Dear neighbour on Fuller Terrace: It's snowing and your dog would like to come in. He has been out there barking for over 30 minutes. I am a block away and I hear him begging to come in out of the cold and wet. You do this every day. Every day you ignore your poor dog. I have had enough. Be responsible or I will call the SPCA.
—The Guy Who Is Not Joking

Dear Students: When you are on a crowded bus, look up from your phones, and when you see an older commuter on the bus standing, get up and offer them the seat! It is called being polite. It won't hurt you, and it might also make you feel good as the older person sits and you, with better balance, ride the next few stops. Also, a bit about bus-stop etiquette: the person who is at the stop first gets on first. If you get there after six people have already been standing around waiting for the bus, you are the seventh to get on, not the first because you moved the fastest or barged ahead. Again, it is called being polite! Try it, you might like it.  —Talkin' Transit

To the guy at '90s Night NYE who took my favourite Weathermate brand vintage grey wool coat instead of your own from coat check that night: please please please return it the coat check there, they have my info. You found my eyedrops in one of the pockets, and I know your coat is still sitting in the downstairs coat check. You know who you are. Don't leave it sitting in your closet as some NYE souvenir while I'm left out in the cold without a winter coat. —Coatless For The New Year

I just saw an apartment listing for a vegan apartment for rent. I thought it was bad telling people to smoke and not have pets, now these landlords are trying to control what you eat! Crazy shit going on in the HRM. No wonder nobody can find a place to live with lunacy like this going on. We need to enforce laws preventing landlords from acting like tyrants. This is beyond ridiculous! —Meat Eater Apartment Seeker 

Dear south end students: You’ve been living in what were formerly single-family homes for what, four months now? It doesn’t matter where you came from, in Halifax, there’s a law: we compost. That’s what the big green garbage can that is assigned to your house by the city is for. It’s not for your garbage and plastic crap. If you keep filling it with crap, it will keep not getting emptied on garbage day. And it will get so heavy that no one will be able to move it off the curb, where you annoyingly leave it. So, learn to compost, get the crap out of your green bin (yes, your problem!) and learn how to “do” garbage in 2020 (hint, there’s an app!). After half a year in school here, you got this! Signed, your non-rodent-loving neighbours.
—Non-rodent-loving Neighbour

I wish a certain popular Canadian coffee chain would buy a new toaster that actually toasts their doughy-ass bagels. I ask for mine to be toasted twice, and the thing is black and tastes burnt but is STILL doughy AF and not a bit of crispiness at all! I'm never buying your shitty-ass bagels again! I might as well eat a raw ball of dough. Also, could you stop putting little pinholes in your coffee lids please? What is the meaning of this? The drippage has completely ruined my new UGGS!
—Do Better In 2020

I applied for housing back in the summer, and have just now been contacted and told that I'm being added to a waiting list. I thought I’d been placed on the waitlist long ago, but no. Apparently it takes six months just to be added to the damn waiting list. What has my application been doing for six months??? Sitting on someone's desk, collecting dust? Then my landlord tells me that my power bill has to be completely paid off to be accepted, and my cat must be fixed. Where the hell am I supposed to come up with all this extra money to pay hundreds for a procedure I don't want my cat to have to go through anyway? She's only a kitten, and I would rather wait to have to get her fixed when she's older. This is unfair to expect of low-income people. Landlords need to stop telling people how to live. Also, all the best locations with housing are designated for seniors and for families. Single people get the shittiest buildings in the worst areas with gunshots and drugs. This is age discrimination against young, single people. Metro Housing is run by a bunch of morons who don't know what the fuck they're doing. How are people supposed to survive in this town? It's pretty bad when a 40-year-old person has to move into a single room, with a single bed, shacked up with five college students in one apartment. When are the municipal politicians that we voted into office going to do something about this serious issue in HRM?
—Homeless in Halifax

I'm tired of hearing your cat calls. Staring at my breasts while I'm talking = not cool. Whistle at me again and I'm going to turn violent. And if I had a dollar for every random guy who told me out of the blue that I'm his soulmate, I would be one wealthy woman. Why any of you think it's OK to send suggestive messages while drunk is beyond me, especially when you’re married. Men, let's get this straight: if a woman is nice, it doesn't mean she's hitting on you.
— Next Time It’s Your Job