“That Pool Is A Waste On Just The Two Of You”: Neighbors Drown Karen’s Free Pool Dreams

Some neighbors can be a pain. There. I said it. They might not be bad human beings, but their nosiness and entitlement can become too much.

This redditor was seemingly dealing with such a neighbor. Known to peer over the fence quite often, the woman—a mom of three—wasn’t very well liked by the OP and her husband. One of the reasons why? She wanted her kids to play in the couple’s pool, without so much as saying “please”, noting only that she has “three bored kids and that pool is a waste on just the [couple]”.

It’s great to have nice neighbors, someone you can chat with, borrow some flour from, if need be, or organize BBQs with. But a good relationship is a two-way street, which only works if both parties are courteous and nice with each other.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case in the redditor’s story. First and foremost, her neighbor was nosy, which is one of the things people dislike most about their neighbors. According to a poll carried out by LendingTree, being too nosy is only preceded by being rude and unfriendly or making too much noise.

The poll also revealed that almost a quarter of Americans living with neighbors dislike at least one of them. Another poll found that some even hide from them. Carried out by Top Rail Fence, the latter found that as much as 65% of respondents admit to hiding from people living around them.

In addition to hiding, people use other techniques to avoid having to interact with their neighbors, too, such as pretending to not see them (which is seemingly the most popular technique used by 37% of respondents), staying inside when the neighbors are outside (used by 34% of respondents), acting like they’re not home (26%) or on their phone (21%), and wearing headphones while outside (21%).

The OP, too, was planning to start hiding from her nosy neighbor by building a taller fence. That’s because the woman living next door would not only peep over the fence, but ask if her kids could use the redditor’s pool when she and her husband were lounging by it. The couple said they were child-free for numerous reasons, so they weren’t eager to have the kids over, but more than that, they didn’t like the way the woman addressed the topic, implying that her kids being bored was somehow the neighbors’ problem.

According to Pew Research Center’s survey from 2023, roughly a third of Americans (ages 50 and older) without kids said that they never wanted children; a quarter said they weren’t sure one way or the other. The main reason they cited for not having offspring was that it simply didn’t happen for them, though people in the younger age group said the main reason for not having kids was them simply not wanting kids.

In the comments under the post, the redditor shared that despite not wanting to have kids of their own, the couple didn’t dislike them. They also didn’t mind letting other people use their pool sometimes. However, the way the neighbor asked for her kids to use it left little to no chance of her little ones stepping foot near the couple’s pool.