Did my neighbor have to make me seem like a jerk on Facebook?

Dear Amy: Until recently, my neighbor “Ron” and I always got along very well.

Ron works from home, and I am retired.

I enjoy working in my garage, house or yard during the day, usually between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. While working in the garage, I will listen to music, and sometimes it can be a little loud because of the tools I am using.

Recently Ron posted on Facebook a profanity-laced post about my loud music, saying that it interferes with his job.

Basically, he made me out to be an inconsiderate jerk, which is the farthest thing from the truth. All he or his wife had to do was to let me know it was an issue, and I would have turned it down, no problem.

When my wife talked to them about the situation, first they denied that they were referring to me, blaming it on the neighbors across the street. (Not true.)

Then they tried to turn it around, blaming my wife for telling me about the FB post.

My wife eventually got a half-hearted apology, which she said should be directed toward me.

They said they would apologize when they saw me. The next day they “unfriended” my wife on Facebook and haven’t spoken to us since.

Did we do something wrong? We always try to be the best neighbors possible, and don’t understand what we did.

– Upset

Dear Upset: You did do something wrong, but your neighbors’ rude and public reaction has far overshadowed your own behavior.

The thing you did wrong was when you failed to imagine that your loud music during workdays might disturb your neighbor, who you know works from home.

Now, onto your neighbors. They are demonstrating the very reason that I am no longer active on Facebook: I couldn’t handle witnessing how poorly some people I know personally (and many people I don’t know) were behaving toward one another.