Woman Threatening to Call Cops over Neighbor Jogging at 4 A.M. Sparks Fury

The feud between two neighbors over one's early morning jogging habits has become a topic of heated debate on Reddit.

Disputes between neighbors can and will happen. According to a study commissioned by the property website Homes.com in 2016, 36 percent of respondents admitted to having full-blown arguments with neighbors, while 25 percent said they had long-standing issues with them.

But while those polled listed issues like parking, animal noise and garbage as major bones of contention with the people next door, for one medical dispatcher posting to Reddit, her dispute was more bizarre.

According to the post, which she shared to the "Am I The A**hole?" subreddit, she has been embroiled in an ongoing spat with her neighbor over her jogging schedule.

As she explains it, the nature of her job means she works "extremely unsociable" hours and will often get home at 4 a.m.

However, she has developed a "routine" with her boyfriend, who is a baker, that sees her set off on an hour-long jog to meet him at 5 a.m. for a meal together.

"On the days I work this kind of shift it's the only time we can see each other, I then help him set up a little before heading back to my home and sleeping," she explained.

Everything had been going well enough until another woman moved into the cul-de-sac where she lives. It wasn't long before they clashed.

One morning as she prepared to head off on her 4 a.m. run, she was confronted by her new neighbor who came out of her house demanding to know what the woman was "doing near her home" and ordered her to leave "before she calls the police."

Though the woman apologized and tried to explain that she was out for a run and also lived on that street, her new neighbor made her open her front door to prove what she said was true. Even as the woman then set off on her jog her new neighbor apparently "kept shouting about the police."

Since then almost every time the woman has gone out for her jog, she has spotted the new neighbor not only watching her but also "calling out vague threats about the police and how I shouldn't be out at this time and how I was scaring her children always being out at this time."

Eventually the woman snapped, telling her new neighbor to "mind her own f***ing business" and calling her a "weirdo" for watching her. It's an outburst she has since regretted, yet many online felt she was right to react in the way she did.

Mm172 commented: "If she has anxiety, she needs to find a better way of handling it than waking up the rest of the neighborhood to yell at someone who's already established they're not a threat."

Another user, posting as LikeEveryoneSheKnows, also disputed the neighbor's claim that the woman's jogging was frightening her kids. "Depending on their age, most children wouldn't even be up at that hour let alone awake enough to be scared of a jogging woman," they wrote.

Larlar626, meanwhile, urged the woman to turn the tables on her neighbor. "i would really consider filing a police report for harassment because this lady is badgering her," they said. "This should have been dropped a long time ago and a simple wave from neighbor to neighbor should have been the end result."

Elsewhere, lady_ivythorne27 presented a sinister theory of her own, writing: "I'm honestly skeptical that she even has kids at all. She seems like a crazy lady that will say anything to try to get her point across."

Newsweek has contacted the original poster for comment.

This isn't the first time a neighborly dispute has gone viral online.

In December 2021, a woman found herself being branded "unhinged" after taking to Reddit to unfairly vent about her new downstairs neighbor, who works from home.

Elsewhere, an angry neighbor sparked concern on social media after sending the family next door a note saying: "Something bad is going to happen to your dog if you don't get its barking under control."

In yet more note-related drama, a prospective house buyer was put off purchasing a property in one neighborhood after discovering a sign warning them against moving there due to the behavior of some local residents.