The Saga Continues

When my husband and I were living in Tokyo, we once had neighbors who seemed to be banging and crashing around in the apartment above us at all hours of the day and night. At 2:00 am, it sounded as if they were rearranging heavy furniture. After putting up with this for awhile, as we figured the initial situation may have been related to the sounds one makes when moving it, we complained to the landlord. He told them about the problem and it stopped.

In my ongoing saga with my noisy neighbors (born in the early Pleistocene age), the record to date has been:

1. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. after midnight on the evening of the Chinese New Year. Ask them to turn it down and be met with the response, "We're celebrating the Chinese New Year." I had to say that my husband had to work the next morning as it was not a holiday and could they turn it down. They did turn it down.
2. Experience them loudly playing their T.V. on multiple occasions and go down during the day to ask them to turn it down and be met with, "It's not us. Our T.V. is not that loud. It must be someone else." I called the manager and told him there was a noise issue, but the downstairs neighbor said it was not him. 
3.  The manager and we walk around the building at various times of day and night trying to work out who it is. Eventually, it turns out it is the people downstairs and they lied. The manager talks to them and asks them to cool it on the noise front. For a short time, they do.The loud T.V. starts coming back again. The manager asks them again to stop it. They stop for an even shorter time.
4. Increasingly louder T.V. starts to happen again and I get fed up and have the exchange detailed in this post. For those who do want to go back, I asked them to turn it down and they told me essentially that they could do what they wanted and I could go sodomize myself (in attitude and not words). I call the manager and say that this problem needs to be dealt with as, even if we moved, the next tenant would be unlikely to tolerate it either.

Yesterday, the property manager (Hector) came by to reassure me that the situation will be resolved. He told me some things which I did not know, but am not surprised about. First of all, he said they have a surround-sound system. That explains all of the booming and highly "mobile" sound (it seems to move from one side of our apartment to the other). He said the bass is likely set too high and that is causing the vibration. He told me that he would go to their apartment "tomorrow morning" (today) and adjust their bass and find a volume that he felt was reasonable and ask them to stick to it.

That all sounds good in practice, but it's nearly noon here and the "morning" is nearly done and I don't think he visited them. What is more, I think that they are actively avoiding him. Hector told me after my last call that he called them three times and left three messages at a time when we both knew they were home. They did not call him back at all and it is clear that they purposefully avoided talking to him because they knew he was going to ask them to cut it out again. He said that, in the past, the old man has always called him back immediately so this was clearly different behavior.

This morning, I'm pretty sure I saw those ancient creatures leave their apartment. It wouldn't shock me if they knew Hector may come by and left to avoid him or if he knocked on their door and they didn't answer and then took off because they knew he wanted to confront them.

All of this running away and avoiding the property manager in order not to face the inevitable may seem completely irrational and stupid to responsible adults, but it frankly does not surprise me. There are no small number of people, and especially elderly ones, who have behaved in this fashion since I returned to America. They are like children who think that they won't have to face the consequences if they ignore the problem. It's the type of thing that causes kids to skip school despite their awareness of the fact that the teacher will know, the school will require a note from the parent, and that they won't be able to produce said note.

Everything about this old man (and his nearly silent wife, who I believe isn't he major player in this) speaks to his wanting not to take responsibility or deal with this issue. He lies. He lies again. He denies. He avoids. He pretends it's not really happening and that I'm making things up. I have little doubt that he'd "manage" this issue by attempting not to deal with it at all, especially when he knows on some level of his cobwebbed brain that he is in the wrong. He just wants to avoid facing the inevitable - he can't play with his toy the way he wants to and someone is going to take it away from him in at least some capacity.

