When you live in an apartment building, it is polite to try to stay reasonably quiet so you don’t disturb the neighbors.

What would you do if your neighbor was constantly complaining about the noise you made, but one day you were at her apartment and didn’t hear a sound, even though your partner was upstairs doing construction?

That is what happened to the couple in this story, so she started ignoring all the neighbors’ complaints, but now the neighbor is getting aggressive and even bothering other tenants, so she doesn’t know how to respond.

AITA for pretending I don’t hear a neighbor that constantly complains to me about something?

I live in an apartment building and my neighbor from the apartment under me is an incredibly bored and annoying lady.

Some people just love to complain.

She complains to me on average once a day. She looks out her window to see when I’ll come home and she’ll come up to my apartment and complain about something.

By the way, I’m 34m and I live with my partner. She’s around 60 and lives with her husband.

Noise complaints are always common in an apartment.

The sort of complaints she has are: you were too loud last night/this morning, your TV was too loud, you moved the furniture too loud, you showered too loud, your AC is too loud, we could hear you had people over, we hear your music, we hear you talking, your cat meows all day long, the water you used for your plants dripped on our balcony, the smells of cooking from your apartment are too strong, we can smell cigarette when you smoke on your balcony, and so on and so forth.

Is she just making up complaints?

I’m not even going to go into the fact that we have 3 cats that don’t meow much (we have cameras), that we have succulents that we don’t water as often as she complains about water dripping, and that neither of us smokes.

The fact is, this woman is driving us crazy. For several years now, we would listen to her complaints, apologize and try to keep it down.

Wow, she wasn’t really hearing anything?

But a few weeks ago we had some repair work done at our apartment so while my boyfriend was doing the work, I went down there to ask them for some patience and understanding.

To my surprise (horror?) I could hear extremely muffled sounds in their apartment. Almost nothing. And he was literally HAMMERING and DRILLING upstairs.

I would be pretty upset.

I asked him if he was going easy with the hammer/drill, he said no, that it was super loud.

So, the conclusion was – they can’t hear anything. We’ve been walking on tip toe for fear of disturbing this poor old couple, I listen to music so quietly, I can’t even hear it.

I certainly don’t blame them for this.

So, we decided to stop living like church mice and behave normally and to ignore them completely.

Now when she calls after me, I just keep walking. When she knocks on my door, I don’t answer. Same with her husband. And my boyfriend does the same.

She’ll get the hint eventually.

Last week, she knocked on my door for a straight 10 minutes, shouting “I know you’re in there” and would only leave when my next door neighbor told her to leave or they’ll call the police.

Yesterday, she waited until 6pm which is when I come home after work, and started shouting from her window at me.

Everyone is seeing how crazy she is.

There’s a kids’ playground in front of our building, and everyone could hear her screaming.

This is where I start to feel kind of bad. She’s becoming a nuisance to other people only because we’re ignoring her.

It is a tough situation since you have to live near these people.

I don’t know what to do. I want to keep ignoring her. But it feels mean to put other people through this.

AITA?

She should tell the neighbor one time, very clearly, that any complaints she has should be brought to the building manager directly. Then ignore her.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this situation.

It can’t hurt to give this a try.

The neighbors might get the cops involved.

Reporting it to the landlord is a great idea.

She might just be lonely.

This is a very helpful comment.

At this point, she needs to just ignore her neighbor’s bad behavior.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a woman who thought sharing homemade bread with her neighbor would stop the noise complaints, but when it didn’t, she kept her pastries to herself.