Normal Gossip - S1 Ep4: Always Google Your Neighbors with Megan Greenwell

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

Megan Greenwell dishes some upstate woods gossip and we tell her about a mysterious, entrepreneurial neighbor. Follow Megan on Twitter at @megreenwell Episode transcript available here. Follow the show on Instagram @normalgossip, and if you have gossip, email us at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at 26-79-GOSSIP. Normal Gossip is hosted by Kelsey McKinney (@mckinneykelsey) and produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin (@alexlaughs). Subscribe to Defector Media and get your first month for 99 cents at defector.com/normalgossip. 

Hey, quick favor. We are conducting an audience survey. We'd be really grateful if you could take just a few minutes and answer it. Please visit survey.prx.org-gossip to take the survey today. That's survey.prx.org-gossip. Thank you. You have the scary, powerful person on your side. I want Carol. I am Team Carol. I am not Team Landlord, purely for self-preservation reasons. Hello, my little gossip fiends. I'm Kelsey McKinney and welcome to Normal Gossip, the show where we bring you some gossip from the real world. All of the gossip on this show has been fully anonymized and adjusted to protect the identities and drama of the people involved, which means you can and should feel fully secure sending us in every bit of gossip you have,

be it firsthand or 15th hand. We wanted to start the show off this week by making sure you know how to do this. We accept gossip in every form you can think of. You can send us a DM on Instagram or Twitter. You can send your gossip via voice memo on Instagram. You can send a carrier pigeon. We don't care. But the two main ways we'd love to receive your gossip are through our email at normal gossip at defector.com and to the special voicemail box I set up just for y'all. Call us at 2679 gossip at any time of day or night and leave us a voicemail. We might use your gossip on the show. I should warn you though, the voicemail box cuts you off at three minutes. But don't worry, if your gossip is juicy, you will get in touch for more intel. Okay, no more business.

Let's get to the pod, shall we? This week, I am delighted to have on my close personal friend, Megan Greenwell. Hello, Megan. How are you? Hi, Kelsey. It's nice to be here with you. I'm so glad you're here. How have you been? What are you up to? I'm living in the woods, a surprising amount of gossip in the woods, which I'm sure we will get to. Why is there so much gossip in the woods? I think there's so much gossip in the woods because I now live in a very small town and so everybody knows each other and that leads to all sorts of wild and wonderful gossipy situations. Can I tell you one?

Please, I would love to hear one. Okay, so for context, we've only lived here for like a year. So we're not as plugged in as a lot of people are. A lot of people have lived here for decades. But when we moved into our house, we had a couple of dead trees on our property. And so we got a couple of people to come out and give us quotes for how much it would take, how much it would cost us to remove these dead trees. Turns out taking out dead trees is really fucking expensive like thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars. Wait, I have a question. Did the trees need to be removed because they were in danger of hurting the house? Correct. Okay. Yeah, they were going to fall on my house.

So it's not like you can just kick it down the road and remove the trees eventually. They needed to be removed now. Yeah, one was going to fall on my bedroom every night I went to sleep before we had the trees taken out. I would have visions of this tree falling on my head and killing me. I was pretty convinced for a solid few months that that was how I was going to die. It's not a great way to go, really. It's really hard. Smashed by tree, it's sleep. Seems bloody. My dog sleeps in my bed. It would just be very bad. He doesn't deserve that. No. Anyway, so we get a couple of quotes. One is dramatically less than the other one. How dramatic. I think I'm trying to remember, but I think we're talking about $2,000

versus $4,800. Tons of huge difference. Big, big difference. I quit my job in the spring and I'm freelancing, so I have less money that I have at some points in my life. And so not paying $4,800 to remove dead things seemed nice to me. Also, it's not like you're paying $4,800 to add value to the house. It's not like you're like, oh, I'm going to have a nice new kitchen. I just don't want to be crushed in my sleep. Exactly. Yes. So what happens is we get these two quotes, and then we go out of town for a few weeks, and we come back and there are five trees gone. Excuse me? Now, what we had done was we had gotten quotes. We had not told either of these people that we would like to remove the trees. You hadn't signed anything. Oh, certainly not signed

