The Neighbor From Hell: How One Man’s Petty Revenge Served Up a Thanksgiving Catastrophe
Some neighbors bring you casseroles. Others bring the heat—literally and figuratively. In the wild world of apartment living, it’s a mental lottery which one you’ll get. For Redditor u/Valkier_Kato, the neighborly jackpot was a woman known as “Tee,” whose antics could fill a season’s worth of reality TV. But after years of ear-splitting country music, slamming doors, and some truly bizarre cat drama, our hero had enough. When the perfect opportunity for petty revenge presented itself—on Thanksgiving, no less—he didn’t just take it. He stepped on it.
This is the story of how one man’s sleep-deprived patience wore thin, and how a lost debit card became the stuff of petty legend. If you’ve ever had a neighbor who drove you up the wall (or who seemed to be listening through it), you’ll want to read on.
Let’s set the stage: Apartment walls thick as bank vaults. A neighbor, Tee (60sF), who seemed perfectly pleasant…until her husband left her in year one. “No idea why,” Valkier_Kato muses, before the comments section erupts with speculation (u/Glittering_Win_9677: “I wonder why her husband left her.” u/Best-Independence526: “Imagine being married to her. No wonder he left.”).
Tee’s post-breakup hobby? Making sure her next-door neighbors never got a moment’s peace. She’d slam her heavy metal door every single time she entered or exited—enough to jolt anyone from REM sleep. But the real pièce de résistance was her campaign of sonic warfare: blaring country music at full volume, always perfectly positioned to mirror whatever room Valkier_Kato and his partner happened to be in. If they moved to the bathroom, so did she—Bluetooth speaker in tow, as if possessed by the ghost of Johnny Cash and a radar for human activity.
If our protagonists dared to laugh, talk, or so much as brush their teeth, Tee would pound on the wall and shout. One time, they heard her bellow, “Oh great! They’re in the bathroom again!” The kind of thing that makes you wonder if you’re in a sitcom or a psychological thriller. (“Apartment living is a mental lottery as to which of your neighbours is the crazy one,” observed u/Endless63, with a collective nod from the r/PettyRevenge community.)
Let’s not forget the summer months, when Tee’s chain-smoking outside forced the couple to keep their windows closed—no small feat in a non-air-conditioned, second-floor apartment. Tee would even smoke directly below the window AC, ensuring maximum smoky infiltration. As for Valkier_Kato’s night shifts? Tee, upon learning his schedule, took to blasting country at 8:30am sharp—just as he got home and desperately needed sleep. “Tee is an absolute crazy bitch. She deserved so much worse, but you did good 👏,” summarized u/starksdawson, echoing the collective exasperation.
But Tee’s pettiness didn’t stop at auditory assault. There were late-night family visits, hallway screaming matches, and—most infamously—the cat incident. Tee, as Valkier_Kato recounts, once threw her own cat out a second-story window because it bit her, then blocked neighbors from helping the poor animal. (Commenters were horrified: “What happened to the cat???” asked u/piratecat666. The good news: the kitty found a loving home with the building next door, as confirmed by [OP].)
Years of this would wear down even the most patient soul. But as u/PixelatedNomadic insightfully noted, “She’s probably annoyed that you and your partner have each other while she doesn’t (anymore). So, she tried to ruin your days whenever she could.” Sometimes, misery really does love company.
Enter November 2023. The perfect storm. Tee, in the grocery store at 8am, Thanksgiving shopping with gusto—her cart overflowing, her conversation with the cashier dragging on, all while Valkier_Kato, with just a handful of items and a desperate need for sleep, waited behind her. And then: Tee’s debit card, dropped and unnoticed, half under the candy rack.
A lesser mortal might have pointed it out. Not so for our weary protagonist. With a calculated step, he nudged the card fully out of sight. Tee, upon finally finishing her saga at the register, couldn’t pay. She left in a panic, groceries unpurchased, and spent the next hour yelling to her daughter about how Thanksgiving was “ruined.” The turkey, the stuffing, all left in limbo—never to grace her table. “Your petty revenge is quite satisfying,” applauded u/PixelatedNomadic, and the thread’s upvotes (over 1,500!) agreed.
But was it justified? Some commenters raised eyebrows. u/boredportuguese77 questioned the logic and fairness, suggesting maybe Valkier_Kato had stooped to Tee’s level. Others, like u/Decemberchild76, empathized: “Mental health issues here to say the least. Sorry you had to endure this nightmare of a neighbor.” Even the OP admitted, “I work with people with ID so that's why I was a bit more patient with her than I really should have been. But yeah, it really was a nightmare.”
The story ends on a note of catharsis. Tee moved out. Valkier_Kato’s friend moved in. Together, they tested the legendary wall: yelling, laughing, blasting music. Result? “I could BARELY hear a peep,” reports [OP]. Meaning, for all those years, Tee’s campaign of noise and complaints was, in fact, a one-woman show—a performance for an unwilling audience. “It kinda creeps me out to think that Tee was standing in her apartment with her ear to the wall all the time, but there's literally nothing else that makes sense,” [OP] reflected. As u/Roxysteve joked, “Everyone knows you use a glass tumbler as a stethoscope for thru-the-wall snooping.”
What’s the takeaway? Apartment living tests us all, and sometimes, the only way to stay sane is a little petty revenge—served cold, or in this case, right before Thanksgiving. Would you have done the same?
Do you have a neighborly horror story or a tale of perfectly executed petty payback? Share it below—because as this saga proves, sometimes the best way to survive the madness is to laugh, commiserate, and plot just a little bit of revenge (the harmless kind, of course).
Original Reddit Post: I mildly ruined my now ex-neighbor's Thanksgiving.