Some neighbors thrive on small talk, but others cross the line into creepy supervision of your social life.

One renter began noticing his nosy neighbor was intercepting his guests before he even opened his door, so he tried to address it without making things weird.

Spoiler alert: things only got weirder.

Keep reading for the full story.

My neighbor across the hall has started greeting my guests before I even get to the door and it’s getting weird

I’m 31M, live alone in a small apartment building, and the woman across from me has slowly developed this bizarre habit that is somehow minor enough to sound fake when I explain it, but consistent enough that it’s starting to really get under my skin.

He describes his neighbor.

She’s maybe in her late 50s or early 60s, always home, always somehow aware of hallway movement before anyone else.

At first it was just one of those apartment things.

Then it happened for the very first time.

Friend comes over, I hear a knock, I’m walking to the door, and by the time I open it she’s already cracked hers open and is smiling at them like she’s the hall receptionist.

Stuff like “oh, you must be here for him” or “he’s home, I just heard him.”

He tried to not make a big deal out of it, but soon it became a larger pattern.

The first couple times I brushed it off because whatever, apartment life, people are nosy.

But it kept happening, and now it’s at the point where if someone comes by, I’m almost waiting for her to appear first like some kind of cursed building feature.

He knows it seems like a strange thing to complain about on the surface.

The part that makes it worse is that she doesn’t do it in an openly aggressive way, which somehow makes it harder to complain about.

She’s not yelling, not blocking anyone, not technically doing anything huge. She just inserts herself into the first five seconds of other people arriving at my door.

It’s starting to grate on his nerves more and more.

My sister came by with groceries and said the neighbor had already asked “is he expecting you?” before I even unlocked the deadbolt.

A friend of mine told me she once smiled and said “he has people over more than you’d think,” which is a deeply strange sentence to say to someone standing in a hallway holding takeout.

Her insertions were deeply embarrassing to him.

Last week a guy I’m seeing came over for the second time, and before I got there she was apparently already outside with a trash bag saying “oh, you found the place again.”

He laughed when he told me, but I wanted to crawl into the wall.

It makes him regret ever choosing to live there in the first place.

It gives this gross feeling that my doorway is not actually my doorway, it’s some kind of shared social checkpoint she thinks she’s supervising.

He tries to get ahead of it, but when it doesn’t work, he decides to just confront her.

I’ve tried solving it indirectly by opening the door faster, ignoring the hallway, timing stuff better, but she is freakishly good at materializing.

I finally said, pretty politely, “hey, can you stop talking to my guests before I answer the door?” and she got offended instantly.

She’s quick to defend her behavior and make him seem like the villain.

She said she was “just being friendly” and that in a building like this people should know their neighbors and “look out for each other.”

Now things are even more awkward than before.

Since then she’s been colder to me, which honestly would be perfect if she also stopped popping out every time someone visits.

But she hasn’t. Now it’s just the same weird behavior with a more wounded expression on top.

I feel slightly insane even typing this, because it sounds small, but it’s such a specific, repeated little invasion that I’m starting to dread people coming over.

This behavior would get on just about anyone’s nerves.

What did Reddit make of this bizarre situation?

This user doesn’t buy the “friendly” argument for one second.

This user would have been a lot more direct in their response.

This commenter imagines a very different explanation for her behavior.

Why not just pull a reverse uno?

One way or another, this neighbor needs to learn her place — and it isn’t in the hallway making all his guests uncomfortable.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a couple who found themselves in hot water after they borrowed their neighbor’s patio furniture without asking.