My office is on the second floor of a commercial building, and there is a pet supply store on the first floor right below us. They do animal rescue as well, so there are various cats and dogs in the store for people to adopt. In our lease, we have veto power over what goes in below us. For example, we would never want a restaurant below us, because the risk of fire is too great for our sensitive documents.

When this pet store went in, our only stipulation was that they keep the noise to a minimum. The owner agreed, saying whenever the dogs started to annoy us, to give her a call. This morning, the dogs had been barking for twenty minutes or so, and that was enough for us. I went up to the temp receptionist to ask her to call down and ask them to quiet the dogs down.

She gave me a little sympathy noise: "Awww" like I was asking her to ask them to beat them or something. I gave her a Look. "You gotta be kidding me" was the gist of it. "How do the quiet the dogs?" she asked. "I don't know, but they told us to call them." The '...and I don't care' was implied. I'm not heartless, but I also can't work with incessant barking.