Weird Neighbours interfering in everything that happens here

[User57327259]

I moved house about a year ago. It all seemed fine at first even friendly. I got a new kitchen and all hell broke loose! The fitters were booked for 3 days. All the cabinets had been delivered a few days earlier. The old cabinets were taken out and put out of sight. The second morning a neighbour came to speak to me about having the old cabinets moved. The job was not complete yet so until all the waste was ready to be uplifted the items were out of sight. The fitters were walking about but none of t he neighbours spoke to them. On the last day I was going out and another neighbour (male) spoke to me very nastily and even threatened what would be done with the waste. I was nervous enough as I was heading to an hospital appointment. I told him not to threaten me. 2 days after that the wife of the male spoke to me about speaking back to her husband. She can not see that a threatening male is not to be tolerated these days. She did not apologise for his behaviour. He is a weird person who thinks he has the right to decide who parks where etc. He is also seen creeping around after dark. He checks on the bins a lot. Just weird behaviour in my opinion. I will not tolerate any abusive men. The other woman seems to either do the bidding of this man and wife or perhaps she is just as weird.

Currently they are blocking the car park to ensure that certain cars can only park in certain places. The weird man has even measured the width of each parking space.
I have no idea what to do about all this. I thought I had moved to a nice area but this conduct really upsets me as it is just so weird. Weirdness is so difficult to understand. What is achieved by making people have to park further along or creeping about in the dark?
I think I have landed in a place which seems to be inhabited by older people even though it is not age specific buildings. There are no children here. Residents are over 70. There was one younger resident in her 20s but she moved away sunddenly. The houses are mostly 2 bedrooms and some 3 bedrooms. It is strange to have about 70 houses and not one with any children.
It is creeping me out the conduct that goes on here. A lot of houses have changed occupants recently.
AIBU to think this is very strange

Ring doorbell. Let them all know you have one too.

I would love to give an hour by hour full technicolour schedule for the next work that is being done but I do not have the workmens' details yet. Like height weight and how many pies they can eat in an hour.

😉 You forgot loo breaks and inside leg measurements. Seriously though when I first read your post I thought you’d moved into my old address! My neighbours complained to the management co that I’d put in broadband (other neighbours had it too) 🙄😂.

CCTV is a v good idea and change your locks if you haven’t already done so. The sneaking around after dark, looking in bins and my car is very familiar.

For the folks who are querying why they didn’t remove rubbish daily: in most areas it costs builders money to dump at the tip so it’s better to wait until it’s all finished and the council won’t make daily trips to collect.

Fucking hell. Why are people so hung up on the cabinets! 😂😂...
Your neighbours sound bonkers. It's like the stepford wives or something.

reading your posts, you are the neighbour who is never wrong. You don’t fit in. Leave. The police comment was a brush off. Not condemnation or agreement with you. They’d probably think it’s you that is the “one” and they clearly were not interested. You still don’t see why it could have upset your neighbours. We had neighbours like you who redid their bathroom and left a toilet for several days just outside our front door when we had guests coming to stay. They were like you. Could not accept that it made the whole area look dreadful. Buy a detached house in a plot. Make as much mess as you like then.

Out of who's sight though? Yours or other people's? Have you left them where someone else has to look at them til you decide to get rid of them? Like outside another's property?

Then arrange it. Problem solved. Storing rubbish in communal areas is a bit antisocial regardless if it's in a place out of sight. It does appear you are part of the problem here. It doesn't matter what part of the gardens you put it in, that's not what the gardens are for and it's clearly causing resentment. Do you even have permission to store rubbish there? Is there a possibility they could report you for flytipping?

Because communal gardens have conditions of use. Storing rubbish won't be one of them. In that respect it's not the neighbours who are wrong, just their way of addressing it that's wrong. They should just be reporting the op to the council or property management.

Don't start to doubt yourself and we'll do e for standing up to these bullies. If the man gets more threatening report to the police. Threatening to trap you in your house was already not ok.

Leaving loads of old cupboards in a communal garden over summer is not considerate at all

@User57327259 if I needed to use communal space even temporarily, I’d let my neighbours know first “just to let you know I’m having a new kitchen fitted, there will be a bit of a mess for a couple of days but I’ll get it all moved once the work is done”. If you’re new to the area they might otherwise think you’re going to leave the mess (however tidy). That does not excuse their rudeness or creeping about so you’re right to get a Ring/cctv but some of this could have been avoided.

Your neighbour is clearly batshit crazy. With a side order of controlling, used to bullying people (single females in particular) and self-important.

It sounds like his life has become this small bubble of the neighbourhood and he can't help but try to micro-manage everyone and everything in it.

