Ah! Spleen's post below reminded me of a story of complaints and flats.
My old close had two doors on each landing, opposite each other. For a long time we didn't know who lived opposite us, due to keeping wildly different hours to the guy.

The one thing we did know was that he didn't like when we left our rubbish on the landing before taking it down. Not because he ever told us, or even left a note - that was apparently beyond his talents. He was apparently quite inventive in areas other than verbal communication though, because on various occasions we found that bin bags outside our door had been:

-moved around and rearranged to no apparent effect except being *slightly* closer to the wall.
-soaked in bleach (that melted the bag and made it near impossible to clean up. Also, the place stank of melty rubbish and chlorine gases for a week).
-pissed on? Or maybe another, less effective, probably extremely cheap cleaning product? We were never sure.
-taped to the door handle, even though I'd just stuck it outside while getting my stuff before taking it out and heading into town.

This last one prompted me to nip back inside and write the foulest piece of sarcasm I have ever committed to paper. I can remember it pretty much exactly, or at least the main points. I drew a diagram that looked a bit like this:

______________
||us..................you||
||____---------------||
stairs

and on the other side of the paper I wrote:

"Hi! :)

Your neighbours from 2/1 here. We're really sorry about the inconvenience we're clearly causing you by leaving our rubbish outside for whole minutes at a time. It must be a terrible drain on you to think up new ways of pointing this out without actually confronting us, and I'd like to offer to repay you for the financial costs incurred in your use of tape and bleach.

It did occur to me that maybe the reason you've never said anything is that you have trouble working out where we live, so I've included a map showing the relative locations of our flat and your flat.

Armed with this information, perhaps next time you have a problem you could actually try talking to us like a fucking adult and mentioning there's a problem, rather than sneaking around and engaging in such pathetic passive aggressive* behaviour.

You fucking twat :)"

I posted it through his letterbox and departed about my business, which included going home to Embra for the weekend. On the bus along the M8, I got a phonecall from my flatmate.

He'd found our door alright.

He'd found it. He'd spent the past hour banging on it and screaming insane threats at the top of his voice. He'd flung the rubbish from the bags at it**, and down the stairs, and around most of the general area. He'd banged and screamed and threatened and screeched some more, and eventually one of the other residents had called the police and he'd been given a caution.
It turned out after the dust had settled, that the guy was well into his fifties and the reason we'd never seen him was that his job as a barrister took up most of him time. That's as in 'respectable lawyer', not 'coffee dispenser'. And it was beyond him to make a sensible complaint to his neighbours.
I suppose given his profession, we're - okay, I'm - lucky we didn't get anything legal thrown at us.
Then again, given his personality, we're lucky we didn't get human faeces thrown at us.



*I am fully aware of the staggering irony of writing this in a sarcastic note. My justifications are that I was on my way out the door in a rush, I was colossally angry at his behaviour, and at least I was actually communicating. Slim moral high ground indeed. Mostly, though, I was in a hurry and determined to make him as angry as possible.

**I was so pissed off I'd neglected to actually remove them in the end.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 16:30, 3 replies)

Very nice indeed
*clickity*

I especially like the smilie on the end of "You fucking twat", as if to say "No offense..."
(MrOli is ugly, but in the morning you will be sober, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 17:21, closed)

It doesn't matter
what he did for a living, or why he was annoyed about the rubbish bags, he could still have found a better way of indicating his disapproval than pouring bleach on your bags and generally being a wanker.

So well done.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 22:45, closed)

Yeah, I know.
Growing older =! growing up. After meeting him a few times, we realised that he was an appalling old lush too - his breath alone would have melted the bags.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Fri 3 Sep 2010, 16:25, closed)