Imagine going about your day, chilling in bed, relaxing and minding your own business, when a construction worker who working on your apartment building looks in your window and insults you. If you knew he didn’t know you could hear him, would you change that, keep minding your own business, or escalate the situation?

In this story, one tenant is in this exact situation, and to make it even worse, she’s exhausted from being woken up by the construction noise. She decided not to make a big deal about the noise and just accept it, but insulting her was crossing the line.

She was furious, emotional, and definitely made sure the construction worker and everyone else she could think of knew about his insult.

Keep reading for all the details.

Construction worker insults apartment owner, gets fear of the gods put in him.

I’m a hefty person in a low-income apartment complex.

The complex ordered a company to build roofs on the balconies and I have a second floor apartment, which has just that.

Now, I work as an artist and set my own hours, which tend to be at night when people leave me alone.

She’s exhausted.

I wake up about 8:30 in the morning for the last week or so to banging, sawing, what have you.

Fourth day in a row I woke up to shouting about people throwing down roof tiles and them landing on cars.

I can sense today is gonna be difficult and decide to give up and just chill until it’s time to eat and take my pills.

I’m sleep deprived, which already makes me prone to getting emotional. Keep that in mind.

How rude!

I load up Subnautica (I’m sure most of you do, but for those who don’t know: a surprisingly terrifying game that takes place underwater on an alien planet) and just chill on my bed while the guys start finishing my balcony roof.

My curtains are open because I like them that way, and there’s two workers talking right outside my window.

Whatever, right? Except one of them was watching me and laughs at his partner.

I didn’t hear what the other guy said but the first one answered with “Just Shamu laying there on her bed.”

She made sure he knew she heard him.

Now, yes, was assigned female at birth and I am relatively heavy set. Not like…morbidly obese but enough of a gut that I’m not socially acceptable I guess.

There’s a lot of psychological and genetic mumbo-jumbo that I could go into about it but forget that. All you need to know is I’m already very sensitive about my weight.

I don’t think he realized I could hear him so I shout to the window: “EXCUSE ME? YOU WANNA INSULT SOMEONE THAT CAN HEAR EVERY WORD YOU SAY?”

He clams up, and continues working.

She was very upset about it, as you would be.

I call the main office to the apartments and am doing my best to stay calm.

WITHIN EARSHOT of the guy, I complain about the insult (slowly dissolving into tears), and the site manager says she’ll get in touch with the company supervisor.

By the end of the call, I actually needed to hang up and finish crying, because once I start I usually can’t stop until it’s all out.

The guy is apparently realizing just how bad he messed up, as he is now only talking to the guys in charge of sizing the parts and cutting them to size.

She got evidence.

I managed to get a picture of him while texting my friends to have them help me calm back down.

As I’m finally starting to calm down, one of the maintenance supervisors of the apartments knocks on my door, and behind him is this scrawny guy.

They can see my puffy eyes and I’m still doing that weird hiccupy-breathing but it’s slowed.

The maintenance guy looks mad, and the scrawny guy behind him steps forward and in a low, trying-to-be-comforting voice gives me a formal apology, stating that “That’s not how our company should act” and asks if I know the guy that called me Shamu.

She pulled out the picture.

That picture from earlier? Yeah that came in handy.

I also happened to mention the guy from earlier with the shingles, and how I’ve been seeing them sort of just throwing them off the roof without really aiming. I even looked for one of those crates they usually dump old shingles. They’re not where I’ve been seeing them fall.

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So yeah, even if he didn’t get fired for the insult I’m pretty sure they’re gonna get their butts handed to them for being reckless and destructive on public property.

How unprofessional! They never should’ve commented and laughed about a tenant chilling at home. They should mind their own business. I’m glad she stood up for herself.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman at a ceramics study who is mistaken for an employee and asked about party bookings.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Here’s some encouragement.

Another person makes two points.

Savage, indeed!

Everyone loves the revenge.

Insulting someone is never okay whether you think they can hear you or not. But honestly, how did that construction guy not realize that the tenant wouldn’t hear him? Apartment walls and windows aren’t going to be 100% soundproof. If they were, the tenant would’ve been happily sleeping through all of the construction noise.

I’m glad she escalated the situation instead of just pretending she couldn’t hear him. He deserved to be called out on what he did, and taking a picture of him will hopefully mean that he’s reprimanded or fired.

Mentioning how they’re not doing their job very well and most likely causing damage was also a good idea.

At least she has a supportive group of friends who were able to help her calm down.