LEMME GET BACK TO YOU

When Your Neighbors Party Through the Pandemic

Our advice columnist gets you through a quarantine dilemma — as well as how to get that expensive coffee experience at home

Melvin Backman
LEVEL
Published in
6 min readApr 16, 2020

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Illustration: Michael Kennedy

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My partner and I live in a small apartment building, and everyone’s been good about observing the shelter-in-place order in our state — everyone except our upstairs neighbors. They’ve got people coming in and out of the place all the time, and it feels like they’re not taking this shit seriously at all. This isn’t the first example of them being not-great neighbors — don’t get me started on the Great Parking-Spot Debacle of 2018 — but given the health consequences, it feels more urgent. Am I overreacting here? And if I’m not, what’s the right move?

No, you’re not overreacting. People are stuck inside not only because coronavirus is so contagious, but also because we can’t do widespread testing for it. (If we could, our respective comings-and-goings wouldn’t be so…

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