Cox and the Creepy Neighbor
About a month ago I got a new neighbor in the unit behind me. The first day they moved in, they seemed a bit overeager to be friends, but ultimately harmless. We swapped numbers in case there needed to be any neighborhood related communication.
That was a mistake. They moved in on a Sunday. By that Thursday I had blocked the guy's number. He had called me drunk every single night (sometimes multiple times) since he moved in. I am not sure if his significant other knew he was calling, but it usually seemed to happen after she got home from work.
He was always wanting me to come over. I would politely decline. Once when Wayne was over he escalated and started asking about our sex life and if that's why I never wanted to come over.
One time he called he was apparently looking in my windows! He started telling me what he could see in my kitchen. I told him that was creepy as fuck (Apparently not the answer he was expecting. I think he thought I was younger than I am and would be easier prey). He tried to play it off like he didn't mean anything by it. He said he was a chef and just liked to see how people cook. I told him I like to cook too, but I don't use it as an excuse for peeping into other people's windows.
This creeped me out so much I called our landlord and asked if I could install a chain lock for my own safety. She asked why I was feeling unsafe. I had been hesitant to call her as we haven't always gotten along. Plus she seemed to like these new tenants a lot (She actually gave them a hug when they first moved in! It took me two and a half years to get this woman to even crack a smile!) But I figured for better or worse I wasn't going to hid the reason. So I told her the issue was the new male tenant in the back house.
To her credit she took this very seriously. She asked me for specifics. I told her everything to the best of my recollection. I sent her screen shots of my call logs where he would call over and over. I sent her screen shots of texts he sent. She said not to worry about it, she was going to nib this in the bud NOW. She did say she wanted to calm down and talk to her husband before reaching out to them. She said in the meantime to install any lock/security that I needed to feel safe. That was good enough for me as it was a much better reaction than what I was expecting.
Literally the day after this happened Wayne came over to hang out. Not two minutes after Wayne left he sends me an audio message, very clearly drunk. In the message he is calling me "baby" and trying to sing along with some song I couldn't identify. I sent him a text back telling him I wanted him to leave me alone. I told him he was a creep and laid out everything he had done that I felt was inappropriate (it was all still fresh in my mind from the conversation with our landlord as well as I told Wayne about it before he left). I told him I was blocking his number and any communication they needed to have with me could come through his girlfriend. I then forwarded the audio message to my landlord as well as sent her a screenshot of what I sent back. She was very kind about it and said that was exactly the correct reaction.
Apparently he tried to call her on me shortly thereafter. I think he may have guessed that I had been in communication with her about this. He told her he didn't know what my problem was, that I was a liar. He tried to tell her I was always complaining that they never fix anything around the place etc. She saw the deflection for what it was. Apparently while they were on the phone she pulled up our conversation and just started asking him, "Why did you call her on this day?...Why did you call her twice on this day?...Why are you looking in her windows?...Why are you continuing to try and contact her after she has told you not to..." Of course he had an answer for everything. "Oh, I just wanted her to move her car" (Not true btw, he never called me to ask me to move my car. The one time he did ask me to move my car was in person). "I never looked in her windows, idk what she is talking about" when pressed it turned into, "She's taking that completely the wrong way, I am a professional chef and have an interest in how people keep their kitchen." (I am not sure how someone who is unemployed is a professional anything).
He must have been very unconvincing as she told him he would be receiving a 21 day probation notice. Part of the lease states to live peaceably with the neighbors. She told him if she received another complaint from me in that time, he and his gf would be given 30 days to find somewhere else to live.
This worked....kinda. Now he tries to find as many grey areas as he can that don't technically violate the probation notice. First he tried to get to me through Wayne. Every time Wayne would come over he would stop him. He would say things like he just really wanted to cook dinner for us. Wayne kept his calm and just told Kevin we were not interested in eating with him.
When talking to Wayne didn't work he started moving my trashcan. I would move it out to the curb and he would move it back "for me" after pick-up while I was at work. I ignored the gesture (I gave a quick, "Thanks" once when he made a point to bring it up).
