Michael is a music teacher in New York, and one of his students, Aleks, a clarinet player with 15 years experience, recently moved to the city to start his master’s degree. “Coming from Ohio, he had no idea what he was getting into when practicing clarinet in his apartment in Queens,” says Michael. “Now he knows.”

related: Buskers & broomsticks

Tremaine spotted this note posted in the lobby his Calgary apartment building. I like to imagine it the “lust” stop on Slothful Scotty‘s Seven Deadly Sins Tour.

related: Yes, Scotty, this is why you’re fat.

Paul has lived in his apartment in Berlin for 15 months, but this note is the first time he’s heard a single complaint about his door. Especially annoying, Paul says, is the fact that it’s anonymous, “even though it could possibly have been written by only one of two people,” and that it’s written in English, “which most expats would consider an insult.”

Just another example of how — no matter smiley faces you sprinkle throughout — your oh-so-courteous anonymous note is probably just going to leave everyone more “pi**ed off.”

related: Wie bitte(r)?

extra credit: “Greetz” [urbandictionary.com]

Upon moving into their new college house this fall, Danny and his roommates at Boston College received this delightfully punctuated welcome letter from their next door neighbor — delivered via U.S. Postal Service, no less.

I, for one, can’t wait ’til the Ben Affleck adaptation comes out. We’ll have a “late night beer party” to celebrate!

related: Passive voice abuse

“My housemate sometimes gets paranoid that people like to watch us going about our day-to-day lives in our apartment,” says Elizabeth in Australia. And yet, instead of, say, window coverings, this note was how she decided to deal with the problem:

related: Stop looking in our window, pervert!

Tim lives in Northwest D.C., “at the front of the gentrification wave” flowing east from Dupont Circle. “We have (only) one rundown/uninhabited house on the block,” Tim says, “and this morning one of the other neighbors decided to mow the front lawn to tidy it’s appearance a bit.” While taking out the trash later that evening, Tim noticed that his neighbor’s good deed had been rewarded by this neighborly thank-you note.

(As far as the smell goes…perhaps some people were under the same mistaken impression as those near this West Hollywood residence?)

related: Gentrification is insanit(ar)y

Okay, I’m totally calling bullshit on this note (spotted by Seth in the lobby of his Brooklyn apartment building).

If one of your neighbors knocked on your door and said, “Hey, so, I’ve been really needing a doormat….can I have yours?” —  would your response really be, “Well, since you asked…here you go!!”

Shame on you for being a bold-typefaced liar, notewriter!

related: Wrath mat

“New York Times reader” didn’t become a right-wing synonym for “elitist” out of nowhere. As the newspaper itself proclaims, “Times readers are a well-educated group. They expect sophisticated coverage and literate prose.”

But how does that literate sophistication hold up when the Gray Lady goes a-missin’? Well, if “self-aggrandizing smugness” counts as sophistication and “almost free of basic spelling and grammar errors” counts as “literate”  — remarkably well, actually!  (That whole “i before e” thing is pretty tricky, after all.)

Exhibit a) From Alan in Washington, DC:

Exhibit b) From an anonymous submitter in Lawrence, Kansas:

Exhibit c) From Elizabeth in Queens:

Unimpressed? Well, for the sake of comparison, let’s take a look at some notes by readers of less “sophisticated” newspapers. Like, say, the Washington Post:

Adds Robin in DC: “This person has also posted several other notes making various threats, including a promise to fill their paper with feces and glitter.”

As much as I appreciate that imagery, it’s actually New York’s other status-symbol-paper that inspires my favorite note of this genre — primarily because it so perfectly captures the essence of the Patrick Bateman/Gordon Gekko-worshipping tool I imagine the writer to be.

Our submitter, meanwhile, found the note more puzzling than anything else. Writes Danielle: “What kind of boring person steals the Wall Street Journal?”

And that, dear readers, is a question for another day.

related: Free markets, free people, free papers

extra credit: Dear Neighbors, Read This Note! [nytimes.com]