Confidential to the Bitch
Dear Aforementioned Bitch,
You know exactly who you are. And now, we know exactly who you are. I was really hoping that it wouldn't have to come to me airing out my dirty laundry in an open forum that no one reads anyway, but apparently common decency continues to elude you and I am forced, reluctantly though it may seem, to air said grievances.
Let's start with the most obvious gripe: the noise. I understand that you have quite the affinity for music. I understand this because, from the moment you moved in, we've heard your music. Loudly. And by "loudly," I really mean "at a ridiculously unreasonable volume." Part of me wants to say that I wouldn't mind so much if the music was good -- and in fact, last night, while Danielle and I were having a quiet romantic dinner in our living room, one of the tunes you played (its specific name escapes me at this time) was rather nice and appropriate for the setting. But when Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar" took its place, that was simply too much to tolerate.
It was at this point, after a month of teeth-gritting toleration, that Danielle finally went upstairs to have a chat with you. From what she told me, you were less than receptive: after requiring approximately ten knocks for you to actually hear Danielle over your incessant auditory attack, you answered the door with notable frustration, then shrugged offer her request with a curt "okay" and a quick slam of the door. (Be fortunate you hadn't dealt with me at the door, because I can assure you I would not have simply walked away from a door slammed in my face.) Now, in fairness, you did turn the music down at that point; it was, in fact, at a reasonable volume again. But this morning, yet again, I'm painfully aware of how much you love this bar.
This week, it's Toby Keith. Two weeks ago, it was some bastardized combination of hip-hop/R&B (I couldn't tell, really; all I could hear was the THUMP THUMP THUMP through the ceiling). And last week, it was insanely heavy hard rock -- which, again, in fairness, I can usually deal with pretty well. The problem, though, is two-fold. I don't mind hearing Papa Roach's "Forever," as long as you don't play it three times in a row or once every hour. Ditto with Drowning Pool's "Bodies" and Disturbed's "Voices." What's the other problem, you may ask? Well, if I can identify the title and artist of every song you're playing, that means I can hear it clearly. From one floor down. Hell, over the weekend, with the weather brisk and cool and all our windows open, I felt the bass thump through the ceiling and heard the vocals and guitars, almost in stereo, coming through my window. It was immersive in a most unpleasant way -- again, by "immersive," I mean "oh God I'm trapped get it the fuck away now now now now NOW."
I mean, as I type, Justin Timberlake is explaining about how he's just bringing sexy back. Fuck sexy. I want you to bring quiet back.
Actually, let me rephrase that. It's not just quiet. Granted, you're not quiet at all, and that problem goes way beyond the music issue. You have no sense of quiet as you traipse across your apartment in shoes that clearly has steel not only on the toes but on the soles as well. If the THUMP THUMP THUMP isn't coming from Justin or Diddy or God only knows who else, it comes from your feet. You do realize that you can walk, heel to toe, and not stomp around like there's an elephant stampede in your living room, right?
And while we're on the topic of things you should and shouldn't know, let's review:
I know it may seem like these things should (and that's the key word here) have been covered years and years ago, when your parents taught you about common courtesy. But apparently those lessons never stuck, so I need to cover them again here. Why the need to be so pedantic, you ask? Because what you're doing is not just annoying, it's rude. Rude because what you're doing isn't strictly independent of your own room: your walls are shared with at least one other apartment, your floor has three other sets of residents on it, and (biggest surprise of all!) your floors are my ceilings. This isn't like home, where a sound that reverberates through the whole building affects only the people you live with; in an apartment building like this, you share the building with eleven other groups of tenants, many of whom don't want to hear your shitty music, pathetic attempts at home repair, or emergency interior design remodels. We have lives too, and some of us (like yours truly) have work to do that is better done in an environment of peace and quiet, one in which we don't want to jab sharpened pencils into our ears or gouge out our eyes with melon ballers.
