When you live in an apartment, you have to expect that your neighbors will be making noise from time to time.

What would you do if, immediately after moving into your apartment, your neighbor started complaining about every noise you made, even when it was in the middle of the day?

That is what happened to the renters in this story, so they pulled up their contract and identified the ‘quiet hours’ and then used their hammer for 10 minutes leading up to those hours every day. After a week, the neighbor realized how bad things could get and stopped making frivolous complaints.

Personally, I think he handled this situation really well. Read through the full story and see if you agree.

Neighbour complaining about noise

Our rental contract, as is normal here, stipulates a “quiet period” between 10pm and 7am every night, where we’re not supposed to be loud.

He can’t be silent 24/7, even on weekends.

We moved in on a Saturday and were of course unpacking on Sunday. So, our new neighbour below us knocked on our door and screamed at us around midday, and told us to read the part of our contract about the “quiet period.”

So I did, and Sundays aren’t mentioned. 10pm to 7am every day of the week. Nowhere does it state that Sundays are any different. So we carried on.

Moving furniture at night is not ok, but the rest of it is just normal living.

He has called the police on us several times for just doing normal things such as rearranging furniture. Each time, he would lie to the police that he had come to speak to us about it first, which he had not.

The reasons included things like “dropping things too often” to “using the stairs at night.” These reasons are of course ridiculous, but each time I have just shown them the contract which all residents sign. If he has signed the contract, he consents to me making noise during these periods.

He is only bothering these people.

We complained to the letting agency that he was harassing us for simply making the normal amount of noise people make from living in an apartment. However, nothing changed.

I checked with our other neighbours to see if they had any complaints about our noise level, and they all said no.

If he wants to complain, they will give him something to complain about.

After he called the police several times, I decided to begin malicious compliance. I went down to the neighbour with a copy of the house rules, which we have all signed, and told him to please read them, specifically, the exact times which are the “quiet period.”

Then for the next week or so, any hammering, drilling or other loud things I had to do, I saved for 9:50pm. Even if I didn’t have anything I needed to do, I made sure to make noise right up until 10pm.

Good, they were able to solve the problem.

After I did this for about a week, we stopped hearing from him, and haven’t had any noise complaints since, and it’s been several months now.

Now, a couple of heavy metal fans have moved into the apartment next to him and I couldn’t be happier.

Sometimes you have to show people how bad things could get in order to make them stop complaining.

Read through the comments from this story to see what other people have to say about it.

At least this person’s neighbor was nice enough to stop.

Not much the police will do about this.

This just shows that people file complaints for many reasons.

Now this is just too funny.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about neighbors who couldn’t ignore reckless neighborhood driving after an accident occurred.

This commenter had a similar situation, and the management team was not helpful.

When a neighbor complains about nothing, give them something to complain about. Sometimes people just like to complain to get attention or for some other reason.

While it is important to try to be a quiet and respectful neighbor, that does not mean you need to put up with unreasonableness.