Any 'normal' person would wait until your works were completed and a reasonable length of time (say a week) had lapsed and if the kitchen cabinets had not been uplifted then they would be within their rights to come and have a chat about it. To threaten to barricade you into your own property is batshit.
To measure car parking spaces: batshit

You cannot put a price on good neighbours (we have, for the most part, nice neighbours) and I really do feel for you that you've landed up with this bunch of nut jobs. However, you seem very switched on to their fuckwittery, and can spot the flying monkeys too, your strategy of 'grey rock' is probably the best way to deal with them, but it's pretty unpleasant that you have to do this - home is meant to our sanctuary after all.

When we had a new kitchen we put the old one in the garden.
Some was taken by a man who had lost his own 'old' kitchen units when his garage flooded. So he replaced them with ours.
The rest was flat packed and put 'out of sight ' behind the shed - in our own garden
When we finally got round to moving them they'd gone green, - it was a worse mess - never again.
What I can't understand though if they were out of sight - how did neighbour see them??????

@CrystalCoco I think you are right about the micro managing. He seems to be under the impression that woman need to be told. I am not like that any more. I was controlled in my previous life but I found the courage to move on and now I have some unrelated person trying to control me (and my workmen). I told the workmen about the complaints and they said tell him to speak to us. He didn't!

@Robin233
"What I can't understand though if they were out of sight - how did neighbour see them??????"
This person does not miss a mouse moving! There were 3 men and a big van. Do you think there is any possibility that he missed the van or the men? This person would be "casually" walking around watching every move the workers made. He "patrols" every inch of the area. He is a creep. Would he really do all this to a real man? Definitely not he just likes to pick on what he thinks are weak, compliant women.

Good heavens, the neighbour sounds, odd, but leaving old broken up furniture in communal areas would be a breach of tenancy agreements in a lot of places. Usual practice is that either they stay in the house until they can be taken to the dump, or a skip is hired for them to be left in if will be a few days, or one pays the workmen to take them away. Not leaving them in shared spaces! Here if anyone has to leave anything outside their house as it is being collected by the council, people stick an A4 piece of paper on the item(s) with a note to say it is due for collection that day - and they don’t put it out several days before collection either.

^ This.

I'm sorry but I find it hard to believe that there would be a multitude of weird neighbours or this is some kind of Stepford Wives community where everyone has turned against you.

To me it does sounds like you've done something that has upset multiple neighbours and you think it is much easier to pretend that they are all weird and harassing you, than to admit that you may be in the wrong.

Maybe dumping old kitchen cabinets in the communal gardens is what upset them?

OP has already said, more than once, that she had booked for the council to collect it. But councils don't provide a same day/next day (or even next few days) service. Ours only does uplifts once a week for each area it serves, even if you book.

I did ask the workmen to take the stuff to the dump but apparently their company does not have the right permission to use the dump. I then said I would drive my car to the dump if they would do the lifting but that too was refused. I cant get workmen to take away the items, I cant get the workmen to come with me in my car to the dump and I have moaning neighbours because I arranged the Council to uplift but could not get them to come immediately. Not much success in all of that but I tried what I thought was the right thing to do. There is no pleasing some people.
My biggest fault in this area is that I will not be controlled by this couple. I do what I think is right and deal with situations when they arise. I have had more work done and there was no sight of the waste materials from that job.
I think they are unreasonable in that they have not let up since that day over 2 months ago.

I guess it depends on the timeline from when the rubbish was placed there, up until when the council removed it. It can take weeks. And if you’ve got a few residents who are ultra fussy, that would have riled them. The plus side being that their input would ensure that the communal areas always look respectable.

I have a stepford wives type situation in the road I’ve moved into. The divide in the road is the original elderly residents v’s new families who move in. They don’t like the new families updating the old properties/resulting building work. I’ve been told to : move my bins (even though they were on my property border), cut back plants in my garden (even though they are not crossing and borders), remove plants because of the leaves that fall from them, I’ve had workmen let themselves into my back garden unannounced because neighbour needs her conservatory roof cleaned (huge brick built thing that was erected without any planning consents) etc, etc.

My strategy is now - not to engage in conversation/answer the door. So long as I know I’m doing right by the law/council - it’s not for anyone else to tell me what to do. Bit like the queen - never complain, never explain.

So - if whatever happened with your cabinets - as long as you followed your management company’s rules and regs - it is NOT up to your neighbours. They don’t set the rules. You follow the rules of law/council/management company - feel secure with that, and ignore/blank/don’t enter into conversation with neighbours.

This all sounds very familiar. I don’t think you’ve been at all unreasonable, I stay in a flat and all our areas are communal. We have a bulk uplift cage but for people doing work like a kitchen refit it would be normal to put the old cabinets in one place then take them to the tip in one go as it’s frowned on to use the bulk uplift cage for that as it costs us so much to have it emptied.

Your creepy stalker neighbour sounds annoying, I think everywhere has someone like him, not enough to do and over invested in other peoples lives.