The situation is complicated by his age and Hector's sense of his fragility. Yesterday, he told me that the man is 85 (no shock) and has suffered a stroke and a few heart attacks (also no surprise as that would relate to the hearing issues). Hector said that the old man was very upset when asked yesterday to cool it on the noise so he wanted to wait until "tomorrow" (again, that's now today) to confront him because he was afraid of initiating some sort of health crisis. Yes, it has been many a person who has had a heart attack because he can't listen to T.V. at sky-high volumes on his surround-sound system. This old man is, essentially, having tantrums because he can't do what he wants and Hector is being tentative because of it. I wish he'd worry more about me getting an ulcer than that enormously old big baby having a tanty and sending himself into a seizure of some sort.

At any rate, I'm writing about this both for catharsis and as a marker on the evolution of this process. I also want to let it be known that, in Japan, where people have consideration for the feelings of others and care about how they get along with others, this would be a done deal after the first complaint. In America, rather than the offending party taking responsibility, he does his best to not change and avoids responsibility at all costs. The response here is entirely selfish and manipulative. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a rare case and it is a reflection of the "individuality" culture in America.

The Minority Narrative

My husband and I had a friend that he met through graduate school who once told a story about an experience she had in a parking lot. She was walking through the lot with a friend of hers who had a baby that she was pushing in a stroller. As they were making their way through the lot, a woman in a somewhat nice car honked in irritation at them.

Under these circumstances, what would your first conclusion be about the dynamic in play during this encounter? As someone who has been in a car and driving through various parking lots with no small number of pedestrians walking willy-nilly (rather than using crosswalks or speed bumps as crossover points) and often doing so in a very sluggish and seemingly disoriented fashion, my first conclusion was that the woman was damn tired of being blocked by people who felt it was fine to mosey through the lot in the path of vehicles without concern. In fact, when I was in Japan, I thought the pedestrians were bad, but I've found they are worse in the U.S. The sense of entitlement in a country which reinforces the rights of those on foot has created a situation where pedestrians routinely jaywalk, cross highly trafficked areas like parking lots without even looking for oncoming vehicles, and in general seem not to think that they have an obligation to stop, look both ways, and cross when there are no cars - which was what I learned growing up - not that I could meander around anywhere and expect cars to look out for me as seems to be the case in California at present.

The first paragraph is the sum of the actual interaction and the facts of the experience as related. There is no added information. The woman did not say anything else. However, I will add two other facts. The friend and her acquaintance with the child are of Chinese descent. The woman in the car was white.

When this friend told this story, she told so in an impassioned manner in accord with sharing an experience she had which reflected her status as a minority. She spoke emotionally about how the woman may have been jealous because she saw someone with a baby and she might not have been able to have one. She said that it could be the woman hated Asians and was a bigot. Nowhere in her narrative was the possibility that she and her friend were doing what so many pedestrians of every race, creed, and color do and that the woman was annoyed because they were taking up too much space on the way to getting in or out of the parking lot and moving at the pace of snails; the driver may simply have been increasingly impatient.

Why would this be a missing possibility from this friend's narrative? It is, after all, a highly likely explanation. The reason is that it is the only explanation which makes the two Asian women in the story responsible in any way for the unpleasantness that ensued. It would have meant that they would have to recognize that they behaved in a way which was inconsiderate at least, and oblivious at best.

Now, I will change the story to an experience that I had today with my ever aggravating ancient neighbors. I have never mentioned this before, but they are Chinese. My guess is that they were born in China roughly 500 years ago and came here at some point in order to annoy the crap out of me. They speak to each other in Chinese, dry cabbage and pickle vegetables outside of their home, and play extremely loud Chinese programs on their T.V. (programs with booming bass music). I know what they watch since they so carefully insure that I hear it as clearly as possible by pushing the volume up into the stratosphere.

Today, they were pushing the limits and I decided to go down and ask them to turn it down. This turned into a very unpleasant situation as, being as they are deaf and they have already been told twice by the manager to chill out on the noise, I had to shout to even be heard at all. Of course, the deafness wasn't the only reason I had to shout. They wouldn't open the door when I knocked and just tried to talk to me through it. I started out asking them to please turn it down. The male fossil of the couple, who finally opened the door, said that it was not that loud. I said that it was vibrating our floor and, yes, it was loud. He said that just was not happening. Um... OK, but, I said that, yes, it was happening and he couldn't hear how loud the T.V. was because he was deaf.

