Imagine living in a small apartment building during the pandemic, and one of your neighbors has several little kids. Would you be annoyed if they used the outside area near your apartment as their own private play area, or would you turn up the volume on your TV and ignore them?

In this story, one woman is in this situation. She tries to ignore the noise, but when her neighbors treat the area as a party venue, she decides to speak up.

Let’s read all about it.

AITA for telling my neighbors our walkway isn’t a play place?

I know we’re in a pandemic & it’s really got to be difficult to have young kids cooped up in an apartment, but I had to draw a line today.

I (27F) live with my mother & sister in a downstairs apartment of a 4-unit building. (2 downstairs & two upstairs).

There is a cement walkway that runs from a side gate to the back parking lot with access to 3/4 units right in the middle, the two upstairs via a set of stairs & my unit has a door right under those stairs.

Both downstairs units have a window right at this walkway.

Kids can be loud when they’re playing.

One of the upstairs neighbors has young children (I think 2 or 3 in total, but they moved in about a year ago & I try not to interact since pandemic).

This family likes to use the walkway as a playground of sorts, with the kids using bikes & scooters in the area(it’s just slightly wider than a normal sidewalk & not big enough to be a parking spot).

Normally I just put up with the noise or turn up my music/TV.

I have once before asked the kids to quiet down as I had a migraine & they were literally SCREAMING “Frozen” lyrics trying to outdo each other outside my bedroom window.

Remember, this is during the pandemic.

Today I started hearing a lot of voices & some weird tapping outside my window.

I have my window blocked since it’s on the main walkway & went to my door to see what was going on, & opened it to a ton of unmasked people gathering outside my door & generally throughout the walkway.

I shut the door immediately.

She decided to confront the family.

A few minutes later, the noise was highly irritating & they’d begun hitting something I later saw was a piñata.

I went out (with a mask) to ask them to be quiet & tell them this wasn’t a party area. (I would have had to walk through this crowd & needed them to stop their piñata beating to ‘safely’ pass if I had needed to access my car during this time).

The man of the couple agreed & could be heard trying to remind the kids to quiet down during the rest of their festivities, but the mom seemed to have a lot of attitude about it.

Her mom thinks she overreacted.

My own mom thinks I’m being unnecessarily grumpy about it & shouldn’t have said anything.

Parks are open in my area & we are at below 8% ICU availability.

Am I wrong for pointing out that they were right outside people’s windows & it was not a suitable party venue?

It’s not a party venue, but it doesn’t sound like they were hurting anyone. I probably wouldn’t have said anything, but since the dad agreed with her, I don’t think she needs to feel bad about speaking up. At the very least, they should try to keep the noise down.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

Another person points out the pandemic.

This person thinks the kids should play somewhere else.

Everyone agrees that she handled this situation well.

It would’ve been better to have the party at the park.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.