This whole thing could have been easily averted -- and the path of our relationship could be easily improved -- if you realize that what you do impacts other people, and that your actions have consequences outside of your own four walls. That means keep the noise down. That means don't act like a bitch when someone comes to your door to respectfully ask you to keep it down. And yes, that also means don't smoke in your bathroom -- why? Because your vent is connected to my vent. And nothing smells worse than waking up in the morning and walking into a bathroom that you expect to smell like a Glade lavender-scented air freshener but instead reeks of cigarette smoke. There's a window or -- surprise! -- an outside world you can utilize to get your nicotine fix, so stop stanking up my bathroom.
And while your at it, since common decency at this point has been long ago defenestrated, turn your goddamn music down, step lightly, lift up your damn furniture when you move it, and, above all, realize that the apartment complex has quiet hours. That start at 10:00pm. So after 10:00pm, turn your shit down. No one wants to hear it but you (at any time of the day, frankly), but after 10:00pm, it's a whole new ballgame.
After 10:00pm, we all have the right to peace and quiet. And if you can't provide that, there are avenues to be taken. They're rather clearly elucidated in your move-in packet. The key thing is that disputes between tenants aren't handled by the complex, they're handled by the disputants. That would be you and me. Or you and Danielle.
Last night, we tried to be civil. You wanted to be a bitch. More than fair. All I'm going to say is, we tried. Pretty hard, I think. But you still insist on being unreasonable.
So when the police show up at your door and slap you with a $300 fine for violating the township's noise ordinance, remember your polite, friendly New Jerseyans downstairs who tried, as civilly as possible, to set you on the right path. And don't bitch to us when your wallet feels lighter for your discourteousness and ignorance.
So seriously. Shut the fuck up already.
Sincerely,
Your Ingracious Downstairs Neighbors
You know exactly who you are. And now, we know exactly who you are. I was really hoping that it wouldn't have to come to me airing out my dirty laundry in an open forum that no one reads anyway, but apparently common decency continues to elude you and I am forced, reluctantly though it may seem, to air said grievances.
Let's start with the most obvious gripe: the noise. I understand that you have quite the affinity for music. I understand this because, from the moment you moved in, we've heard your music. Loudly. And by "loudly," I really mean "at a ridiculously unreasonable volume." Part of me wants to say that I wouldn't mind so much if the music was good -- and in fact, last night, while Danielle and I were having a quiet romantic dinner in our living room, one of the tunes you played (its specific name escapes me at this time) was rather nice and appropriate for the setting. But when Toby Keith's "I Love This Bar" took its place, that was simply too much to tolerate.
It was at this point, after a month of teeth-gritting toleration, that Danielle finally went upstairs to have a chat with you. From what she told me, you were less than receptive: after requiring approximately ten knocks for you to actually hear Danielle over your incessant auditory attack, you answered the door with notable frustration, then shrugged offer her request with a curt "okay" and a quick slam of the door. (Be fortunate you hadn't dealt with me at the door, because I can assure you I would not have simply walked away from a door slammed in my face.) Now, in fairness, you did turn the music down at that point; it was, in fact, at a reasonable volume again. But this morning, yet again, I'm painfully aware of how much you love this bar.
This week, it's Toby Keith. Two weeks ago, it was some bastardized combination of hip-hop/R&B (I couldn't tell, really; all I could hear was the THUMP THUMP THUMP through the ceiling). And last week, it was insanely heavy hard rock -- which, again, in fairness, I can usually deal with pretty well. The problem, though, is two-fold. I don't mind hearing Papa Roach's "Forever," as long as you don't play it three times in a row or once every hour. Ditto with Drowning Pool's "Bodies" and Disturbed's "Voices." What's the other problem, you may ask? Well, if I can identify the title and artist of every song you're playing, that means I can hear it clearly. From one floor down. Hell, over the weekend, with the weather brisk and cool and all our windows open, I felt the bass thump through the ceiling and heard the vocals and guitars, almost in stereo, coming through my window. It was immersive in a most unpleasant way -- again, by "immersive," I mean "oh God I'm trapped get it the fuck away now now now now NOW."
I mean, as I type, Justin Timberlake is explaining about how he's just bringing sexy back. Fuck sexy. I want you to bring quiet back.
