Life

The neighbour drama came to a peak this week, after last weekend where I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night at all, and on Sunday morning I sent an ultimatum to the rental office notifying them as a courtesy that if they could not stop the neighbours above me from lowering their sound level and especially opening and closing their balcony doors over and over through the night, then I would take matters into my own hand.

This is the overnight log of their balcony door opening and closing and opening and closing:

Nov 26
Several times between 12 am and 1 am
Several times between 1 am and 2 am
2:19 am
2:25 am
2:36 am
2:50 am
3:04 am
3:11 am
3:28 am (sitting outside fidgeting in chair and making noise)
3:33 am (heavy footsteps, creaking of floorboards)
3:59 am
4:06 am (particularly loud balcony door slam)
4:23 am
4:27 am
6:04 am
6:06 am
6:13 am
6:19 am
8:27 am
8:32 am
10:20 am
12:20 pm
12:22 pm
1:08 pm napped and was woken up by the balcony door again and could then hear sweeping, followed by the rough dragging of some furniture along the ground.
1:11 pm
1:13 pm
1:16 pm

I’m absolutely furious at this. There has been no break at all from this (except between 4:30 and 6 am, where I might have drifted off briefly to sleep but was rudely awakened again to the sound of the balcony door.)

Something needs to change and “opening and closing the balcony door more softly” is not a suitable compromise. I am going absolutely crazy as this is heavily impacting my ability to even function and the balcony door noise is pretty much giving me mild PTSD at this point. I am also sick of trying white noise at this point, it’s distracting and hard to sleep with white noise going on every single day, and I can hear the balcony door even through the white noise anyway. Plus I cannot keep white noise on 24/7 to mask all their other noises during the day.

As a courtesy to the rental office, I am letting you guys know that I will be responding in a nasty way starting probably around the middle of this week going forward, say Wednesday, where I will be knocking on the ceiling with my broomstick for every single sound that I hear from them during the daytime and nighttime, this will involve noises from the balcony door as well as the many thumps and item droppings and furniture slams and other stupid noises that they make on a daily basis because they have no idea how to respectfully and properly live in an apartment setting with other neighbours. This should not be a problem because all they have to do to stop my banging is to not make any noise themselves. I will try to do it in the center of my apartment to try not to impede other neighbours.

If this still has no effect in getting them to cease their maddening sounds, from the following week onwards I will be printing out those timestamp logs of the balcony door opening and closing, and will be pasting them on sheets of paper around the apartment complex to show others how much they use their balcony door and how addicted they are to smoking, to publicly shame them. No one in their right mind needs to smoke that much, at all hours of the day and night when they are home, there’s something seriously wrong with them and it’s affecting my mental health as well at this point. And I’m sorry but if it is still going on by the following week then it’s obvious that whatever the apartment complex is doing to try to help, though I appreciate it, isn’t working.

Nothing changed, so I sent another followup email to the office on Tuesday stating that I would commence the banging campaign the next day.

Good afternoon,

I just wanted to note (and leave a paper trail) that there has been no discernable decrease in noise from my neighbour, and I’m not sure if this constitutes “proof” but I’ve attached a partial log below anyway (of the night portions especially), mostly of balcony door opening/closing, though some of it is general noise as well. The entries without the timestamp in brackets are the balcony door opening and closing, sometimes they come with other noises as well. The entries with the timestamp in brackets are specific and egregious examples of general noise that don’t involve the balcony door.

As such, I will be starting my campaign of “knocking on my ceiling for every noise I hear” tomorrow morning, at 8-9 am or whenever they wake me up, I expect to knock upwards of 50 times a day judging by previous days, so I am guessing they will be very annoyed. I apologize for the inconvenience this will cause you in advance, and please let them know that I will stop making noise when THEY stop making noise to MY satisfaction.

This is the log I have for the evening and night of Nov 26/morning of Nov 27. I didn’t sleep the previous night so I was able to fall asleep despite all the noises eventually.