At this point, things degraded further. He said that I should complain to the manager. I said that I already had and I knew the manager had spoken to them about it. He then switched to saying that it wasn't late at night so they could do what they wanted and then slammed the door in my face after I said he was being very rude.

I'll admit that that was hardly my finest hour. I made mistakes. Part of the cause of those mistakes was based in the need to shout at all. Part of it was my amygdala was all hepped up on adrenaline due to the ongoing aggravation. The straw that snapped the camel's back and made me call him "deaf" (true) and "rude" (also true) was him asserting that I simply was not experiencing the noise as I was. Why on earth would I go down there and complain if nothing was happening? Why on earth would I call the manager repeatedly to try and get the situation dealt with? Well, that is where my story about my friend comes into play.

In this situation, there are several explanations for why I'd complain. No, strike that, I can only think of two. One is that I am actually experiencing the vibrations and noise. Two is that I have a need to harass my neighbors for imaginary problems for some reason. What would that reason be? Well, if my neighbor wants to find the most comfortable narrative, the one that relieves him of all responsibility for creating the issue, he can tell himself that I am prejudiced and therefore making things up to create problems for him. My best guess is that that narrative would either be about age or ethnicity and I'm wagering on the latter since, at 50, I'm hardly a spring chicken myself.

Minorities in America are indoctrinated into a mindset which I've seen with stunning frequency since my return from Japan. That is that they believe any action which they dislike is the result of bigotry. If they don't get a job, it's racism. If they don't get an apartment, it's racism. If they behave in ways that upset others and those folks have the audacity to complain or protest, it's racism. What is more, the white folks in the U.S. are not allowed to challenge their conclusions that everything bad that ever happens to them is the result of historical or present racial inequality. With the talk of "privilege" and the sensitive nature of any interaction between a white person and a person who is not of European descent, we are not allowed to question any conclusion made about the nature of an interaction, even when more cogent and likely explanations are sitting right out there for anyone with half a brain to see.

I know about this minority narrative because I lived as .2% of the Japanese population for 23 years. I also lived in a place which had none of the safeguards (legal, social, or otherwise) that America offers its minorities. I had zero power to challenge things like labor laws being broken at my expense, being questioned by the police without cause, being refused apartments, being turned away at restaurants, etc. (and all of these things happened to me there). After years of this, I constructed a minority narrative. Every time something bad happened to me, it was because I was white in a sea of Japanese people and they knew I was a powerless minority in their culture. I became incredibly hostile in public when I was gawked at, pointed at, laughed at, and people didn't sit next to me on the train (for fear of catching my cooties as a foreigner).

After spending years constructing and living with that narrative, I started to deconstruct it. I got tired of being mad omnidirectionally all of the time. I got tired of the stress. I felt bad about telling my husband that the people who treated me badly were little more than "animals" in their self-awareness and intellectual capacity. I am not a person who naturally belittles others, but my narrative had me doing it nearly every day as a way of coping with the hardships I was enduring.

As part of really looking at that minority narrative, I had to present myself with some cold hard possibilities and facts. One of them was that not everyone treated me badly because I was a foreigner. Sometimes bad stuff happened because bad stuff happened. People are jerks. People are rude. People don't care about anyone but themselves much of the time. Maybe I was the dog they chose to kick because of my whiteness, but if I hadn't been there, they'd have kicked someone else who they also felt was sufficiently lacking in status or power for them to abuse in their hatred and frustration with life. It wasn't about me. It was about them.

Further, I had to consider my responsibility in bringing on some of the actions I hated. I can't say right now what some of those might have been. Part of it may have been a defensive posture, a pushy, and sometimes malevolent look to try and intimidate people so they wouldn't stare, point, laugh, or talk about me. Part of it in terms of my work and interaction with students could also have been feeling that my "American" way of offering opinions as if they were facts may have been more than a little off-putting in their culture and my lack of understanding that they have a way of dealing with each other that is indirect which is in contradiction to American directness.

