Apartment Resident Says a Man Sits in His Truck for Six Hours a Day — Then Neighbors Started Losing Parking and Patience

An apartment resident says he tried to ignore the man sitting outside the building in a full-size truck every day. But after three months of blocked parking spaces, cigarette butts, trash, and hours of watching residents come and go, the whole thing finally started to feel like more than a minor annoyance.

He explained in a Reddit post that the man does not appear to live in the complex. The poster thinks the man’s girlfriend might live there, which would explain why he is around the property so often. But even if that is true, the way he uses the parking lot has become a problem.

According to the poster, the man sits in his truck right outside the building for several hours every day. Usually, he is there from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., then comes back again in the evening.

This had been happening for at least three months.

The truck itself is part of the issue. It is a full-size truck, and the driver apparently parks over the lines so badly that he essentially takes up three parking spaces. In an apartment complex, where parking can already be tight, that is not a small inconvenience. Residents end up having to park farther away because one person who may not even live there is spreading his truck across multiple spots.

Then there is the smoking.

The poster said the man sits there chain-smoking weed and cigarettes for hours. He added that the driver keeps the truck running while he sits there, smokes, and plays on his phone. The poster said he does not care that the man smokes weed. What bothers him is the excessive trash and cigarette butts left behind outside the truck.

Over time, that kind of thing starts to feel disrespectful fast. One cigarette butt is annoying. Months of butts, packs, and trash in the same parking lot where residents live is different. It becomes less like someone minding his own business and more like someone treating the property like a private hangout spot with no cleanup rules.

The man also watches people when they are outside, according to the poster. He said the man has never actually said or done anything to him or the neighbors, but it is still annoying and uncomfortable to be watched around your own building.

That is what made the situation tricky.

On one hand, the poster did not think it rose to the level of calling police. The man had not threatened anyone. He had not approached them. He was mostly sitting there. On the other hand, he was taking up parking, littering, smoking in the lot, idling for hours, and making residents feel watched.

The poster had considered leaving a note on the truck during one of the times it was parked there overnight. The note would have asked him to stop parking badly and throwing trash on the ground.

But he hesitated.

Leaving a note can feel like the least confrontational option, but it also carries risk. If the person guesses who left it, the situation can get personal quickly. And when the person already spends hours outside the building, residents might not want to be singled out as the one who complained.

The poster also said he had quietly let the issue bother him for a while before realizing it bothered the neighbors too. That detail mattered because it showed this was not one resident being overly sensitive. Other people had noticed the same behavior.

The frustration was not really about one man smoking in his truck. It was the routine. Every day. Same building. Same hours. Same parking problem. Same trash. Same feeling that residents were being watched in their own lot.

By the time he posted, the question was not whether the man had committed some huge crime. It was whether the poster was overreacting by being bothered enough to say something.

And based on the responses, most people seemed to think the issue was real — but that the note was not the smartest move.

Commenters mostly told him he was not overreacting, but many warned him not to leave a note on the truck. They said a note would be easy to trace back to him or another resident and could make him a target for harassment.

A lot of people said the better move was to contact property management. Since it is the complex’s parking lot, management could handle the parking, littering, and loitering without making one resident the face of the complaint.

Several commenters pointed out that taking up multiple parking spaces and littering are legitimate issues, regardless of whether the man has bad intentions. Some also said sitting in a truck smoking weed for hours could be a legal issue depending on the state and whether the vehicle is running or the keys are accessible.

Others thought the man might simply be killing time, avoiding someone, or waiting for his girlfriend. But even those commenters generally agreed that parking across several spaces and throwing trash on the ground was not okay.

The strongest practical advice was to document the pattern, take photos of the parking and trash if possible, and send it to the property manager rather than confronting him directly.