anything nor any verbal agreement. And in fact, there were only three dead trees on my property, and yet five had been removed. Someone has stolen two of your trees. Correct. And it turns out that it was the $4,800 man who had removed our trees without our permission. Okay. So this is a bad situation, right? But this is not gossip. Where it becomes gossip is that we initially said to this man, sir, we cannot pay you for this work that we did not authorize you to do, at which point this man, who is very plugged in to the community, unlike us, goes around telling everybody that the new people are sniffing him. Yes. So we start hearing from multiple people, we know, hey, why the hell are you sniffing so and so? And you're like, this man stole two of my trees. Correct. And

we tried to explain and everybody's sort of like, well, you know, you have to work it out. That's how business gets done around here, blah, blah, blah. What? It was a nightmare. And there are only like two bars in town. And this man hangs out at both of them, it became clear. And so he would tell everybody at the bars that the new people in town were sniffing him for tree removal work. And we couldn't go to everybody, like we can't find everybody, we don't even know everybody, and say, hey, just, you know, we heard you heard that bar story, we actually have to tell you the correct story. It was really bad situation. And it became clear that this man who had stolen our trees and demanded more money than we wanted to pay, absolutely had the upper hand, precisely because it was a

gossip situation, precisely because he knew everybody in town and we absolutely did not. Because now you look like shit. Yeah, so we were going to look like the shitheads, unless we paid this man $4,800. Did you pay him? You paid him. Well, an agreement was reached under which we would pay him his $4,800, but he would also do some additional work for us. So we would get like some extra stuff out of it. Now he has not done that additional work yet. So it's possible you just got scammed. Absolutely. Honestly, I respected Fear This Man for his ability to create a full whisper network of just drama before you even have the opportunity to fight this. It's incredible. Also, perhaps relevantly,

he's huge. He is a very large, very built band. That's extremely relevant because neither you nor your husband are like boxers. No, I mean, I could start to train, but I think it would take a while and he would still have a hundred, hundred and fifty pounds on me and you know, it would be a problem. What is your relationship? I mean, obviously in this situation, you're having a bad relationship with gossip, but in general, what is your relationship with gossip like in your life? Do you like it? I love gossip. I like to think, I mean, probably everybody likes to think this, but I like to think that I don't love gossip for nefarious or cruel reasons, but I love gossip as just sort of the lifeblood of communities and like, you know, the thing that bonds friendship. I mean,

I think, you know, you and I, Kelsey, are very good friends in part because we gossip a lot. We do love to gossip. Sometimes on multiple platforms at once. And I think, you know, part of my relationship with gossip, I was thinking about this this morning is like, I think my mother has a really good relationship with gossip. My mother is a very good person and a woman of the cloth. She's an Episcopal priest. And so she would never gossip in a cruel way. She is the least cruel person I know. But, you know, she gets kind of giggly and excited at like 13 year old when she hears something juicy. And it's really delightful. I was recently sitting on my mother's deck with her after my father's funeral. And we were just like trying to talk about anything

that wasn't the fact that my dad had just died. And I mentioned somebody who I didn't know, but I knew she knew. And I knew a connection, you know? Okay. And my mother just gets this glint in her eye. And she goes, Oh, him? That man is a hack. And then she just starts like giggling wildly. One of my favorite memories of my mother. It was so nice. And then she gave me all the details about him being a hack. This is so funny, because I know that your mother is in the Episcopal church. And I obviously also grew up like with a clergy member parent. And so I had written down if I like to ask you whether or not you had grown up with the like demonization of gossip, right? This kind of idea that like, gossip is a sin and gossip is bad and gossip is like women's

sin on earth. So it's very funny to hear you say like, no, my mom is an absolute like killer gossip. And she has all this intel because nobody has better gossip than pastors. Yeah, it's like maybe pastors and therapists. I think Episcopalians really love to gossip. I mean, you know, we're drinking people. And I think that helps. And like Episcopalians are like sort of famously wealthy, like it's one of the wealthier Protestant denominations, but obviously not all Episcopalians are wealthy. But you know, I think those those class divides within the Episcopal church really sort of help fan the flames of some quality gossip. And if it's like the people without much money gossiping about the rich people, like I am 100% in favor of that kind of gossip,

