Dealing with Neighbours
Our new neighbour was great for the first few months. But recently he acquired a large stereo system, and him and his 13 year old daughters have been playing music with very loud bass that shakes the house. We have asked them to keep the bass down. He has turned it down when requested so far, but the bass always creeps back up in a few hours, or the next day. However he seems to be getting annoyed with our complaints recently. His daughters both play the stereo loud when he isn't around, and they do not answer the door or turn it down if I knock. Granted he turns it down before 11 at night, and its not loud before 11 am. However during the day and evening, the stereo shakes the house. Now the main problem with neighbours (and room mates) is that when stuff like this begins to happen, it causes friction, which tends to escalate over time. People who live in shared housing units tend to have a higher chance of getting into fights with neighbours. The problem is that each party considers the house as their own private island, in which their own comfort is the main priority. I tend to be careful about how loud I am. To the point that I tip-toe in parts of the house where I know the floor creeks. Sure I do have speakers for my computer, but the bass is turned down all the way. The fact that I am always careful about how loud I am and how much I try to minimize my impact on other peoples lives, means that it is even MORE stressful for me when there is friction like this. Because the average person will become vengeful and try to nit and pick on the other person to try to shift the blame. This means that if I begin to nit and pick or complain about someone else, I have to be extra careful about noise when I previously haven't had to. The problem however does effect my quality of living, being all stressed out all the time about how I impose on others, causes my current living situation to not exactly be a peaceful place to live. I don't expect that other people actually feel this, Especially if they are not considerate enough to keep the volume low in the first place. I expect most people are ignorant of other peoples comforts, and will only pretend to care when confronted. Perhaps I should be ignorant as well? Maybe crank my bass up just as loud and play it over top of their music, or even play it when their not playing music... so long as I play it loud during the 'legal' times when I am allowed to be noisy, its all good right? Who cares about anyone else? Maybe I shouldn't? Should I just be thoughtless and crank the music, and be an average ignorant asshole? Well, it is tempting. Being nice and asking people things in a pleasant manner, never really seems to ever get anything done, does it? and of course swinging to the other end of the spectrum never seems to work, being angry and threatening people tends to get the aggressors arrested. Is the only way to beat such people to join them? Be as arrogant and ignorant as they are? I mean the worst that can happen is we will start calling the police on each other for noise complaints. Of course this will waste valuable police resources on petty issues. There are other options of course, getting land lords involved? But this will likely always lead to some of the other above issues. Land lord will usually never take action on tenant vs tenant issues, and even if they do, it will just cause further tension. It seems the only real option, if being nice is not working, is to move? I would really like to hear other peoples stories about this, do you guys and gals out there have any opinions?