When you move, don't make an enemy out of your neighbors
Condo associations should have a firm move-in and move-out time restriction and know who the moving company is
I couldn’t believe it. When I heard the loud dragging noise of a desk or bed frame being pulled across a wooden floor, I thought this had to be some kind of sick joke. It wasn’t until my parents’ dog started barking and racing back and forth that I realized, “Oh, this is really happening — at 6:30 a.m.”
For six straight years, I’d enjoyed the wonderful sound of silence from the tenant living in the condo unit above me. She rented out two units — one for her belongings and the other she lived in. After a big blowout during my rental days when a tenant would run on her treadmill at 9 a.m., I was adamant that I not live below anyone who was obnoxious in the morning. I was ecstatic to find out my condo purchase would result in a quiet upstairs neighbor.
But when I heard all that dragging, squeaking and pushing (along with a dog loudly barking) on a Saturday morning, I temporarily thought, “Even the treadmill lady had more sense than this.”
Turns out it was not the tenant living above me. Her grandson had the bright idea to allow a moving van to arrive at 7 a.m. when she wasn’t at home, and he was getting a head start by moving furniture at 6:30 a.m. I poked my head out the door to find out why there was so much noise, and he had the audacity to ask me about how he could get keys to our basement.
Why? The two landlords who the tenant was renting property from had never given him their phone numbers. Imagine that. A landlord has a lease with a tenant, but the emergency contact has no way of reaching the landlord (and apparently vice versa). And by neither of them talking to each other, they would have no way of knowing nor telling him what time was OK to start moving.
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In Chicago, the noise ordinance starts at 7 a.m.
From my alderwoman’s website:
Quiet time is generally designated between 10 PM and 8 AM in any area within 600 feet of a residential district.
Activities involving loading, unloading, opening, closing or other handling of boxes, crates, containers, building materials, garbage cans, dumpsters or similar objects must not be done in a manner as to cause a noise disturbance between 10 PM and 7 AM.
His response: “I can move whenever the f**k I want.”
And to add a cherry on top, he started yelling in the hallway about somebody’s car in his way — loud enough for anyone with working ears.
Needless to say, this turned into a screaming, name-calling argument. And by the time the police arrived with a noise complaint, it was already after 7 a.m., and they could do nothing about the noise because the grandson had the legal right to make all the noise he wanted.
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I was dumbfounded. I’d lived in three states and moved 10 times, and I’d never humored the idea of moving anything before 8 a.m. — as a general courtesy. On top of the movers blocking an entire lane of traffic for over an hour, they left multiple cups and mugs throughout the hallway and ripped off the wood of one of our stairs while trying to bring a dresser down. This was the horrendous gift that just kept on giving — and they keep having negative reviews taken down on Yelp! to cover up this insanity.