which gets to your point about one of our favorite kind of gossip being who has secret family money. Yeah, we love that. That's our favorite conversation is like if you have secret family money and you're listening to this podcast, we know, we will find out or yeah, we know or we will know. We have a good running list. We really do have a pretty good running list at this point. But I think that goes to your point earlier of what you said about like, we don't like gossip that hurts people, right? Like I there's some gossip that we get that we're both like, oh, this is this sucks, right? Like, I don't like knowing this. I don't want to tell other people this, like this feels bad. But luckily, I do have a good gossip story for you that I think you're

really going to like, and that is not nefarious at all. Would you like would you like to hear it? Yes, 100%. So, a friend of a friend of mine, her name is Ellen, she's like, in her mid 30s, and she started dating this guy, like in January before the pandemic. So January of 2020. And they got like, pretty serious, pretty quickly, right? Like she was like, oh, I really like him, like things are going really well. She starts spending most of her time over at his apartment and a group of her friends was like, we're never seeing you, you're always gone, you're always at his house, we want to go upstate for a girl's weekend and she was like, cool. So she went upstate with them only to come back the next

week and find out that it was this guy she's been seeing fairly seriously his 40th birthday. Oh, and so he spent his 40th birthday alone, which is like tragic, right? And also extremely relatable to anyone who just lived through the last year. Yes. So she felt really bad, but it kind of like, they got through it, whatever, it's not really that big of a deal, three months in, things kept going well, right? And they're kind of like, this is ridiculous, like, why are we living in separate places? Things are going well, we should probably move in together. And so they moved in together, they moved into this apartment. And they were like, Oh, this is perfect. They live in like a midsize city on the east coast. And they had been looking

around for months, because it's impossible to find apartments in general. And they found this place that was like a little four unit building. And there's great light, wood floors, big space, the only problem is it's like not fully updated, right? Like the oven is really old, and like maybe the broiler doesn't work, and like there's no microwave, right? There's like some little problems, but they're like, you know, we're wasting all this money paying rent to live apart when I just sleep at your house. So like, we're going to move into this apartment. Literally, the only downside of this apartment is that the hallways are filled with boxes. Their boxes? No. So when they moved in, she was like, Oh, somebody else must also be moving in. But there are all

of these boxes in the hallway, and she just expects that they're going to disappear. So over time, they're like, it's so weird that these boxes aren't leaving. There are just tons of boxes in the hallway, and they're coming and going, right? It's not like they're just sitting there. And they're like moving boxes or like Amazon boxes. Both. So there's big boxes and small boxes, and she's looking at them. And you know, because they're coming in and out, it takes her a while to realize that they all have different names on them. They're addressed to the building, but the boxes themselves don't have an apartment number on them. Okay. And a lot of them have like little business names on them, right? So it's like Wiccan goods and Woman in Red and Blood Boutique.

And she's like, this is weird. I don't know about this. I'm not going to touch these. And are even the moving boxes like addressed like this? Yes. So all of the boxes are either coming in to these corporations or they're like, they seem to be ready to go somewhere else. Got it. Right. And she's like, this is so weird. It's like super annoying. They live in the kind of city where it's like really easy to bike places. So it's like they're having to lift their bikes, right? Like over these boxes. Yeah. And it's not just the boxes in there. So they live on the second story, right? Of a four unit building. It's not just the boxes are on their floor. The boxes are also on the floor below theirs. Okay. So the boxes are in every hallway. So it's like

you have to bring your bike in. It's like a pain in your ass, right? You have to lift it up and carry it up all of these stairs. And she doesn't know who is bringing the boxes? Like are they coming through the mail? She has no idea, right? So she's just like looking around. She's like, this is so annoying. Hate all of these boxes. But like the rest of the apartment is great. It's always quiet. No one's annoying her, right? Like she's like, my apartment's great. I have no problems with it. The landlord leaves me alone. I'm thrilled. So we come up on the year mark. And she's like, you know, my boyfriend didn't get to have a 40th birthday. And I missed that. And I wasn't there. And I'm going to throw him one. I'm going to invite all

of his friends. It's going to be great, right? But you know, we have this conversation and she's like, I don't know. I feel like it's rude to have a party in a four unit apartment complex without asking my neighbors if it's okay first. Like, I don't really know the rules. I think it's nice. Sure. So she goes downstairs and she's like, you know, I'll start with these people. She knocks on the first door and the woman is like, yeah, whatever. I don't give a shit. Like have your party. Just like, let me know when it is so that we can like not plan to be asleep, right? Which is good neighbor behavior reasonable. She knocks on the second door downstairs and her neighbor is like, you know,