6:59 pm
7:49 pm
8:02 pm x2
(8:40-8:52 pm – Loud music was playing (the ceiling was shaking) and then something marble-like dropped on the ground with a clatter)
(8:59 pm more banging noises)
9:02 pm
10:22 pm
10:30 pm (plus banging noises and door opening/closing)
10:33 pm
10:46 pm
11:00 pm
11:31 pm
11:41 pm
12:06 am
12:17 am
12:21 am
12:22 am
12:30-12:32 am – A lot of loud “fidgeting” furniture noises upstairs, I think out on the balcony.

This is the log for the night of Nov 27/morning of Nov 28:
11:56 pm
11:58 pm
12:04 am
12:08 am
12:18 am (plus loud clatter x2)
(12:25 am they kept on tapping something against the ground on the balcony outside, very annoying noise)
12:36 am x2
12:45 pm x2
(12:50 am chair scraping on stone outside on balcony)
1:26 am
1:29 am
1:30 am
1:35 am
2:11 am (I banged on the ceiling loudly around this time, I was so irritated.)
2:27 am

9:33 am
(9:52 am scraping of some furniture on ground)
(10:47-10:52 am banging noises upstairs, not sure what sort. Sort of like a mop hitting a wall baseboard over and over.)
11:25 am (door opening/closing and they’re cleaning/sweeping again)
11:36 am (opening/closing balcony door while still cleaning)
11:38 am (opening/closing balcony door while still cleaning!)
11:47 am (opening/closing balcony door while still cleaning!!)
11:51 am (opening/closing balcony door while still cleaning!!!)
(12:28 pm some annoying soft thumping noises, over and over, like a wooden stick tapping against the ground)
(12:50 pm a loud sound like a chair leg swinging against a table leg, made me jump)
(2:14 pm a banging noise, not sure what)
(2:32-2:41+ pm a LOUD BANG, apartment vibrated, like a table dropped sideways onto the floor, followed by a chair leg being dragged along a wooden floor a minute after, then lots of soft banging noises like a broomstick hitting things, and then more furniture dragging noises. Are they cleaning again?)

The entries with timestamps but no other comment are just the logs of their balcony door opening and closing.

These emails were directed at three people — Val, who worked the front desk, Michille, an office worker who apparently has my case and whom I like and often have friendly interactions with, and Denise, the office manager whom I dislike but whom might well be forced to play a “bad cop” role since she’s the manager, I’m not sure. In response to that latter email, Val said I would get a phone call on Wednesday from Michille, and so in respect of that, as well as the fact that I actually had a good night’s rest on Tuesday, I did not end up commencing banging on Wednesday even though they were really loud.

I did not get a phone call on Wednesday though, so on Thursday I sent another email saying that I would be commencing the banging noises:

Good morning,

I didn’t actually begin knocking on my ceiling yesterday because I slept well the previous night (Tues night/Wed morning), and because Val said I would get a phone call from Michille yesterday but I did not (but that’s alright). So out of respect I skipped knocking yesterday. I will be beginning the knocking campaign and noting down all the knocks I made today though, since yesterday was a particularly bad day for noise and I slept badly last night. As an ongoing paper trail, I wrote down all the noises they made yesterday in a more verbose manner instead of just the balcony door stuff. I think they have a wooden floor upstairs instead of a carpeted one in their living room and that’s why there’s constantly so much noise (floorboards creaking, furniture scraping against the floor whenever they drag it)? Either way, they have no idea how to live in a shared apartment community nor how much of their noise travels down through the paper-thin ceiling/floor. I’m about to teach them this.