When I took things apart, I could see at least that some of it was about me and some of it was about them and some of it was, yes, about racism. However, I could not logically conclude that any time something went badly, it was because of my skin color. Being white, I was also constantly challenged in any assertion that I was experiencing racism (other white people in Japan don't hesitate to descend on you like pack of rabid dogs if you suggest the Japanese aren't anything but totally kind and helpful to the .2%).

In America though, I, however, cannot challenge anyone's perception that an interaction was racism and suggest that maybe, just maybe, the issue was that they did something jerk-like to provoke a response or, maybe, just maybe, sometimes you can't always get what you want because the pie in life doesn't have enough slices for everyone and you don't always get served first. I'm not allowed to say any of that because of my skin color. I am muzzled by the concept of "privilege" when such narratives are played for my consideration. That is not to say that sometimes it's not racism or the consequence of the feces pie that minorities have been force fed throughout history (especially African-Americans who have been shafted worst of all), but sometimes, hey, it's not racism!

At any rate, I don't know what will come of the situation with the prehistoric entities living beneath me, but I will never confront them directly again as it is clear that they will not take any responsibility for their actions. I did contact the manager once more (third time) about this and mentioned that, if we were to move, there's a high likelihood that any replacement may also be less than keen on the vibrating floors and bombastic T.V. This was my way of encouraging him to deal with them more aggressively because, if we go away, the problem won't go away. My guess is that he'll tell them, again, to use headphones to deal with their issue and that they, again, won't do anything differently other than cool it on turning it up to "11" for a short time then start limit-testing me again.

They feel entirely entitled to do whatever they want because they don't think they are doing anything wrong and the only reason I'm complaining is that I've got some sort of personal issue with them. The logical explanation that a person with a hearing problem can't tell how loud his T.V. is because he can't hear very well just is one they won't accept because then it's their fault and not mine.

It's not my fault. I am not against them because they are old or Chinese or lacking in basic self-awareness or whatever. I just don't want to feel the earth shaking under my feet while I'm sitting at my desk making whiny blog posts.

It Smells Like Burning

Every psychology student hears about the famous case of Kitty Genovese as an illustration of the "bystander effect". This is when people know something is going wrong, but there are a lot of people around and they don't help because they know many others are around and expect someone else will take responsibility. The higher the number of people, the less likely that any individual will decide to take action.

This morning, I had an experience which may or may not have been similar. As I've mentioned before, I live in a building with 19 units and a small (four-machine - two washers and two dryers) laundry room. The laundry room is next to some poor sod's apartment and I've often thought about how annoying it must be to be next to the noise of the machines and the smell and heat of the exhaust vent on the dryers. When you walk by, you can often see and smell fabric softener or laundry detergent as well as feel the hot air blowing out. If you lived in the apartment next door, opening one of the two windows would certainly get you a nose-ful as well as heat up your place from the exhaust.

My usual route to the trash bins takes me by the laundry room. It's a longer jaunt than the closer route, but it ends much closer to the bins and I am generally okay with a little more exercise. As I walked by, I heard what sounded like a high-pitched screech from a belt. It's the sort of thing I used to hear in my old cars when the fan belt got wonky or in a vacuum cleaner which had seen better days and had one foot in the appliance grave. I also thought that I smelled something burning, but figured that it was my imagination.

I walked over to the trash bins and, as I stood there taking care of business, I heard a mother in the opposite building (the one I call the "white trash building") hassling her kid. She said, "You're spilling water everywhere? Why are you doing that? Do you like wasting water? Do you like being messy?" I thought about how this was fairly bad parenting. Kids are careless. Hell, adults are careless, and walking with a cup of water isn't necessarily an easy task when you're young and have less than fully developed balance. Some fully-grown and poorly paid waitresses still can't manage it. Of course the kid wasn't trying to waste water or enjoying being messy. The kid was being a kid. The mom was just being an idiot.

