A Neighbor Keeps Complaining About Their Home Business — But The City Confirmed They’re Doing Nothing Wrong
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Some people just seem to like to complain even when there’s literally nothing to complain about, and even when they’ve been told in the past that the thing they’re complaining about is not actually a problem.
This story is a good example.
A married couple has a small business that they run from their home, but they’ve already checked with the city. Everything they’re doing is perfectly legal.
Yet, the neighbor still keeps complaining!
Let’s read all about it.
Neighbor keeps reporting our fully legal home business over 10 minute wood deliveries
My husband and I run a small business building greenhouses – this is our full-time livelihood. It’s very low impact – no customers coming to our house, no employees, no chaos.
We pre-cut some materials (like 2x4s) in our garage and do all the actual builds onsite at our clients’ homes. We load everything in our enclosed trailer..
We are fully compliant with all county and state requirements, including taxes.
The town has already investigated us and confirmed everything we’re doing is allowed.
But they have an annoying neighbor.
Occasionally, we get small material deliveries. That’s it.
Last year, one of our neighbors reported us for “running a business out of our home” and for having deliveries.
The town checked and said we’re fine.
Now it’s happened again.
The city is on their side.
This time the complaint was literally that we had a wood delivery – 50 2x4s on a small flatbed truck. The truck pulled up, beeped maybe twice while backing in, dropped the materials, and left.
The entire thing took less than 10 minutes. No obstruction, no ongoing noise, nothing disruptive.
The town actually drove by right after the complaint and saw the delivery load, and told us that this is the exact kind of delivery they themselves would have sent to their own homes. In other words – completely normal.
While they didn’t officially name the person, they repeatedly referred to the complainant as “she reported again,” and based on that and our street layout, we can pretty confidently narrow it down to one specific neighbor.
It is pretty odd timing.
What makes this even more confusing is:
• She doesn’t even have a direct view of our house from where she usually is (her front patio is on the corner of the cul-de-sac)
• She started a new remote job after 14 months of unemployment that same day and was outside on her laptop (where she always is)
• The only “disturbance” here would have been two quick backup beeps from a truck that was gone in minutes
So the timing just feels… odd.
They’ve been really good neighbors.
And this is someone we’ve gone out of our way to help over the years:
• Helped unload an entire semi of decking
• Bought her food when she had COVID
• Helped her look for her “missing” dog (which wasn’t actually missing…)
• Made and posted flyers for her lost cat
The list of good deeds continues…
• Helped lift an ~800 lb fountain piece
• Let her dump pea gravel in our driveway
• Took a perfectly good fridge off her hands so she didn’t have to pay to dispose of it
• Been friendly, had drinks with her, gave her eggs, etc.
So we’ve been genuinely good neighbors.
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OP is pretty fed up.
Meanwhile she’s apparently repeatedly reporting us over completely legal, already-approved activity – and now over something that lasted less than 10 minutes and was confirmed by the town to be totally normal.
At this point I’m less angry and more just baffled.
Has anyone dealt with a neighbor like this? Do you just ignore it since the town has already cleared everything, or is there a better way to handle someone who keeps making complaints over non-issues?
Are they sure that’s the neighbor who is complaining? Is there a way to know for sure? It seems pretty odd.
Let’s see what Reddit suggested.
This person would confront the neighbor.
Another person has a theory.
This person shares a story about her neighbor.
This is funny.
I would really want to know for sure who reported them. I wonder if there’s a way of confronting the neighbor. They could use the direct approach, like one comment suggested, or they could try talking to her in a less confrontational way.
Perhaps they could vent to her, like, “I can’t believe someone reported us to the city again. The city keeps telling us we’re not doing anything wrong. I bet they’re really annoyed about all these phone calls wasting their time.” And see what she says.
Maybe that would be enough to get her to stop if it is her.
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