A little while ago, I shared some absolutely bonkers stories about the pettiest things people have ever done to their neighbors. Well, turns out the good folks of Reddit and the BuzzFeed Community had even more brilliantly petty tales to tell! Here are 15 of the very best ones:
1. This person who fought fire with...cowbells:
"I had a neighbor that had really loud sex. We didn’t even share connecting walls, but I could hear EVERYTHING. Eventually, I started banging the cowbell I had gotten for Christmas when they were loud. They moved out a month later."
2. This neighbor who worked smarter, not harder:
"I once lived below extremely loud neighbors. They would fight (and make up) in the middle of the night. One time it was so bad, they were knocking photos off our wall, she we spoke to them directly and asked them to keep it down. Eventually, there was a night where I was home alone while my boyfriend was out of town dealing with a death in the family, so tensions were already high. The neighbors proceeded to drop things, stomp, and slam doors well into the night. Well, knowing their address and being afraid of retaliation, I signed them up for every physical catalog and free magazine I could find. I hope they’re still getting all these mailers."
3. The neighbors who got their revenge:
"Last year during the height of Covid shut downs, our neighbors kept letting their college-age son throw huge parties that went until like 2 or 3 in the morning. We talked to them about it and kept getting vague apologies followed by 'kids need to socialize' lectures. At their last party, one of the attendees peed on our fence. At the end of the night, they all set up tents and slept out in the yard. My husband saw this and fired up the lawnmower as early as possible without violating any ordinances. He drove it back and forth along the fence all morning to keep them up as long as possible."
—beaglerock
4. This abuela's last straw:
"My abuela had a papaya tree at her house and she had her eye on one of the papayas that was almost ripe. Papayas grow at the very top of the tree, so she had to wait for my uncle to come over the next day and pick it for her. When she went to show him the papaya, she found out that the neighbors had beaten her to it. So, she had him cut the whole tree down."
—francesjoys
5. The neighbor who left a very clear message:
"I had a neighbor in my apartment complex that kept letting her huge dog take huge shits in my yard space. There were literally about 20 of them sitting outside my window, and I'd had enough. I put on a glove, picked them all up, and dumped them right on her doorstep. I left a note stabbed into the ground telling her to pick it up next time. Well, she did, and she moved pretty soon after."
— u/Kurtandcourtney
6. This mom's hedge of hatred:
"My mom and her next door neighbor hated each other. My mom decided that she never wanted to see this woman again, so she let her border hedge grow and grow and grow until it was 20 feet high. It was a bushy, scraggily thing of beauty that we called it our spite hedge."
—sandyra
7. This brother who should never, ever be messed with:
"Years ago, when you could advertise house sales in the paper without too many pictures, my brother put in an ad for his obnoxious neighbor’s house. It was just an exterior picture and was priced about 75K under market as a private sale with the neighbor's phone number. He found out the guy was inundated with calls for weeks but never found out who had listed it."
8. This person, who was NOT messing around:
"Did you know you can sign up for the Jehovah’s Witnesses to come to ANY address to teach you about their religion? Yeah, YOU'RE WELCOME."
9. This no-nonsense neighbor:
"Our next door neighbor would constantly have friends park in the no parking zone in front of their unit, which made it a nightmare for people to navigate the parking lot. I started calling the tow truck every time I saw a car there. After a couple weeks, nobody parked in the no parking zone any more."
— u/shaidyn
10. The mom who taught these students a lesson:
"Years ago when my children were little and I was heavily pregnant, we lived on a street by a primary school with lots of families. A developer had bought the house next door and opened it up as a university student house. Like the movie Bad Neighbors. They were shouting and running around all night playing loud music, and my kids were crying because they couldn't sleep. So I had a word with them, friendly and polite, saying they needed to be quiet after 9 p.m. They got LOUDER! I wasn't sleeping, my kids weren't sleeping, I started to develop obstetric problems. Nothing worked. So, I decided to sleep train them with The Tweenies. I put TVs against all the walls, loudly playing Tweenies videos from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.. After a week of this, the students were successfully sleep-trained and we could sleep at night."
—jborrett793
11. These neighbors who apparently don't know how streets work:
"A few weeks ago, my neighbor boxed in another neighbor’s car because they parked in front of their house. Cops were called, and they had to explain that it's a public street, so anyone can park there. Now they don’t park in their own driveway and park their two cars in front of other people’s houses. It’s the pettiest shit I’ve seen in a while."
—darkstarz
12. These little chaotic geniuses:
"When I was 10 or so, an old lady was nasty to my brother and I for sitting on 'her' curb. So we got the bright idea to have an estate sale for her. We got up at like 4 a.m. on Saturday morning and put up homemade cardboard garage sale signs with her address on them and 'early birds welcome' in bold letters. We then sat on the curb a little down the street across from her house and watched people bang on the door for an hour or so. The best part is we didn't put a date on the signs, so if she didn't find all the signs, presumably people would keep showing up every Saturday."
13. This stagehand who outsmarted her bad neighbor:
"My friend had a neighbor who put in a very bright yard light that was pointed at her bedroom window. After a negative interaction when asking neighbor to re-aim or dim the light, she put her theatre stagehand skills to use. She put up a parabolic mirror pointed directly at the dude's bedroom, then used an old projector dowser and and a lighting board to program a chase sequence that was hours long and repeated. The end result was a beam of randomly blinking light that was aimed right at neighbors bedroom window. When he complained, she let him know that it was his light source and all he had to do was turn off his yard light."
 —u/hippybiker
15. And finally, this grandma, who is my new personal hero:
"Many years ago, when my grandma was living alone, she had my cousins put up her outside Christmas lights for her. She decided to leave them up all year round, because her roof was really high and she didn’t want to risk anyone getting hurt. She didn’t turn them on all year, she just left them up. Honestly, the trim of her house was dark and you couldn’t really see them when they weren’t on anyway, even during the day.Â
Well, grandma had this one neighbor who always complained about her and her house. One afternoon, I was washing my grandma’s truck when the neighbor came over to complain. She and my grandma got into a big screaming match, during which this lady told my grandma that needed to take her lights down, because 'Christmas lights being up all year were as tacky as her pink lipstick.' The next weekend, my grandma hired some guys to come paint her house pink — the same shade as her 'tacky' lipstick. She not only left the lights up, but she also turned them on every night, all year. Sometimes she’d sit on her porch with a beer in her hand, glaring at her neighbor with her Christmas lights on in the middle of June. The neighbor didn’t complain to my about anything else ever again."
—imbatmom2