After managing the trash (a task that takes awhile because of the unlocking and locking of the bins and the need to use two different ones for that which is and is not recyclable) and judging that woman's parenting I passed by the laundry room again. At this point, smoke was coming out of a washing machine and the burning smell was clearer. At this point, I also panicked and ran to the property manager's apartment.

The truth is that I have never had any experience with smoking appliances, so I'm not sure what, if anything, I should have done. My estimation of the situation was that it was bad and getting worse, but there was an equation in play that I am too ignorant to know how to safely handle. That little math problem is metal + water + electricity + burning. My fear was that it would soon also include actual fire and that this was best dealt with by someone who has had more experience than me, or at least is less of a coward about touching large, water-filled metal objects connected to enormous power supplies.

I banged a few times on the property manager's door, but there was no answer. As I gave up, I considered whether I should call him and report it or return to the scene. I could actually do both as I could run back and see how bad it was then make a call if it didn't look even worse. As I started to run back, Hector (said property manager) opened the door to his place and I quickly told him the situation and went back to the laundry room and waited for him.

In the short time that had passed, things had gotten worse. The smell was toxic and acrid and the entire laundry room was filled with smoke. I opened the laundry room with my key so Hector could jump in right away (yes, the laundry room is locked, too). He pulled open the lid of the machine and found that an enormous white down comforter had been crammed in there. It seemed to have been attempting to strangle the agitator to death as it was wrapped in a death grip around the central core. The machine had valiantly fought back as little flecks of comforter popped out and fell to the floor when Hector pulled the comforter off of the dying machine's agitator.

Hector asked me is the comforter was mine. The question stunned me, but I guess it wasn't so off-base since I was the one who reported the problem. I said that it was not and I was just passing by and smelled/saw what was going on. Hector's cute daughter (Bella) had followed down and he warned her to stay back as he opened the lone window to disperse the toxic smoke. My guess is he was afraid there still might be fire, but I thought also that she shouldn't be inhaling the almost certainly poisonous smoke.

I commented that the machine was likely ruined now and that whoever did that really should be responsible for the repair. I also noted which machine it was in case it didn't get marked as broken. I don't want to waste my money using a machine that had likely burnt out most of it's belt. Hector said, "Why would anybody do that?" I said that I believed that they may not have wanted to pay more to have it properly cleaned, but he said laundromats have big machines to accommodate them. To this, I could only say that perhaps they were just too lazy to bother. Of course, the more obvious answer is that the party was simply too stupid to figure out why it's a bad idea to cram an enormous comforter into such a machine.

I left Hector after telling him that I was sorry that he had to spend some of his Sunday dealing with these sorts of messes and he thanked me and stood there pondering the next move. The problem with figuring out who to hold responsible is that he'd have to essentially stake out the laundry room for an indefinite time period until someone showed up to claim their vanquished comforter and that's just no practical. He could leave a note telling the mentally limited party to contact him, but unless the perpetrator is really as stupid (and not merely lazy or cheap) as his or her actions indicate, he or she will not own up to what happened knowing money might have to leave a wallet.

After returning to my apartment and explaining what had happened to my husband (who had grown somewhat concerned by my prolonged absence, but figured I'd run into Hector and chatted with him - which I sort of did in a roundabout way), I thought about what had occurred. Mainly, I wondered if people did these sorts of things due to a sense of putting someone else's property at risk. There are signs telling people not to overload the machines. Do people not know why? Do they not care about breaking them because they won't have to pay for repair? Are they really so dumb that they don't understand the consequences or are they acting as if they assessing the situation in the most positive way possible?

The other thought that I had lead me to remembering the bystander effect (also known as bystander apathy) and the Kitty Genovese case that I mentioned initially. Did no one else smell, hear, or see what was going on? In particular, the person living in the adjacent apartment, who was almost certainly home on a Sunday morning around 11:00 am, must have heard that screaming belt. If it were me, I'd have wanted to know what was going on and checked as the sound was pretty annoying.

