At-Home Business
I lost some great neighbors about eight months ago when they moved. I knew the bliss wouldn’t last forever, and I helped them pack up their stuff, took trips to the dump for them, and even said “anything that comes up at the last minute you need ditch, toss in my trailer on the side yard”.
The new neighbors moved in a few days later—turns out he runs his own business out of his home. All home-based businesses require a permit which must be signed. The permit outlines the requirements/rules of a home-based business.
Two of these rules are a) no customers before 7 am on the weekdays and no customers before 8 am on the weekends, no business to be conducted after 7 pm, and b) no more than three customers at your home at a time. Sadly, our neighbor runs a gym/personal training out of his garage.
We found out that he has classes every hour of every day between 5-9 am and then from 4-7 pm. He will routinely have four or more people at his class. After the first complaint to the city provided no relief, I purchased and installed some video cameras. I know it sounds bad, but get a load of this.
We are routinely woken up by his customer traffic, sometimes as early as 4:45 am. His customers love to talk—and talk loud without much thought given to anyone in the neighborhood. There was one that would announce her arrival by setting her car alarm several times while she walked into his garage.
One Saturday, he decided it would be a good idea to open his garage up, pull out his equipment, and have class on his driveway. About a dozen people showed up by 7 am. His customers routinely use my side yard and driveway to access his garage.
His customers, generally 4-5, will line up outside his gate at 10 minutes to the top of the hours waiting for the prior class to finish. Routinely they will drop weights in the garage (on a padded floor) which will rattle his side door.
When his side is open, my side door and sometimes the windows adjacent to his home will rattle. And there is so much grunting going on. Clearly, he wasn’t obeying the rules set forth in the home-based business policy set by the city.
Finally, after several months of complaints, video evidence, sworn statements by myself and likely other neighbors, his business—and sole means of support for his wife and three young daughters—will be cut off this next week.
I hope for his sake he decides to move or open up a commercial space. Hopefully, he decided to move. I can suggest a few realtors that could help him and he’d be welcome to use my trailer to move his stuff.
Story credit: Reddit / bored2death