Good fences make good neighbors

Why, oh why, do our neighbors at the restaurant next door to our store insist of turning up the radio in their kitchen so loud that we can hear it all the way in our store? And, more importantly, why do they NOT BELIEVE ME when I call them, tell them we can hear it, and ask them nicely to turn it down? Tell me, do you think that I’m being unreasonable, not wanting to hear their radio in our store?

Why do I have such bad luck with neighbors?

First, there was the possible CIA neighbor, who only showed up late at night once or twice a month, and was noisily building some kind of scaffolding in her apartment.

Then, there was the crazy child who used to find pieces of wood, like a 2x4, and pound it repeatedly on the sidewalk. No reason that I could tell. He’d just pound and pound and pound.

Sue, the musical neighbor would sing opera. I mean it, really, Harry the Dirty Dog style opera, and LOUDLY. She was just above us, and believe it or not, noise traveled downwards into our otherwise beautiful apartment. That woman could really project her voice. Then, after an hour of her opera scales, she’d play piano scales and exercises. Never any songs. Just scales and exercises. For an hour. Then she’s run on her treadmill, which shook the whole building. Really. This was a punishment for us, because we once asked her not to do her treadmill at 4am. Yes, 4am, as in before DAWN. She went ballistic at us for daring to tell her how to run her life, when we obviously didn’t have lives, then she started the whole opera-piano-treadmill routine every night as soon as she got home from work. Sometimes, if she was feeling chipper, she’d sing again for another hour before bed. Weekends she’d often do the entire trio twice a day. She did this for the rest of the time we lived in that apartment.

There have been crying baby neighbors, parking spot stealing neighbors, hogging the laundry room neighbors, but none really ever could compete with Sue.

You’d think with all of this apartment neighbor karma, we’d escape commercial bad neighbor syndrome. But no. It’s like a college dorm around here.

The owners of the restaurant are so NICE, I’d like to say. The food is good and the beer on tap is great. I love the owners, they’re so very sweet. But those guys that work in the kitchen are just, well…did I do something to make them not like me? Besides ask them to keep their radio turned down, that is.

The thing is, they know that their radio can be heard through the wall. My proof is that they turn it up even louder at exactly 6:00, when we normally close. We won’t even go into the fact that our work day rarely ends at 6:00, I’ll save that for another post.