Did anyone else notice what was happening and ignore it because there are 19 units in the building and they didn't want to be the one to try and deal with the problem? Or, was I simply the only one who was in the "right place" at the "right time" in order to catch a situation which could have resulted in our building being burned down (or, less dramatically, the total loss of our laundry room facility)? It's impossible to know, but it is worth pondering. One thing I do know is that people can be incredibly irresponsible and it's all too often the case that someone else has be be more responsible in order to avoid the worst consequences of their choices. I've found that to be the case more often in America than I might have imagined.

A Tale of Two Buildings

About a year ago, my husband and I moved into an apartment complex which seemed to consist of two buildings connected by an extended archway over the entrance to the parking area. The buildings are physically fairly identical as they share color, architecture, apartment styles, door lettering, etc. Each has 19 units and a small coin-operated laundry room with two washers and dryers. The main difference is that

They are so alike that it is very common for both delivery people and visiting individuals to be confused about which one to go to. Two of my friends have gone to the identical-looking apartment in the other building. It doesn't help that the numbers of the building are very similar as well. Ours ends in "85" and the other one ends in "65", but the first two digits are the same.

The reason these buildings are so similar is that they were once owned by the same entity, but in the past several years were split up and sold to different owners. This change was sufficiently recent that some tenants in both buildings are still under the impression that they are under the same ownership. It's also an issue because there is only one manager's office for both buildings, but there are separate property managers for each.

It's often the case that people will wander over to the wrong place because they assume that that office applies to both. I know this because our assigned parking spot is in front of that office and, despite there being a sign which says the parking is restricted and those who park there without authorization will be towed away, people keep parking in our space when they want to see the manager. I have to keep kicking them out and get rude response from people who seem utterly put out by my cheekiness when I assert my right to the parking space that comes along with my apartment and its exorbitant rent. When I ask them to move, they never apologize and just say they've only there for a short time or are there to see the manager. The fact that I need to put my car there and have no other place to park isn't even a factor in their limited capacity to process. They need the space. The space is by the manager's office. Why am I asking them to move?

At any rate, the buildings are ran quite differently, or at least they seem to be. Our building does not allow pets and the other one does. Theirs has junk sitting around outside of some of the apartments. Furniture or children's toys often litter the area in front of some of the two-bedroom units. Ours are generally clean and clear. A lot of their metal screen doors are in a state of disrepair. Some have paint peeling off. Others have missing handles or hinges. Ours either have well-maintained screen doors or no screen doors at all. Their tenants put bags of trash out in front because people aren't quite ready to make the long and arduous three-minute walk over to the trash bins.

Our manager said when we moved in that people wouldn't be doing that in our building, and that is correct. Each apartment has its own labeled trash bin and recycling bin, but ours are locked and theirs are not. Homeless people stop by nearly each day and poke around their bins and their tenants dump trash next to the bins when they overflow. They get much fuller than ours because our tenants are too lazy to unlock the proper bins and just throw their trash in the other ones (and they believe the buildings are still essentially united).

All of this may seem like trivial differences, but the truth is that the tenants are also different. I don't know if that is because our property manager screens differently or if being in a place with stricter rules incites better behavior on the part of tenants. All I can say is that I've come to call the other building the "white trash building" for several reasons.

Before I get any further, I should hasten to add that I am white and come from poverty. I probably would have been called "white trash" growing up if the term had been popular then. However, I don't call people that based on socio-economic status, but based on behavior. What makes them white trash? Well, part of it is that most of them are white. Our building has a much higher proportion of non-white people, especially Indian and Asian, but there's also an African American couple. The other building has one elderly Chinese woman, a couple of Sikh men, and a biracial couple (white and African-American), but otherwise seems to be a lot of white folks.

