A woman who works from home says her neighbors put a kiddie pool in the one spot guaranteed to drive her crazy, directly under her office window. The catch is that these aren’t random neighbors. They’re close friends, the sort who were in her wedding. They also have an entire acre of land to work with.
Obviously distraught, she shared the saga on Reddit, and it’s a familiar slow-motion friendship strain. About four years ago, her friends bought the house next door, which sounds like a dream scenario for some homeowners. It’s a couple her husband had grown up with and even lived with in their twenties. For a while, everything was great. Lately, she says, the couple has started making calls that ignore her family, doing whatever’s easiest for them or whatever they think looks better.
Then came the pool. Despite all that open land, and other water sources on the property, they set it up right against her house. That put it in front of her dining room window and under both her office and bathroom windows. Their stated reason is that they like to watch the sunset from there. So now she’s trying to run work presentations while a screaming toddler splashes a few feet away, windows closed or not.
Her husband asked them to move it, and they agreed. No problem, they said, they’d take care of it. Three days later, it hadn’t budged. Then she watched them add more air and more water to it. That’s the moment the whole thing tips from oversight into something that looks a lot like a choice.
Why the Pool’s Placement is a Problem
The Kiddie Pool of Torture
by
u/Spdice999 in
neighborsfromhell
It’s obvious the pool was seemingly placed where it is for a reason when the couple has an acre of land. There are other places to put a pool. They still picked the exact spot under the window of someone they know works from home. The sunset excuse is a stretch, since a whole acre presumably offers more than one western view. And they also promised to move the pool.
Plenty of commenters had their own theories about the situation. Maybe the pool is actually bait, some said. Put the kids in a splash zone right outside this woman’s window, and she becomes the built-in babysitter. Whether that’s the real plan or just speculation, it’s awfully convenient when you look at the big picture.
What Can Be Done?
The advice this woman got mostly pointed one way: have a real conversation with her neighbors. The version a lot of people suggested names the friendship up front, then gets specific. Something like, this is a big deal to me because I work right there, and I need the pool moved. Being warm and being firm aren’t opposites here, and after a broken promise, firm is probably overdue.
If talking doesn’t work, she has other moves, of course. Several people suggested getting the property line professionally surveyed. The pool straddles it and the exact boundary may not be where anyone assumes it is. A privacy fence came up a lot too, as did the point that many places have rules for standing water that a pool like this might run afoul of. But it’s important to remember that we’re only hearing one neighbor’s side, and a very pregnant couple may genuinely be running on fumes. Still, good friends would probably move the pool. It really is that easy of a fix.