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how to win friends and alienate your enemies

May 9, 2005   

Disclaimer: This is gonna be a long post. :p

On Friday, I was workin from home when our housemate shows us this horribly creepy note from an anonymous neighbor that was in our mailbox:

PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR YARD! [this is in red marker across the top]

Letting your property repeatedly become an ugly eyesore spoils our neighborhood and is grossly inconsiderate of us, your neighbors.

Fortunately, the city of Oakland has stiff laws with high fines for dealing with this situation.

If your property is not adequately cleared of weeds, debris, etc. by this Monday, May 9, we will file a formal complaint with the city, triggering the Blight Control Department to police your cleanup.

We felt that this needed a response, as the most annoying thing about this was that for the last few weeks, Seppo, with my help, has been working his butt off trying to get things cleaned up. If you looked at our yard today, it would be clear that things were happening. We wrote a note, hoping to achieve two desired effects:

  1. Assure our neighbors that things are getting done and
  2. Paint the anonymous note-writer as the bad guy who is disrupting the harmony and peace our (inclusive of all the other neighbors) neighborhood.

Seppo went around yesterday and distributed 20 copies of our note (which follows), and spoke to those whose lights were on. They were uniformly surprised, supportive, and friendly, which was great. This morning, another guy came by from across the street to say hello and to sympathize. That was awesome, and really something we appreciate. Our neighbors ROCK!

Our note:

Hello dear neighbors!

We are your neighbors at [house information deleted]. First, let us apologize for the state of our front yard and for asking you to read this note. We are writing because we recently received a very confrontational anonymous letter threatening to call the authorities on us for the state of our front yard, which feels very scary and alienating for us.

As people who have met us know, we’ve been trying hard to bring the lawn into order lately. We knew that unfortunately this would look worse for a short time before it looked better, which we feel terrible about, but we hadn’t realized that someone would feel the need to harass and intimidate us. We place extreme value on our home and know that you do too. Our home is not just a huge investment (both financially and emotionally) for us but truly a home, as it is for everyone else here who calls this great neighborhood home. We value the neighborliness and history of our street which is a rare gem to find, and we certainly don’t mean to cause a problem, which is precisely why have been taking action to make improvements.

Please rest assured that this is not the permanent state of things and that we are actively working on the lawn. Due to severe allergies, we’ve even resorted to doing some yard work in the late evenings when the pollen count is generally lower, but we are making steady progress. We have been doing research on pretty plants that will grow well in this climate, because we’ve come to the realization that between the terrain and allergies, grass can’t really be our face to the neighborhood. It took us a few seasons, but we’ve learned that we can’t keep up with it and we don’t want it to be ugly as it has been in the past – that’s bad for everyone on our street. In order to make everything tidier, we’ve been looking around at our fellow [street name deleted] yards to pick up hints and determined that we should rip out the lawn and replace it with other plants, which we are in the process of doing. This will go on for a few more weeks, as there is a big space to clear. Many fellow neighbors on this street know that we love our neighborhood, and that we’ve worked hard to make improvements on our home over the years to modernize and contribute to the ongoing beautification of our neighborhood. Sadly, it is taking a longer amount of time than any of us had hoped. For this, we apologize.

Everyone we’ve met out here has been wonderful the last few years, so it is shocking to have the threat of having the City called and being heavily fined hanging over us. To us, issuing anonymous threats causes a bigger damage to our neighborhood than a lawn that is getting ripped out. We feel violated in our own home over this threat because

  1. The writer assumes we don’t care about our home or our neighborhood
  2. The writer assumes we will not comply
  3. The writer acted alone to give us a very short deadline determined by himself or herself
  4. The writer feels it’s acceptable to make threats against neighbors by hiding behind anonymity
  5. The writer had never made any other attempt to speak to us about this problem before

If the intent wasn’t to harass and intimidate us, then we are relieved and in fact grateful for letting us know that there are people who are frustrated, but the wording was very clear and straightforward. This is pretty terrible and un-neighborly. 🙁 As it will be impossible to clear out all of the grass by Monday (the deadline in the letter), we understand we may still get reported and will cooperate in every way with the Blight Control Department.

To us, this has always been the kind of wonderful neighborhood were people always say hello, neighbors tell neighbors when our cars have the lights on, and generally go out of our ways to work well together. We’ve traded great stories with people who have been there for generations, as well as people like us who are relatively new to the area. We remember when there was a fire on the block and people came out in the middle of the night to make sure everyone was evacuated and safe. This is the neighborhood we care for.

Please don’t ever hesitate to stop us in the street, knock on our door, or drop us a note to have a little chat over neighborhood concerns! We love to meet more neighbors and we won’t ever hold it against you to address neighborhood issues – they are our shared issues and welcomed responsibilities. The only thing no neighbor can welcome is a threat. 🙁 We know it can feel awkward to stop a stranger for a chat, but we aren’t really strangers – we’re neighbors and will be for many years to come. 🙂 We love the friendly feel of this street and are eager make sure that we contribute to a cooperative neighborhood and not detract from it in any way. Again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but hope that you understand that it will look much better soon.