Nov 29
12:19 pm balcony door
12:29 pm balcony door
12:32 pm balcony door
12:38 pm scraping noises on balcony
1:26 pm item dropping
1:29 pm balcony door
1:33 pm balcony door
1:36-1:53 pm agitated scrabbling noises, stomps, things moving around
2:03 pm balcony door
2:11 pm item crashing on floor
2:13 pm balcony door
lots of noises between 2 and 3 pm, very irritating
3:03 pm balcony door
3:07 pm balcony door
3:29 pm balcony door
3:33 pm balcony door plus slam of something on ground
3:40 pm thumps along the ceiling
4:19-4:25+ pm a very weird falling sound, then many little irritating sounds like things being moved just slightly
4:30 pm balcony door
4:36 pm balcony door
6:31 pm – they’re home, several LOUD thumps on the ground
6:33 pm balcony door
6:55 pm loud THUD upstairs
7:10 pm balcony door
7:57 pm balcony door
8:36 pm balcony door
8:38-8:40 pm lots of heavy movement/footsteps noise upstairs
8:41 pm balcony door
8:47 pm balcony door
8:50-8:56 pm many MANY thumpings, what are they doing?
9:32 pm scraping of chair on ground
9:35-9:46 pm constant, every half a minute or so, noises upstairs, like wooden things clattering against each other
9:50 pm balcony door
9:55 pm soft balcony door and many thumps!
(9:55 pm I knocked on ceiling 3 times, my only knocks this entire day)
9:57 pm balcony door
10:03 pm balcony door
10:05-10:06 pm a loud slam and stomping
10:46 pm the scraping of a chair/table along ground
10:53 pm balcony door
10:58 pm balcony door, heavy footsteps
11:06 pm heavy stomp, made me flinch (also light stomps for last few minutes)
11:18 pm heavy footsteps
11:19 pm balcony door, bang on ground
11:22 pm balcony door, something wooden hitting something else
11:31 pm footsteps, and a swish swish noise against the floor
11:33 pm something knocking against something else, twice
11:47 pm something heavy being placed/dropped on the floor above, made a bit of a clatter
12:18 am loud footsteps
12:33 am a table or something loudly scraping against the floor above.
12:51 am balcony door, scrabbling footsteps
12:57 am balcony door, scrabbling footsteps, sound of something rubbing against the floor
1:00 am balcony door
1:14 am a loud thump on the floor above
1:19 am loud creaking footsteps
1:23 am loud creaking footsteps
1:31 am balcony door and furniture scraping on stone outside
1:34 am wooden thing knocking against ground, two loud floorboard creaks from footsteps
1:36 am balcony door, chair scraping against ground outside on balcony
1:38 am more chair scraping noises outside
1:41 am balcony door and footsteps and some furniture noises
2:19 am balcony door, chair scraping against balcony floor, foorsteps
2:21 am furniture moving noise

This is not reasonable.

I *immediately* got a phone call from Michille, not even 2 minutes after that, although she said that she had not yet read my email. We talked a bit, and I said I was going to start banging, and she said they’d read my email and also that they’d talk to the residents upstairs and would continue talking etc etc. All useless though.

On Thursday, November 30th, I started my knocking-on-ceiling-with-broomstick campaign, though it was very sporadic at first because I wanted to see if there would be any change:

Just 22 times over a long day of noise. There was no change, so on Friday, I ramped it up further, knocking for practically *every* noise I heard:

I was up to 72 knocks by the time I stopped at 3:12 pm. Why did I stop then? Because it achieved the desired effect — I wanted to trigger something to happen before the rental office closed for the weekend, and apparently they had found time in between their chain smoking and multiple cleaning sprees to go down to the rental office to sue for peace. So I got a fun call from Denise Brophy, the rental apartment/office manager.

Denise said that the couple living upstairs had come down to the office itself to speak to them and were feeling traumatized from my knocks. She said that they had come from Ukraine, and that my constant knocking on the ceiling reminded them of (this part was unclear) either the dropping of bombs or warnings about bomb droppings or gunfire or something, and also that they were scared to even open the dresser in their apartment now or even play with their cat (they apparently have a cat!) for fear of triggering more knocks. And that they were very nice people when they came down to the office. Apparently they smoke a lot because they were “stressed” from being refugees from the war and “stressed” from my complaints at them, which had triggered several letters and calls from the apartment office to them. Especially the male half of the resident couple.

