A friend of mine told me an interesting but intriguing story the other day.

He described for approximately fifteen minutes about the annoyances his new neighbors (who are leasing the house next door to him) had bought to the neighborhood. He discussed everything from various different people coming and going at all hours of the evening, one parent waking up at 5:00 AM to go out to the garage and get various construction equipment to place in his workvan, the parent’s employees showing up and parking in the front yard at 5:45 AM with their stereos blasting hard rock music and sitting out in the front yard until the parent walked out and therefore went to work, the addition of an above ground swimming pool, the yard getting real high, and the teenage child swimming and playing loud music until 11 PM, the aesthetically tacky sign advertising the business that was placed in the front yard, etc.

My friend described how at numerous times he tried to approach the neighbor to discuss the ‘issues’ (to prevent it from going to the landlord or police) and either the neighbor was not home, cars present and no-one answered the door, or the neighbor answered the door and then the cell phone went off for potential business and was told that they would talk later on.

Later on, never came. Therefore, my friend decided that he would call the neighbor at the ‘work’ number listed on the tacky sign in their front yard. He came to discovery that after he dialed the number, he got an automated centralized voicemail system to a local church that had options such as:

To speak to the church secretary, press 1

To leave a direct voice mail message for the pastor, press 2

To leave a direct voice mail message for the associate pastor, press 3

To leave a message for (the owner of the home improvement business), press 4

My friend was baffled and so ’shocked’ that he had to call again to re-verify that he was not going nuts. After getting his senses back, the pressed the appropriate option and left a voice mail for the neighbor to call him back.

My friend never received a phone call back. Therefore, he decided to call the landlord and express some of his concerns over the landlord’s answering machine. A couple of hours later, the landlord called him back and they had a very lengthy conversation about everything. The landlord drove by the house late in the evening and heard the loud music, saw the swimming pool, and heard the kid carousing at 10:45 PM. The next morning, the landlord drove by off and on from 5:45 until 6:15 and witnessed the employees parking in the front yard still blaring their hard rock, tearing up the grass, etc.

In the early evening, the landlord shows up at the house and stays for almost two hours and drives off. Thirty minutes later, the landlord calls my friend and told him that he had formally verified all (and more) issues were accurate and that a very lengthy discussion took place about care for the house and grounds, respect for the neighbors, and the fact that the lease explicitally stated that no home business was to be ran out of the premises.

A couple of days later, all the home improvement equipment was removed from the garage and back yard off the premises. The employees no longer met in the front yard. The children became more behaved, and the in-and-out traffic was reduced.

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