New Neighbors
Some years ago, we had some new neighbors move in next door. Nice enough people, but we had a problem with them. The husband traveled a lot and his wife was afraid of just about everything—the dark, thunderstorms, you name it. The problem was the floodlights over their garage doors.
She would leave them on all night, every night, even though you couldn’t see them from inside of their house. They were positioned such that they would shine into our bedroom at night. We were not able to block them effectively with our curtains.
We asked them politely several times if they could turn them off at night since they served no effective purpose. They adamantly refused. I offered to pay for a timer that would control them. No way they would consider it. I thought about taking the bulbs out, shooting them out with my pellet gun, etc.
The solution that I arrived at was to simply loosen them up enough that they wouldn’t come on. Since they couldn’t see them from inside the house, it was about five-six months before they realized that they were not working. They screwed them back in. I waited a couple of weeks and unscrewed them again.
Another few months went by. Finally, one day, my neighbor asked me if I ever had any trouble with my outdoor lights. I told him yes, as a matter of fact, I did.
I said that they would loosen up occasionally and I would have to retighten them. I blamed it on vibration from the traffic on our street. He said that he had the same problem.
I told him that I finally just gave up and left them off. He eventually did the same. We were happy with the final outcome and we were able to keep pace in the neighborhood.