Boo hoo. I wasn’t even knocking particularly loudly on the ceiling, my ceiling/their floor is paper-thin so all I was doing for the most part was prodding the ceiling enough to make a noise, but without any strength put into the thrust most of the time. Just a “tok” notification. I didn’t get the chance to say this out loud, but I was basically “reflecting” the noise at them — instead of wondering why I was knocking so loudly on their floor, they should have put themselves in my shoes and thought about all the “noise bombing” they had been doing to me, and how if they can hear that noise so clearly, then I can hear all their damned noises very clearly too, a constant cacophony day in and day out over the past 7 months or so, since I returned from Kyoto. Instead it was always about their (as Denise put it) “rights” to “also” live the way they want there too.

But there’s no “also” if I was not getting enough silence to even sleep at night to begin with. And just one day of 72 knocks and one previous day of 22 knocks “traumatized” them, even when each knock was a response to a sound that they themselves made. It’s like they’re allowed to have trauma because they’re Ukrainian refugees, while I’m not allowed to complain about their noise (or rather, the rental office doesn’t care enough to bring the hammer down when I do) when it’s about the same damn level of noise to begin with, except I was the target of the noise for a lot longer than they have been. Am I only allowed to have peace and quiet if I have trauma in my past? Double standards.

Denise went on to say that they had agreed to not use the balcony door after 10pm from now on, and that if they were going to smoke they would go outside the front door to do so, and would I please stop knocking on my ceiling instead. She also said that they had in principle accepted the offer from the apartment complex to move to another unit for free (i.e. the complex apparently usually has a moving cost if a resident wants to shift to another house) when another unit of comparable price opens up. This was the same offer they’ve kept offering me the past few months as well, which I’ve steadfastly refused to do since I’ve lived here for over 10 years now. Both these concessions made me happy, because eff these nightmare “boo hoo we’re Ukrainian refugees, how dare you give us a taste of our own medicine” neighbours and their constant noise. I even offered to Denise to pay of their any associated moving costs if finances were a problem, though I don’t think she took this offer seriously.

Denise was also very passive-aggressive, and added a snide side-comment when she mentioned that that they had accepted the offer to move, something to the effect of “although I don’t know if your next neighbour will be quiet enough either”. This angered me. The context behind this is that I’ve lodged so many noise complaints with the office in the past year or so, starting around when I returned from my first Japan trip back in November at first. Most of them were targetted at my right side neighbour at first, as they often played loud music/TV and while the paper-thin walls blocked a good amount of it, the bass from their speakers would resonate through the walls and make my ears pop over and over at my computer desk.

The rental office always wanted me to go out and verify who was making the noise though, which is a stupid request to make, especially when the noises were coming in at midnight or 1am sometimes. Still, I did try to comply and would go out and listen outside the neighbours’ doors, both on my level as well as above and below me, and it was usually my right-side neighbour making the noise, which makes sense since they’re the ones I share the wall next to my computer desk with. (Also the ones where the previous resident kept bringing in bedbugs.)

They kept denying it and accusing their upstairs neighbour though, to the point that I was accusing the rental office of making me do the legwork of discovering who was making the noise for nothing, since most of the time I could very clearly hear the noise coming from outside the neighbour’s front door and it was the exact same noise that I could hear from my apartment as well. It wasn’t just them though, as I did discover that occasionally the noise I could hear did indeed come from their upstairs neighbour as well, or occasionally my upstairs neighbour, the nightmare Ukrainians I apparently terrorised with my broomstick this week. But it was *mostly* them, and I could tell because they all have a different sound profile, my right-side neighbours for example were Indian and I could also often hear Indian voices and the hooting laugh of one of the men in the “parties” that they liked to hold every week.

After many complaints and warnings and noise investigations, and a walk-through of their apartment, and them shifting some furniture around or using headphones for their TV/stereo system or something, their noise had mostly subsided to the point that I seldom get the booming bass from their apartment anymore, and their once-a-week parties, which still do happen, seem to stop by 11pm anyway instead of going on until 3am. At some point their upstairs neighbours also moved on, which cut off one of the occasional noise sources.