I don't have a problem with it. But I don't know if Carol is going to go for this. Carol. Carol. And so my friend Ellen is like, why is it going to be a problem because she just like doesn't like noise? And Carol is in the third unit. Carol is in the unit across the hall from her on the same floor on the second floor on the second floor. Yeah, got it. And the woman's like, I will not be getting involved in this. Whoa. I will not tell you who Carol is. I will not create drama. I don't want to be a part of this conversation anymore. It's between you and God. Good luck upstairs. So Ellen is like, okay, wait, I have two questions. Question number one, are these boxes Carol's? Right. This is my question. And the downstairs neighbor is like,

I told you, I'm not getting involved with this. I will not answer any more questions about this. And Ellen is like, okay, but you do understand that I have to go upstairs and talk to her. Like, can you please give me some information so I know what I'm getting myself into? Yeah, help me out. Don't throw me to the wolves. And she's like, no, her last name is on the mailbox downstairs. I would Google her. I'm out. Oh, Google her. Okay. Okay. So Ellen is like, oh, Jesus Christ. Like this must be some neighbor feud. I mean, I do think Ellen's first mistake was not that we're judging our friend Ellen here, but not automatically Googling all of your neighbors is wild to me. Well, okay, it's important to remember that some people are not crazy in the

exact same way that you and I are. They do not move into a building and immediately Google every single name on every Amazon package the way that we do. Some people respect privacy and are like, you know, other people live here. That's fine. What's that like? Okay, move on. Cannot understand it. So she's like, you know, maybe this is some like old school feud. Maybe this is just because like Carol lives above her and this woman hates her. So like, I'm just going to go upstairs and knock on her door anyway. So Ellen goes upstairs and she knocks on the door. Nobody answers. She knocks again. Nobody answers. She's like, fine. I'm going to go pick up dinner. When I come back, I'll knock again. She goes, she picks up her dinner, she puts it down,

she comes back in the hall, she knocks again. And now she can hear movement on the other side of the door. You know, like when someone has a dog and you can hear like the little clicking of their nails, she can hear like something moving in the apartment. So she's like, she's like, I know you're there. I just have a question. She knocks again and she sees that little thing, the little eye viewer slide to the side. And she's like, I just, I'm just trying to talk like I, I live right here across the hall. And so Carol opens the door, but like only like enough for her face to fit through. And she's like, did the landlord send you? Oh, and Ellen is like, no. Why would the landlord have sent me? And Carol is like, I'm not having that conversation

with you. Absolutely not. And starts to close the door. And Ellen is like, wait, no, I just, I'm here to ask you one question about a party. Like I'm hoping to have a party across the hall from you in a couple of weeks. And I wanted to see if that would be okay with you. And Carol is like, absolutely not. I don't want anyone coming into this apartment or out of it that doesn't live here. What if my boxes got damaged? So now Ellen is like, hmm, okay. So now these boxes I know belong to Carol. So she's like, Carol, what if you just moved the boxes into your apartment instead of them all being in the hallway? And then we could both have what we want, right? You move the boxes into your apartment. I get to have my birthday party. And Carol is like, I can't

move them into my apartment. There's no room in here. And she opens the door and the apartment is full of boxes, like floor to ceiling, right? And like anyone who has lived in an apartment complex, this is a glimpse into an alternate version of your life, right? So of course, Ellen is like peering in there. And she's like, Oh, interesting. Carol has nicer appliances than me. Oh, right? She's like, that's a new fridge. It's a new oven. It's a new microwave. Kitchen looks like it's been redone. Like, that's good to know, right? Which as a renter, you're like, cool ammo. Great. I will take this for myself. I will use it to my advantage. She's like, fine. Okay, we'll pick this up later, right? I'm not going to fight with my neighbor in the