Your friendly neighbors at [house information deleted],
Seppo and Ei-Nyung

My feeling is that this note, along with Seppo going in person to speak to people, really put everyone on our side. It was important for us to portray this person as not being in line with everyone else, to paint him/her as the “them” and all the other neighbors as a collective “us”. I think we won.

Us: 1
Anonymous jerky neighbor: 0

8 Comments
Angry Chad
May 9, 2005 at 7:28 pm

Great letter! I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t side with you when you put it like that. And I’m with you 100%, anonymity sucks! *cough*a_b*cough*

I’m going to print a copy and keep it as a “Get Off Your Neighbor’s Shitlist Free” card, should I ever need one.

Anonymous
May 10, 2005 at 1:43 pm

I think it took guts to go out and talk to your neighbors about the lawn and to explain the steps you guys are taking to rectify the situation.

But that letter … I’m trying to imagine if I didn’t “know” you guys and I was on the receiving end of the letter and the visit.

I don’t know. I think the letter won’t have the effect you think it will. I think most people don’t want to be involved in your conflicts with your neighbors. If your lawn really is a mess, I’d be happy that someone got off their ass to complain. I know I wouldn’t bother, but I do know I’d be annoyed if a neighbors lawn was a pig-sty. Accutely annoyed if it had been a pig-sty for a while.

I mean, I have had neighbors who made a lot of racket. Not enough racket for me to call the cops, but I was annoyed with it. If one of my other neighbors complained to the cops, I wouldn’t have any sympathy for the noise maker. If the noise maker came to my door with a long letter like that, saying, “I have bad hearing so I have to talk loudly and the TV is loud, but I’m getting a new hearing aid.” I wouldn’t think the person that complained was a bad guy. I’d think, “shit, I live next to a deaf person and I’m going to be stuck listening to this racket forever until they get a new hearing aid or something.

If I didn’t speak with Seppo, here’s 90% chance of what my conversation with my wife would be like:

Me: Did you see this letter?
Her: Yeah …
Me: Did you read it? It’s like 20 pages.
Her: It’s a little long.
Me: Which neighbor is this? The one with the fucked up lawn?
Her: Yeah, down the street.
Me: What the fuck? Just mow the lawn already, why are they involving us?
Her: I don’t know. I guess somebody complained to them or something.
Me: Yeah, I mean the lawn looks like shit and they should clean it up, but what the hell? Do they think we complained?
Her: They probably sent it to everybody in the neighborhood.
Me: I don’t know why they have to bother us with this. We already have to look at their fucked up lawn. It’s between them and whoever complained. But hell, if this gets them in gear to clean it up, all the better. Why don’t they just hire somebody if the guy has allergies?
Her: I don’t know.

That’s the gist of it. I wouldn’t want to be bothered with your conflict and I would want you to clean up your mess (assuming it is a mess).

I don’t know what Seppo said, but I know I imagine if he came to my door, I’d be just happy to hear you guys are going to clean up your messy lawn. I don’t think I’d have any sympathy for the “violating” your home argument.

If blight control thinks it’s a blight, then it’s a blight and you should have cleaned it up/not let it get so bad. If it’s a blight, your neighbors shouldn’t have to put up with it. It’s not fair to them and anonymously or not, they have a right to complain. If it’s not a blight, you have nothing to worry about. It’s not a “violation” of your space to have people enforce codes unless you have some argument that the blight code is wrong.

As for the deadline or warning, they don’t have to give you any warning at all. Plenty of people would have called without any warning to get your yard cleaned. If I didn’t know you and I read this letter, I’d be thinking they were nice to give you any warning at all.

I have sympathy for your situation because I know you guys are sincere and you mean well and everything in your letter is the truth, but if I didn’t know you, this letter would come of as a bunch of excuses and you were waging some kind of battle with some other neighbor that I didn’t ask to be a part of, and I’d be glad to know you guys were cleaning up your yard and glad somebody gave you a kick in the pants to get to it.

Let me ask this, do you think your lawn would be considered a blight? If so, why don’t you think you should have to comply with the code?

If the person had given you their identity and your yard is a blight, does it make your requirement to comply any less necessary?

If the person had given you their identity, what would you do with it? If you were to “negotiate” with them to not have them call Blight Control, why should your other neighbors put up with a blight (if you think your yard is a blight)?

If they had not written this letter anonymously, would you have bothered to explain to your neighbors what steps you are taking to rectify the blight or, the mess of the yard?

A_B

ei-nyung
May 10, 2005 at 2:08 pm

I hear where you are coming from. And for most of the other neighborhoods I have lived in my life, I think your take would be exactly accurate, and it would be my take as well. However, I think that the crucial difference lies in the current neighborhood. It is exactly as I described — very friendly and “neighborhood-y”, for lack of a better word. People do things like invite each other over/out to dinner, chat all the time outside, pet each others dogs, stuff like that. Half the people have been living on the block and have grown up with each others kids and cousins for generations here. The other half are new people, trying to move into a nice neighborhood and do so by moving into a not-so-great house and fixing it up. So that’s some of the context.