Mixed into all these were complaints about shifting furniture and banging, which indeed turned out to not be them at all, but it did not register to me that this was my upstairs neighbour until I realized that it could not be my right-side neighbour because I was hearing footsteps along the ground that usually paired with what turned out to be the balcony door opening and slamming as well. (It took me a while to even figure out what the balcony door noise was, since I don’t open and close mine that often or that forcefully, but it clicked for me one day and then I went outside to take photos and a video of them out on their balcony from downstairs a few weeks ago as well to be sure that I had the right unit.)

Throughout this ordeal, the Midwest Property Management rental ofice here at the Village at Southgate did to their credit always follow up by sending a letter and/or phone call to the residents involved, and would sometimes call or email me back too, but otherwise they were really toothless and helpless. They never once came to my unit to follow up on or witness the noise, even when invited, and seemed utterly powerless to figure out who was actually making the noises at any given point, especially at night, since they used to have a night security guard on premise but (I believe) had apparently long since axed that position to save money. Supposedly my right-side neighbour had a “final notice” at one point too but all it took to avoid trouble the next time I complained was to say it wasn’t them, when I clearly could hear the noise from the hallway outside their door, AND also checked the doors of their upstairs and downstairs neighbours and confirmed that all was quiet there. And there were at least 3-4 more complaints after that “final notice”, and yet they’re still there.

And then this office manager comes along yesterday and asked if I was at home all the time now (to which I said yes, I work from home), and then talked about how oh, maybe the reason I’m so sensitive to noise now is that I’m home all the time now post-pandemic instead of being outdoors more, and that people have a right to live their lives too, and even if the upstairs neighbour moves elsewhere (the implication was that *I* was being the bully) she wasn’t sure if I would not also make complaints against the next tenant.

No, Denise. I’ve been here for around 12 years and have never had issues like this until this current crop of neighbours, and in fact I’ve been very understanding and tolerant for my neighbours and their daily noises for a long time. It’s due to your office being extremely unhelpful and ineffective and MULTIPLE neighbours making cacophonies over a LONG period of time that my patience and tolerance has been worn down to next to nothing, and I’ve basically gotten PTSD from my upstairs neighbours opening and closing their balcony door upwards of 50 times a day every day for months on top of all the OTHER noises they make, to the point where it was affecting my sleep and causing me to miss work days too. The last straw was the night last week where they kept me up all night. And I stated my intentions to start this knocking campaign on my upstairs neighbours if nothing changed, in three separate emails that you were CC:ed on. You obviously didn’t read any of those and are falling prey to their “we’re refugees, boohoo, and we need to smoke a lot to destress” bullshit. The neighbours to my left are ALSO refugees, from Afghanistan, but they’re not (as far as I know) a noisy and poor excuse of a neighbour, unlike the ones above me.

(Also, while they can’t help the floor above being wooden and creaky, why is the floor in the apartment above wooden to begin with? The ceiling is so thin. Mine is carpeted, which deadens the noise for the resident below me. This has never been a problem for me with any of the previous residents of that unit, though, assuming the wooden floor isn’t new.)

Denise was also the one a couple weeks ago, when I went down to the office to discuss the noise issue myself, told me that “it’s not always neighbours, there was another long-time resident in a highrise that complained about noises but it turned out to be heating pipes and maybe you can just use white noise machines instead like she did”, which was insulting.

At any rate, I gave her a bad review the last time there was a resident satisfaction survey, and I think there will be another chance before I leave as well. Because I plan to outright leave when my lease is up, I do think I hold most of the cards in my hands in this case anyway, especially since due to what happened with my next door neighbour, I’m fairly confident that they don’t have the teeth to actually evict me anyway even if I continue banging on the ceiling (especially since I have a very substantial paper trail). Though I think I said last year that last year was my last planned year here, and I still ended up renewing for another year anyway. Who knows about this year. It depends on the housing market, since my ideal next step right now is to buy an actual house. Worst come to worst though, I’ll just rent another place with my Mom and Dad and possibly siblings.

