Okay so I live on the top floor and there's four units up here. The one across from me is empty - I am pretty sure the last family moved after like a month because they couldn't deal with the children on that floor and the families in this neighborhood are just kind of uncooperative I guess.
It seems like within the last year, the children of these other two families have become friends with each other and they're at the age where they're running up and down the stairs and hanging out on our floor, drawing on the walls, slamming themselves onto the walls, idk wtf they do but these parents clearly don't care. The kids also like to hit my buzzer when they come home from school. It took a while of ignoring this shit over the past few years to have this happen only once in a while (I look down the balcony to see who it is...). Kids are dumb so I'm cool with it, but I'm not cool with how the parents allow all this crap.
Especially when this one tiny incident happened that caught me off guard a bit. I've been getting USPS packages lately, so after the guy buzzes my unit, I buzz back for him and then go downstairs to get the package. Except this time I speed down the stairs into these parents walking up the stairs with their kid. It was super awkward because I'm just like "Hello." and they look at me and look back down as they walk up the stairs. And I am stalking them on their way up because they live on my floor. And while I feel awkward as hell during this, I am also feeling really embarrassed for them because they got me to open the door for them, run down the stairs to say hi to them, and they wouldn't even thank me or say hi back and are looking at the floor with this huge SHAME aura around them.
This family also has a little dog that barks like shit whenever someone enters this floor, and if it happens to be in the lobby, it will run to whoever enters it and I just have to deal with this dog and these kids until I get into my home.
The only passive aggressive thing I do is to trigger their dog alarm by being very loud about my entrance/exit. I guess I am also passive by just dealing with it, but you know, you pick your battles, understand that there's no changing these people, this apartment situation is temporary, and save your fucks for the more important things in life.
Like you OP, I am usually a ghost (I book it to the city in the early morning and get home at like 10pm). Just not recently, and these kids and their dumb dog and the other passive aggressive neighbors give me more motivation to get back to my workaholic schedule. I want to be out when they sleep, and back when they sleep. And trigger their dog alarm both times.
Sorry for the rant. You can probably tell I never talk about this. I know your pain and we just want to be nice, but dumb neighbors always gotta make things hard.