hallway. She's like, okay, you can't move the boxes. But like, I'm going to, I'm still considering having the party because I live here too. So now Ellen is like, it's time to Google. How has she made it this far? Unclear to me. Right. She's normal. She's a normal person. I know it's very confusing. So she goes, she Googles, she Googles Carol's first and last name. When you Google someone who lives in your building, what usually pops up for you? A LinkedIn, sometimes ideally an Instagram that's unlocked. Yeah. Some bio on a company site. Yeah, maybe a Facebook page, right? It's just like social media links and like things that you can use to investigate them as a person. What pops up when she Googles Carol's name

is two full pages of local news articles. Oh, we love it. So she Googles Carol's name and there are two full pages of news articles, which we love, but as you know, should send a whole siren off in your brain. Oh yeah. Of like, if these news articles are ranking above a LinkedIn, a Facebook, an Instagram, they've got to be good, right? And they've got to have high traffic. So not being an idiot, Ellen is like, you know what? I'm not going to read the first one. I'm going to go to the news site and I'm going to search her name and I'm going to look at them in chronological order. Oh, wow. That's a good move. It is a great move and shows a lot of willpower to not just automatically. This is the whole thing with

this girl is I'm like, how, how did you do this? Ellen, tell us your secret. Ellen, what's the secret to sanity? Please share with us. So she goes and she like has them in chronological order now, right? And what she learns is that Carol moved into the apartment five years ago and she moved in during her recession when the landlord was having a really hard time getting people to move into it. So the landlord cut Carol a deal and was like, you can have $500 off your rent every month, which is a huge percentage in our small American city. You have $500 off your rent every month. If you do like some household chores, essentially, if you vacuum the hallway, if you sweep the stairs, if you make sure the garbage cans are lined up, right? Like some basic jobs

that the landlord should do. If you do these, I'll give you discounted rent. So now Ellen is pissed because she's like, this woman is getting $500 off her rent a month. The hallway does not seem to be sweeped. The garbage cans are never out when they're supposed to be. And she has new appliances. Like, wait, but why are there news articles about this? We're getting there. Please. Oh, sorry. Please be patient. She's like, this isn't fair. So she keeps reading and she finds out that Carol has been operating a knockoff essential oils Amazon company out of her apartment. Is this good? No. Does the landlord like it? No, the landlord especially does not like it because Carol has been shut down by Amazon five different times, which is why she continues to

have to keep making up pseudonyms. Oh, and this is what the news articles are about? And this is what she's finding out in the news articles is that she's been doing all these things, selling all these things out of her apartment. And the landlord, because he is mad and because he is like, this is annoying, all my other tenants are complaining, tries to evict her. Because that's what landlords do, right? Wait, clarifying question. Yes, please. So they're knockoff essential oils. Is Amazon banning her because they're bad? Or like, why is Amazon kicking her off? Amazon is kicking her off for fraud. So like a popular essential oils brand is doTERRA. Our friend Carol would have her little like company name as like doTERRA. Oh, I see.

All the branding looks exactly the same. All the images are exactly the same. She's taking the copy off their websites, right? Like she's running a pretty good scheme here. What I'm hearing is that Carol's really good at Photoshop and that's a good neighbor to have. Agree. But this article is two years old. And Carol's still here. So clearly this didn't work. So she goes to the next article and the next article details how Carol, having lived in the neighborhood for five years, was a part of a Facebook group full of like people who lived in the neighborhood, a lot of whom happened to be lawyers. So she had gone into the Facebook group and been like, my landlord is trying to evict me because he hates me. What can I do? Oh my God. So the lawyers being lawyers immediately connect her

to like a tenant rights organization, right? So the tenants rights organization is like, you can't evict her because there are laws that say you can't. Sure. So like this is not a valid reason to evict her, essentially. And the landlord is like, fine, I'm raising your rent to market value. So now you have to pay $500 more a month because the landlord, like you can't just say you have to do chores to have your rent reduced. He's like, well, we agreed that she would do these chores and she's not. Oh, idiot landlord. And Carol is like, well, I can't do them because of my nerve disorder. So this is illegal. You can't evict me. The landlord is like, fuck. And this is all in the news coverage. So this has happened pre Ellen moving in. Yes.