Anyway, while there aren’t any winners in this sort of dispute, I’ll take what I got as a win. I agreed to stop knocking at least for the weekend, and if they don’t make noises or use the balcony door past 10pm and are also going to move out in a month or so then I’ll be happy with that, though I might make a fuss about their daily cleaning at some point too since that’s also very noisy and happens for like 45 minutes every day, sometimes twice a day. But so far this weekend (Saturday) they’ve been as quiet as mice as well, minus a couple balcony door uses and one item dropping on the floor. Finally some peace.

I had a great sleep last night, Friday night/Saturday morning, and the silence (minus a couple of creaking floorboards as they assumedly went outside the actual front apartment door for a smoke) was like manna for my ears, although, like many nights these days, it took a while for me to fall asleep partly because I’m paranoid about hearing the damned balcony door sliding open and shut again, and partly because I get trapped in an angry loop of replaying different arguments and responses over and over in my mind. Funnily enough, I did finally fall asleep, but I was woken up by their damned balcony door at about 10 am on Saturday morning.

Still though, I feel slightly bad about terrorizing them into silence, but they weren’t complying with any other requests to stop, and I gave ample warning to the office and had no idea about the alleged refugee/bombing thing, so what was I to do? (Though I probably will continue do it anyway if their noises pick back up to unacceptable levels, so it had better not.) The office was no help until I forced something to happen.

That was such a long complaint tirade but it felt good to get all that off my chest. And to make sure that my side of this incident is on Google search results for Denise Brophy, the Midwest Property Management office manager here for the Village at Southgate, since as far as my interactions with her have gone (and I did say this part directly to her, but she disagreed), she doesn’t seem to be on my side on this issue and had taken a rather one-sided view of the situation. Where was this communication or negotiation when I was making complaints about their level of noise, hmm? Have you ever at any point come to my apartment to listen to what I hear? (The answer is no.)

Oh, and a fun update as per Saturday night — I heard them use the balcony door a couple times again, even though Denise told me that the deal for no more ceiling banging is that they will absolutely avoid using the balcony door past 10 pm every night, and instead will go outside the actual apartment front door to smoke. On Saturday night, one of them went out onto the balcony at 10:56 pm and came back in at 11:00 pm, trying to be as quiet as can be. I think they might have done it a few minutes later again, but I was distracted (by games) and could not confirm either the entry or exit of that second one, if it happened. It then happened again around 12:59 am. What to do, what to do… probably nothing for now until I can catch them in the act, though. Especially since they were blissfully quiet the rest of Saturday anyway. The idiots are just going to plead Ukrainian refugee status again at this point.

===

So what happened outside of that fun this week? For starters, I haven’t actually booked my trip to Singapore and other parts of Asia and Australasia yet. I was in a pretty nasty mood for most of the week, for starters, and although I did some planning, I also kept getting bad vibes from the trip and the plane ticket prices, so I kept on putting it off, and now I’m not sure if I actually want to go anymore. The bad vibes were not about the border issue but about the cost. I can afford the trip, but I also need to save for the house that I want to get next year (or soon), and this will cut into that in a way that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with. I will continue to monitor things over the next week or so I guess. I already cancelled my Sophia study abroad year, so I’m certainly not shy in chopping this trip from my itinerary either if I think that that’s the right move. I’m also not afraid to go though, so we’ll see.

Before the start of my broomstick knocking campaign late this week, I wasn’t entirely sure what kind of response it would receive from the neighbours, but I had told myself that I would not answer the front door this time if the neighbour dropped by again, so to protect myself, I actually moved a heavy box in front of my front door so that it wouldn’t open even if the door was unlocked/broken down. Especially at night. This turned out to be unnecessary, however it did elicit a “secret fort” sort of feeling for me, especially since I made sure to stock up on groceries beforehand, so that did provide a new, and somewhat nice and interesting, experience.

While out getting groceries, I saw a mall Santa having his throne set up, and I walked over to take a picture. He waved at me, even though I was some middle-aged woman carrying bags of groceries, and this made my day.

Three days later, he appeared on Reddit, in the /r/Edmonton and /r/MadeMeSmile subreddits. The uploaded video is cached here for posterity: