neighbors who don't even say hello and go straight to the gossip

As soon as they see you, the first thing they do is start asking frantically about the latest neighborhood gossip. Sometimes the gossip is about you. These are middle-age neighbors who should know how to conduct themselves better.

People could at least have some decency and say hello, call you by name, and ask you how you are doing first. Especially if they haven't seen you in a while. Then ease into the gossip later.

 

Just wondering, did you do these things when you guys ran into each other again? Or just went with the conversation direction (gossip) your neighbours took and came on here to tell us about their behaviour? If it happened more than once perhaps they just assume you are fine with the gossip approach After all we can't all guess what our neighbours think when we rarely talk to each other. I think there's a good chance if you change the way of approach they'll go with the flow.

 

on the bright side, at least they talk to you. i know plenty of people who have absolutely no communication with their neighbours at all. i only know MY neighbours on one side, and even then i only see one of the 5 that lives there with any regularity.

gossip implies a sense of community sort of lacking around here.

 

So you go start a thread on the internet without so much as a hello, in which to gossip about people who gossip without so much as a hello.

How about you shove it.

 

There are various people in my neighborhood I know who behave this way in differing degrees. The most gonzo example recently was a neighbor lady who I hadn't seen in months. While I was walking down the street she stopped her car on the street near me as I was walking, opened up the passenger window, didn't say hello, and yelled the same question at me again and again through the passenger window which I couldn't quite hear. I thought it was a stranger at first asking for directions or someone ready to pull a gun on me. It was unexpected. Then I knew who it was. She kept asking me about a lady on the street and if I knew how much money she was making on her new job. I didn't know the answer. She asked a couple more times and then got frustrated and drove away.

Others I know act like this too but not as bad. This particular lady has been nosy at times but hasn't been this bad when I've talked to her other times. People can be really desperate to hear gossip and try to verify rumors. You can hear it in their voice and see it in their mannerisms. I'm not the kind of person who spreads gossip or even gives out personal info about people, so they shouldn't really be asking me.

 

Sometimes seems like tact is becoming a rare commodity. A person wouldn't want to go into a job interview with a tactless approach. For example, asking the interviewer as soon as you see him or her, "How much money are you going to give me?" There a salutation first and people exchange names. You let the interviewer sit down first as a matter of courtesy. Usually some small talk. Then things get more serious. Neighbors don't have to be that stringent, but there should be at least some decency.

Stopping midway down a street and yelling out a car window at a neighbor "Hey, do you know how much money so-and-so on the street is making at her job?" is completely tactless. It goes beyond the issue of tact when it gets really blatant.

Someone else on RT mentioned a neighbor going through her garbage cans. So it happens elsewhere.

 

That's debatable. A person who upon first seeing you is trying to immediately siphon info out of you to verify rumors and then takes off immediately when she didn't get what she wanted isn't talking with you. When they behave like that, you're just a thing to pump info out of.

It's not as bad other times when you are actually having a conversation with someone and gossip comes up.

 

This actually happens?

I am social/neighbour friendly with folks but I have never been told "gossip" nor have I said anything about a fellow neighbour.

Rather too much Mrs Kravitz for me.

 

The whole time we've lived here, we only had one neighbor who even really spoke to us (other than to bitch at us or nag us for something) and she used to come down the street and start pounding on our door the minute she heard any gossip about us. And there was a period of time where there was nothing but talk about us, so she was at our house a lot. She was always really strung out. We called her "Crazy Cindy". We sometimes hung out with her son and he'd try to park so she couldn't see when he was here, haha. I kind of miss her since she moved. No one's kept her yard as pretty as she did and she missed out on this huge plant that sprouted in her yard right after she moved out. I don't remember what it was, but it only grows and blooms once every hundred years or so. Really sad she didn't get to see it, she loved her yard.

 

Mrs. Kravtiz. That's going back a ways.

There really are people like that. The neighbor that Kinky Ramona described is nearly the same as a couple of neighbors that I know. People who choose to act that way could benefit from a shot of the 'niceness gun'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmKYHHbQ2vU"]kravitz - YouTube

 

lol, Oh, she was nice enough. She had no bad intentions telling us what other people were saying, she was the only person in the neighborhood who would even look us in the eye, let alone talk to us. She would just get so pissed about people talking shit on her son's friends, lol.

 

Even having lived in a small town I never really came across it. There is a network but it was more a call out if someone is sick or a death. Then it is a community thing as in what can be done to help them. Usually someone will take a bit of leadership and organize things like food and visits in a positive way though.

I think I am rather relieved as I have a feeling I would not handle someone asking those type of questions well.

 

Kind of sad she did not see it bloom. Sounds as if she would be glad you did though.

 

Yeah, I live in a small town now. And it's like that. People are so nosy about stuff, not realizing it's none of their business. They simply don't have a life. Nothing going on in their lives to take up their time. I call it a type of mental inferiority.

 

When I was a kid a neighbor barged right into our house without permission. She claimed her daughter (who I was friends with) was in our house when she wasn't. It was a cover story that she used just to barge in. The next day her kids were whining at me that our house wasn't up to date and needed to be cleaned and refurnished. Obviously, the mother went home and told all sorts of things to her family that she thought was wrong with our house.

With some it's an inferiority complex and they are trying fictitious ways of making themselves feel more important.

 

I'm so fucking bored when people gossip to me, and I make a point of never participating in it myself. It's pathetic and it just makes me think your own life is extraordinarily uninteresting.

 

Nah, some people are just so nosy and intrusive...they need to be shot, but it ain't with a niceness gun!

 

I speak to all my neighbours!! It would be weird if I did'nt! Our houses are all so close together its hard to ignore them even if I wanted to lol!
I live on a housing estate so everyone knows everyone, the kids all play out together on the street and so-on. Im not saying all the neighbours get on with each other though, they have the occasional fight out on the street so we all get the popcorn out and do some curtain twitching whilst waiting for the old bill to arrive.
Its so handy to speak to your neighbours, what if you've ran out of tea-bags and the shops closed??? who you going to ask??