And not only is it all in the news coverage, the local paper bless them has open comments. So not only is it in news coverage, but the landlord and Carol are both in the comments fighting. So through the comments, you know, Ellen learns all sorts of shit. Like the fact that in the court documents, the landlord said that the apartment was 750 square feet. And Carol measured her whole apartment with a tape measure and found it to only be 654 square feet. So she claims that her rent should be reduced. She finds out that not only did like Carol not do any of these chores, but she also like is behind on some bills and shit, right? There's just tons of drama. Okay, now I have a really important question. Yes. Which is, so this all started with Ellen

trying to plan a birthday party on the presumably on the DL from her boyfriend. Yes. Has she now dragged her boyfriend down deep into the rabbit hole with her? No, because she's like, if I drag my boyfriend down into this rabbit hole, he'll know that I've now gone through this series of hoops that has led to me confronting our neighbor and now stalking her online. But that's what normal people do. No, Megan, it's not. We've been over this. The problem is it's not. So she and she's like, I really want to have this nice party for him. I mean, that's what's admirable to me is the depth of the commitment to the party. I know, even when it started like unraveling into like a giant scandal, she was still like, I can't tell boyfriend because he'll know that I'm planning

a party. Is she texting all of her friends? Yes. That's how I have this story to bring to you. She's telling everyone. She's not telling her boyfriend because she's like, it's a special day. Sure. So she's like, this is awful. Like now I'm confused because I still want to have my party, but like, I understand both sides of this problem, right? It is annoying that all of the boxes are here. It also seems like Carol has a right to live here, whatever. Of course she has a right to live there, but a right to live there and a right to run her fraudulent business out of the hole is a very different thing. Right. So that is the dilemma, as Ellen is like, okay, but like, I still really want to have this party. Like that's all I want.

So she goes back to Carol and she's like, please, please can I have my party? No one will touch your boxes. I won't tell the landlord. It'll be like, hush, hush, we'll all be on the same team. Carol's like, no, I don't want anyone coming in here. The landlord is ruining my life, right? Like, no. So like two or three days go by, Ellen goes downstairs and the landlord is there. You know, he's doing a landlord-y thing. And she's like, huh, while he's here, with this new information I have, I have some questions. My first question is, why does Carol have better appliances than me? Is that the first question? Yes, because she's not trying to get involved in the drama. She's trying to get a rent reduction. Fair enough. But isn't she also trying to get the boxes out of the

goddamn hallway? I don't know what Ellen is doing. She's just like, I want to have my party. I want to have better appliances. I want my rent to be cheaper. Her like best case is she never has to fight with Carol again and her rent is $200 cheaper. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. So she's like, I just have a quick question. I noticed that the apartment across the hallway for me has better appliances than mine. I just noticed this, you know, I saw in there and she has a nice gas burning stove and I was wondering if I could have a nice gas burning stove. The landlord turns beet red, right? Like he's furious. And he's like, this damn Carol, like she got to you. And Ellen is like, what? No, I didn't even talk to Carol. Like I literally just want you to get

me a new stove. And he's like, well, I didn't even get Carol that stove. She hauled it up the stairs by herself and installed it. And this is the whole problem, right? She pretends to have this disability. She pretends I can't evict her. And meanwhile, she's replaced all of the appliances in her apartment. With appliances she bought herself? With fancy appliances, apparently. Wild. Well, she might have scammed somebody else out of the appliances. But yeah, okay. Yeah. I mean, a woman like this is very powerful and I fear her. So I don't know where she got them. But Ellen is like, oh no. Okay. So now I have accidentally inserted myself into this drama. And the landlord is like, I mean, do you agree with that? Oh no. And Ellen is like, this is like a Italian man in his