Then he tried with the neighbors in the unit in front of me. This one actually hurt a bit. They moved in about a month before he did, but we became friends (for my part) pretty quickly. They are close to my age and we have several similar interests and hobbies. They also became friends with the back neighbors when they moved in.
They have made a few passing comments about how, "Kevin's not so bad" and I'm "Misinterpreting". Wayne and I had made dinner plans with them which they cancelled (they said due to illness, not the situation with Kevin), but every other time I've tried to hang out with them there is a reason they can't. It might be nothing, but time will tell.
Fast forward to last Friday. I go to work and everything is fine. I come home from work and my internet has been disconnected. Apparently COX came out to hook my new neighbors up with internet and my neighbor told them to disconnect me AND THEY DID!!!! I have a few side jobs I do on the weekends and in the evenings that require internet use, so I am freaking out.
After numerous calls to them yelling, crying, asking to speak to a supervisor, they finally agree to send someone out Sunday to hook me back up. Sunday comes, but COX never does. So I start calling them again. Now the soonest someone can some out is Monday between 10-12. I let work know I would be in late so I could get this sorted. I settle down on my front porch with a good book (The Unfinished Tales J.R.R. Tolkien). I get up to go to the bathroom, come back, and I have a text message from COX saying my appointment has been cancelled and to contact them to re-schedule.
I start calling again. The first rep I speak to is some Indian girl who tells me the tech went out and spoke to me and that I told him to leave. I told her no one has come by and certainly no one has spoken to me.
She tells me, "This is your first warning". I said, warning for what? She said she could see in the system where I had spoken to someone and I sent them away. I told her, "Ma'am, no one has spoken to me. I haven't talked with any tech". She tells me this is my second warning.
I said I didn't know why her system was telling her that, but I hadn't seen any tech come out and I really needed my internet to be re-connected. At this point I have already missed an entire weekends worth of wages and was missing time at my day job waiting for a tech.
Predictably she said "This is your third warning!".
At this point I do yell. Why not? She is giving me "warnings" like I am some child when I am calmly explaining to her what happened. As expected she hangs up on me.
So I call back, immediately as to speak to a supervisor. This one still acts like he doesn't believe me. He does apologize for the girl I spoke to before, in an, "I'm supposed to apologize to you kind of way" and says he will contact the tech and reach back out to me. No one ever calls me back.
I call them again. This time I finally get someone who reads me the notes. It wasn't me the tech spoke to, it was a man. I told her, "Ma'am, I live alone." Apparently my neighbor had intercepted the tech and told him the call wasn't about hooking my internet back up, but something about how the cables need to be hung differently. She agrees to send the tech back out and lets me wait on hold while she contacts him so she can get right back to me. The soonest that he can come back out is between 3-5.
Finally the tech gets there. I explain the situation to him and show him where on the pole I can see my line was disconnected. It was really an easy fix and in about 15-20 minutes my internet was hooked back up. I asked him what my neighbor had said to him. He re-iterated that the neighbor said the call was about how the cables were hung. Since COX doesn't do that kind of work, the homeowner would need to, he left. I asked if it wasn't known before he came out that the call was for internet service being disconnected, not about re-hanging cables. He said he had thought that was confusing. When he asked my neighbor about it, my neighbor told him, "No, don't worry about her. Her internet is fine. She's just crazy." AND THAT WAS ENOUGH FOR HIM TO LEAVE WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO CONTACT ME.
The neighbors in the front house saw I got my internet hooked back up and congratulated me. When I told her what happened she said it was petty of Kevin if true, but probably not an attempt to get my attention.
There is a silver lining to all this. Without internet I was able to get some reading done. I spend so much time online it almost felt like a brain detox. My TV went out a few hours before my internet got reconnected. I don't even have plans to fix it. When I am online I am doing more productive things. I am going to try and go without a TV for a while. I have internet, a computer, and a phone. But no TV is forcing me to do better with my time at home.