The other context is that our block is in a state of half-nice, half-run-down. Not run-down in a neglected sense, but the houses are all 70 years old on a hill and many need a lot of structural work. This means houses might be getting a paint job, or be in the state of construction, or getting the roof fixed, or be in the state of yard redesign. A good 1/6 of the neighborhood is trying to fix something at any given time especially during the “construction season” (spring to fall, basically), so there is a lot of leeway that we give each other.

The other thing is that the neighbor is greatly exaggerating. The front yard is somewhat overgrown, but it is in no way a blight. If they call the authorities, my assumption is that they will be like, yeah, hmm, I guess we’ll give them a small warning to not let the grass grow so long, and leave it at that. It’s got *some* weeds, but mostly it’s grass and a few perennials, and some drapey flowering vine that we don’t like, but is actually quite pretty. The problem is that the ground is extremely fertile and things grow really big, really fast.

And it’s quite clear that we are already 1/3 of the way to finishing our work.

Sure, it’s within their rights to report us, but it is within our right to be pissed off at them for being jerks, because in the context of our neighborhood, they are. Our neighborhood is a very friendly kind of place, and their action is honestly out of place here, and our letter is far less so.

ei-nyung
May 10, 2005 at 2:12 pm

The really awesome thing is that people have been coming by to tell us that they think the other person sucks and that they know we are working on it. The best thing is that the people who live the closest to us that it would annoy the most all have the kind of relationship with us that they would just tell us it annoyed them if it did, which we know because they came by to say something when the dog visiting us was barking too much during the day (which is not in violation of any ordinances here, but we still tried to accomodate them out of courtesy and no hard feelings).

Cool people. Very nice.

ei-nyung
May 10, 2005 at 2:15 pm

Heh, I keep commenting, but here I go again. We also are not the worst looking house/yard on the block. There are other houses that clearly are in a similar or worse state but even then, because it’s a generally nice area with constant improvements happening, it really doesn’t look that bad.

Anonymous
May 10, 2005 at 2:33 pm

I’m still waiting for a picture in Flickr of your lawn. :p

In any case, if you don’t think it’s a blight and no one else besides the letter writer thinks it’s a blight, then yeah, I can see where you’re coming from regardless of how friendly the neighborhood is.

And if it’s a pattern where people are “messy” and then clean it up, that adds to the context and whether they were being dicks about the situation.

Moreover, if you’re not even the worst house, I wonder if others got similar letter.

A_B

ei-nyung
May 10, 2005 at 2:58 pm

Our housemade had the interesting theory that perhaps it was not even someone in the neighborhood, but a yardwork company, as there wasn’t anyting in the note that was specific to our house, but that can equally apply to someone who is annoyed at more than one household.

I kind of wanted to ask around, but I also didn’t want people to feel like they’ve been singled out as having a bad yard because I asked them. Heh.

I might post a pic of the yard, but as it is partially ripped out, it naturally looks terrible, and without the context of the other houses, it might look like I’m nuts/full of lies. Heh. We’ll see. There will definitely be before and after pics when we are done planting. 🙂

Seppo
May 13, 2005 at 8:01 pm

So, I took the letter to the five houses on either side of us, and the ten houses across the street nearest to us. I talked to everyone with a light on at the time I dropped the letter around (8:30ish), and people were uniformly nice, sympathetic, and supportive.

As Ei-Nyung said, it’s not a “blight” – it’s overgrown. We have grass that shoots up seed stalks to about six feet tall, mint, and that flowery thing. It’s not attractive in the context of manicured lawns and such, but there’s maybe six houses on the block (of which I covered about 1/3rd) that have nicely manicured lawns.

We *used* to have a lawn that could be considered a “blight” because it was covered in construction material from the construction that was going on. We got a call then, from “blight control,” and they came by and took a look, and they said, “you’ve got a lot of construction material in your yard,” to which I replied, “yes, we’ve also got a lot of construction going on.”

They said to make sure it was cleaned up when the construction was over, and we did. This is nothing like that.

The weird thing, again, is that *even if you considered it a blight*, they sent the letter *after* we started ripping up the stuff. We’d been working on it nightly for two weeks at the point when we got the note, which is what really fucking pissed me off.

But basically, we got either calls or visits, or other friendly responses from most of our neighbors from this. The general sense is as Ei-Nyung described, that most of us have got these houses that we’re trying to improve. Anyone who’s been around for a couple years knows that the house used to be a literal eyesore, in its old silver and black state, with peeling paint, a weed-filled, overgrown lawn (ours is relatively free of weeds, just overgrown), and just looked completely like shit. Our house is now at least in line with others, and had it not been for an improperly installed window which was patched somewhat poorly, leading to a surfacing irregularity on one side, it would look brand spanking new.

I understand where A_B’s coming from – shit, if the cops had been called on our neighbor across the street who constantly yelled at his kid at 11pm every night so loud we could hear it in our house with the windows closed, I’d have been happy. But the context is what matters in this case, and our house isn’t out of line with most of the houses in the neighborhood.

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