When you have some type of conflict with your neighbors, you need to handle it very carefully to avoid escalating the issue. Keeping in mind that you have to live next to these people is very important.

What would you do if your new neighbors had a floodlight on their driveway that was pointed directly into your window, and even when you asked nicely, they refused to turn it off or adjust the lights?

That is what happened to the couple in this story, so one night the frustrated homeowner snuck over to the neighbor’s house to solve the problem in his own creative way. It took months for the neighbors to realize what happened, and they never did realize how it happened.

What’s even better was the homeowner’s response when the neighbor asked about it.

Keep reading for the whole story.

Neighbor won’t turn his flood lights off

Some years ago we had some new neighbors move in next door.

Nice enough people but we had a problem with them. The husband traveled a lot and his wife was afraid of just about everything: the dark, thunderstorms, you name it.

The problem was the flood lights over their garage doors. She would leave them on all night, every night, even though you couldn’t see them from inside of their house.

I can see how this would be annoying.

They were positioned such that they would shine into our bedroom at night.

We were not able to block them effectively with our curtains.

We asked them politely several times if they could turn them off at night since they served no effective purpose.

They are being more than nice about it, which is good. I wonder if they couldn’t just adjust the direction that the lights are pointing.

They adamantly refused.

I offered to pay for a timer that would control them.

No way they would consider it.

I thought about taking the bulbs out, shooting them out with my pellet gun, etc.

This is likely illegal, but I get why they would do it. It is too funny that they didn’t notice for such a long time.

The solution that I arrived at was to simply loosen them up enough that they wouldn’t come on.

Since they couldn’t see them from inside the house it was about 5-6 months before they realized that they were not working.

They screwed them back in.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

I waited a couple of weeks and unscrewed them again.

Another few months went by.

Finally, one day, my neighbor asked me if I ever had any trouble with my outdoor lights.

Oh, this is the perfect answer.

I told him yes, as a matter of fact I did. I said that they would loosen up occasionally and I would have to retighten them. I blamed it on vibration from the traffic on our street.

He said that he had the same problem.

I told him that I finally just gave up and left them off.

He eventually did the same. We were happy with the final outcome and we were able to keep peace in the neighborhood.

Stories where there is conflict between neighbors don’t always work out so well. This person played it perfectly and got the results they wanted without making enemies of their neighbors. Well played.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

Let’s see what the top commenters on Reddit had to say about the situation.

A motion-sensitive light is more effective for security than just a light that is always on.

I think this qualifies as revenge. They made it so they couldn’t have the security light on, which was so important to them.

Here is someone who knows how to be kind to their neighbors.

This commenter has a great suggestion. Give them a taste of their own medicine.

The lights were so important that they couldn’t ever have them off, yet they didn’t notice when they were broken for months at a time.

The neighbors were being unreasonable, so now they don’t get the security lights at all. They had so many options available to fix this problem and keep everyone happy, but in the end, keeping them off solved the problem too.