Actually, let me rephrase that. It's not just quiet. Granted, you're not quiet at all, and that problem goes way beyond the music issue. You have no sense of quiet as you traipse across your apartment in shoes that clearly has steel not only on the toes but on the soles as well. If the THUMP THUMP THUMP isn't coming from Justin or Diddy or God only knows who else, it comes from your feet. You do realize that you can walk, heel to toe, and not stomp around like there's an elephant stampede in your living room, right?
And while we're on the topic of things you should and shouldn't know, let's review:
- Holding parties on Friday or Saturday nights in a college town is probably to be expected, but a raucous party till 4:00am on the night of Labor Day (which, in case you forgot, is a Monday)? That's outlandish.
- Moving furniture around not by carrying it but by scraping it loudly across the floor? Not only is that going to wreak havoc on your gorgeous hardwood floors, it travels directly through those floors and into my ear canal.
- You've apparently got some nails that are begging to be a-hammered. And that's fine. Hammering them repeatedly at 1:00am, though, on any night of the week, is just plain irritating. Do it in the middle of the day or the evening or -- brainstorm! -- at a time when other people might actually be awake and not potentially sleeping!
- And yes, I know I went through the music thing already, but since we're on the topic of appropriate times to be loud, here's a couple of hints: playing your music loudly enough for me to hear at 6:45am? No. Playing the same music as loudly at 2:00am? Same no.
I know it may seem like these things should (and that's the key word here) have been covered years and years ago, when your parents taught you about common courtesy. But apparently those lessons never stuck, so I need to cover them again here. Why the need to be so pedantic, you ask? Because what you're doing is not just annoying, it's rude. Rude because what you're doing isn't strictly independent of your own room: your walls are shared with at least one other apartment, your floor has three other sets of residents on it, and (biggest surprise of all!) your floors are my ceilings. This isn't like home, where a sound that reverberates through the whole building affects only the people you live with; in an apartment building like this, you share the building with eleven other groups of tenants, many of whom don't want to hear your shitty music, pathetic attempts at home repair, or emergency interior design remodels. We have lives too, and some of us (like yours truly) have work to do that is better done in an environment of peace and quiet, one in which we don't want to jab sharpened pencils into our ears or gouge out our eyes with melon ballers.
This whole thing could have been easily averted -- and the path of our relationship could be easily improved -- if you realize that what you do impacts other people, and that your actions have consequences outside of your own four walls. That means keep the noise down. That means don't act like a bitch when someone comes to your door to respectfully ask you to keep it down. And yes, that also means don't smoke in your bathroom -- why? Because your vent is connected to my vent. And nothing smells worse than waking up in the morning and walking into a bathroom that you expect to smell like a Glade lavender-scented air freshener but instead reeks of cigarette smoke. There's a window or -- surprise! -- an outside world you can utilize to get your nicotine fix, so stop stanking up my bathroom.
And while your at it, since common decency at this point has been long ago defenestrated, turn your goddamn music down, step lightly, lift up your damn furniture when you move it, and, above all, realize that the apartment complex has quiet hours. That start at 10:00pm. So after 10:00pm, turn your shit down. No one wants to hear it but you (at any time of the day, frankly), but after 10:00pm, it's a whole new ballgame.
After 10:00pm, we all have the right to peace and quiet. And if you can't provide that, there are avenues to be taken. They're rather clearly elucidated in your move-in packet. The key thing is that disputes between tenants aren't handled by the complex, they're handled by the disputants. That would be you and me. Or you and Danielle.
Last night, we tried to be civil. You wanted to be a bitch. More than fair. All I'm going to say is, we tried. Pretty hard, I think. But you still insist on being unreasonable.
So when the police show up at your door and slap you with a $300 fine for violating the township's noise ordinance, remember your polite, friendly New Jerseyans downstairs who tried, as civilly as possible, to set you on the right path. And don't bitch to us when your wallet feels lighter for your discourteousness and ignorance.
So seriously. Shut the fuck up already.
Sincerely,
Your Ingracious Downstairs Neighbors
posted by Dave at 9/18/2007 12:19:00 PM
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