So a neighbor is making bullshit complaints to police and the home owner's association that started with one reasonable complaint, which we immediately addressed, but have now expanded to a shitload of unreasonable shit beyond our control, half-truths, and blatant falsehoods. And it looks like it's working. We're being asked to get rid of the dog we got a few months ago to help our 7 year old with serious mental health issues, and I fear it won't stop at that because they're complaining about our kids too. And we can't afford to move.
This again...
Shortly after that post, I made an impassioned e-mail to our landlord about how it wasn't just about the dog. It started with the dog, but then after we addressed the complaints about the dog, they just moved on to other complaints. It's a solid case of bullying, and we don't have a choice but to stand up to them. We laid out considerable evidence. Our landlord relayed some of those to the HOA and asked to arrange a meeting between all parties. They refused, have been incredibly avoidant ever since, and we hadn't heard anything about complaints from them in over a month. I thought it had blown over.
But then tonight, we send our kids out to walk the dog. When they go out, the man neighbor has his garage open and is doing something in there. As illustrated in the photo below, the guy's garage is right next to our door. This is the only way in/our of our condo, unless we go through our garage... just to the right of our front door in the photo.
So our dog has learned by now not to like this guy, and immediately veers in that direction and starts barking at him. They're just small kids, and the dog is medium-sized but still a puppy lacking discipline. So of course, it gets a short distance into his garage. The guy responds by loudly banging on his trash can and yelling at them to get the hell out. My wife hears this, because his garage is right under our living room. Goes out and sees our kids rushing the dog away, the younger one crying. She's a confrontational type, and marches right down to ask him what the hell. Our roommate immediately gets me.
I get down there and the guy is being hostile as hell. He tells us that he's verified with police that he's within his rights to shoot the dog if it sets a single foot on his property. My wife is getting really upset at this point and starts yelling at him about how unreasonable he's being. He yells back that he's the one who has a right to be upset because his vehicle "suffered damage" because our dog peed on it, claims that it's continued happening (we're 100% certain it has not), and adds cryptic remarks about how we'll find out on the 26th, foreboding that he's pulled some strings and we're going to suffer consequences on this date. At this point our scrawny little 7 year old, who is extremely protective about people/dogs that he cares about, starts entering one of his righteous anger trances, growling and clenching his fists at the guy. He says he's going to hurt our kid if he sets foot in his garage, and starts going off wildly about how we're bad parents and shit.
So I usher the kids inside, because everything's getting out of control. My wife calls the police and tells them we're being threatened. Police show up, speak with both parties separately, and basically tell us "Yeah, it's rough with your situation, but the burden is on you to find a way to keep your kids and dog from touching his property even the slightest bit. He's within his rights to make that demand, and everything else is just personal dispute." When we explain that there's physical threats involved, and the demands being made in order to avoid those things are unreasonable, the officer shrugs it off, explains there's nothing he can do and he doesn't have any suggestions for us. We just have to figure it out.
So now we can't let our kids exit the only door to our residence unless we're there with them, and we'll have our phone cameras set and ready every time we do. Because if our kids take one step to the right and then backwards, they're in physical danger from a psycho, and if the law isn't on that guy's side, he at least believes that it is. And we're probably going to shell out for a surveillance camera looking out over the guy's driveway, so we can better dispute any further claims, and film any altercations.
And it's 11:30 pm and I have hours of research to do by tomorrow to gather evidence on why roughly 300 product codes (out of a database of at least 40,000) don't precisely match formatting between our database and our customer's, because our customer's compliance manager has been in a shitty mood lately and digging for any little imperfection he can find to claim that our business standards are "falling apart".
Welcome to 'Merica.