The reason I've come to call the building the "white trash building" is well illustrated by a situation that occurred several nights ago, though it is hardly rare. Around 10:30 pm, a man parked his car between the buildings (partially blocking traffic into the parking area) and starts having a screaming match with his partner. I didn't listen to it directly, but it went on for some time and sounded very aggressive. This family moved in within the last six months and consists of a mother, father, and two children (a boy and a girl who look to be in the age range of 8-11). At the end of a protracted and very public fight, I heard the husband scream twice, "I want you to get your shit together and follow me."

I don't know what happened, but my guess is that she got her shit together and followed him because about a half hour later, three policemen showed up and started rapping the front door with batons and shining flashlights in the window trying to see if anyone was inside. They cased the place for some time and then gave up and left. The following morning, two policemen returned and were again trying to get inside. A woman stood near the street with a cell phone and they asked her to try and call someone. No one was home and they gave up again.

Today, about 3-4 days later, I saw the woman who lives there finally return. I'm not sure what happened or why the police were called, but my best guess based on the woman with the cell phone is that the woman herself called a female relative in a panic over what was going on and the concerned relative contacted the police. The police arrived too late to intervene and the whole lot of them took off for several days until things cooled off.

The thing is, this incident was the most protracted, but it's not rare. Shortly after moving here, a couple had an enormous fight in front of that building which included shoving. The woman was screaming and yelled for someone to "call the police" (it was not the same couple - they didn't live here at that time and these were younger people). In the past week, someone else stood outside and had an extremely loud and melodramatic phone call about how someone didn't love her, want to be with her, or care about her anymore.

Within the past three weeks, a mob of men stood in the parking lot between our apartments smoking up a storm, talking loudly, and clapping their hands for about an hour between 11:00 pm and midnight. I think they were actually buddies of the Sikh men, so I guess they technically weren't white trash, but were doing a pretty good impression with their rude and disruptive behavior. The thing is, if the office manager of that building called people on this sort of thing, it'd stop. She does not. 

I don't know what sort of mojo is going on over there, but there is more drama and loud behavior coming from there than from here. Our building is far from perfect. There is a 1000-year-old Chinese couple in the apartment beneath us that had been watching T.V. late at night (between midnight and 1:00 am) so loudly that it vibrated our floor. My husband or I went down three times to ask them to cool it, but finally had to enlist the property manager who, fortunately, heard it one night when he came home from work and told them to use headphones if they were too deaf to hear T.V. at a reasonable volume late at night. After that, they cooled it.

Our office manager is actually pretty good about trying to keep the tone of the building civilized. Our immediate neighbors, a very nice Indian couple with the most adorable little boy I've ever seen, were prone to having shouting arguments not only inside their apartment, but between their apartment and the parking space. He'd stand outside and she'd stay inside and they'd carp at each other. Since they did that during the day-time, I didn't complain, but our manager overheard it one day and asked me if it happened a lot. I told him the truth; it happened nearly every day. He put an end to it. They still fight, but less publicly.

I think that people generally are not aware of how their behavior impacts others, especially when they are acting in a state of emotion. However, when people live in a free-for-all environment in which those in authority don't act, others feel it is normal to publicly display their drama and to generally be rude. The tone is set by the authority figure and that other building has a property manager who simply doesn't give a crap. While I think sometimes that too rigid management goes on (and more former apartment would give the Third Reich a run for its money in terms of how uptight they could be), I can very much see the effects of an "anything goes" mentality in the nasty, messy-looking apartments (both inside and out - I've seen into a few of them while walking by and some of them are pig pens - probably because of the higher numbers of people with children and pets) and behavior.

The tale of our two buildings is an intriguing one because they are so similar in every respect except the property managers and (invisible) ownership. The rents are almost certainly close to the same. The location is the same, and they obviously are the same size and style. The factors that differ are the property managers and the tenants, and the latter aren't seriously screened in any way that I can see in either case. The differences in tone, behavior, and cleanliness really do come down to management, and I'm glad that I'm in this building instead of that one.