60s who was like fairly built. She's like, I don't want to fight this man. So she's like, I mean, yeah, I guess. And he's like, oh, great. I have a proposition for you. What I need is to get proof that Carol is moving these boxes in and out of her apartment freely, which would then prove that she is not disabled. The landlord is like, what if I got you a ring doorbell and you simply installed the ring doorbell, and then I could have video of Carol moving these boxes in and out, which she must be doing because they keep leaving and coming. Oh no. And then all my problems would be solved and you can have a new stove, right? Okay. First of all, legally, I feel like this doesn't even hold up because like people are disabled in different ways. You can be able to

lift boxes and still have a nerve disorder. Like we, yes. Yes. Exactly. But we're not explaining this to the landlord. No, we're not explaining this to the landlord at all. So now this is where our story comes to an unfortunate end. Is that Ellen is left with this decision of what do you do? Wow. So what does she do? That's my question for you is what should she do? I mean, you've got to say no. You've got to say no. Why? Because getting your landlord to bribe you to install surveillance technology in your home is crazy. And what you need to do is run out the end of your lease and just move the fuck away. Right. So I think that's the thing that keeps tripping me up is I'm like, the ring doorbells are bad, right? So bad. Hands down. Ring doorbells,

unethical, bad surveillance state. Do not put them in the hallway to your apartment, right? And literally getting them to spy on somebody. I mean, I guess that's sort of always the point. But like usually there's a justification for the ring doorbell where it's like, I want to make sure my package was delivered or I want to make sure somebody's not trying to break in or whatever. In this case, it's like the most extreme case of an already bad thing where it's like, I want you to install spy technology to spy on someone. Yes. Which feels bad. Bad. So bad. At the same time, who knows what Carol is capable of and our friend now has to live with her? Right. But who knows what Carol is capable of so pissing her off by installing

a ring doorbell, which Carol can see because as we've established, she is very powerful and clearly not a moron. Like real bad. Oh, I just like stay all the way off Carol's radar. Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. In fact, I wonder if there's some argument that you should go to Carol and this is crazy. You go to Carol and you say the landlord asked me to do this and I said no. And that way, one, you get your party because Carol is now engrossiated to you. Two, you have the scary, powerful person on your side. I want Carol. I am team Carol. I'm not team landlord purely for self preservation reasons. This is a good strategy and I like it. Ellen tells the landlord no. Okay, good. Ellen is like, I am not putting

the surveillance camera in my hallway. No, I don't want to. What Ellen does is she repeats what her downstairs neighbor said and that says I do not want to get in the middle of this. I will be living here peacefully. I'm uninterested in this. But now she has one more question, which is do you throw the party? Right. Well, this is where my strategy comes in, right? You tell Carol about the clean landlord. Yeah, I think this is a good strategy. Right? But can you have it if you don't tell her? Right? That's kind of dangerous to align yourself with the person the landlord is trying to evict on some level. Yeah. I mean, I think you have the party because what's she going to do? And you just tell people to be extra super careful around the boxes. Also,

there are bars. You could just have the party at a bar. That's probably the way to do it. Right? Yes, you have arrived at the same conclusion that Ellen arrived at, which is I'm staying out of this. We'll have the party at the bar. Amazing. So now she just has to live there. She gets no party. She gets no nice stove. The landlord is now skeptical of her. Carol deeply distrusts her. Yes. Ellen's really lost out in like 17 different ways here. But her boyfriend was really happy because he got a surprise party at a bar. So congrats to him. Sweet. I like that. Megan, thank you so much for coming to hang out and gossip with me. Thank you for doing it. We gossip so much every day that it's nice to do it for other people

this time. Yeah, congratulations to the listeners. If people wanted to follow you on the internet, where could they do that? They can see photos of my really, really, really cute dog on Instagram at M.E. Greenwell. And they can see like my rants about sports and media and other shit on Twitter at the same handle, M.E. Greenwell. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. Bye. Thanks for listening to Normal Gossip. If you disagreed with Megan and I's opinions or you have a gossip story to share with us, email the podcast at normal gossip at defector.com. Or you can leave us a voicemail at 2679 gossip. You can follow me on all social medias at at McKinney-Kelsey. This podcast was produced by Alex Sujan Laughlin.

Thanks to Justin Ellis and Tom Lei and the rest of the Defector staff. And thank you to Jane especially for sharing this gossip story with us. Defector Media is a collectively owned subscriber based media company. If you love this podcast and want to support us, subscribe to defector at defector.com. I'm Kelsey McKinney and remember you didn't hear any of this from me.