living in a monkey cage

To understand this story better you should know I live in a big block of concrete flats, two locked corridors going to the side from the elevators on each floor. Lately it's been even more entertaining than usual since they've started to "thermo-insulate" the house, so we have the workers on the scaffolding, looking right into our rooms, and can hear them cursing, and shout things like "your very gay friend" or "I'll turn your face up and fart right into your nose" and so on, and so on...
That can be solved, at least it worked for me, with the, as they call it "fight evil with evil" method. I had today off work, so stayed home in a rather rainy and cold weather, and wanted to have lunch sitting down peacefully, for a change. However they were here today, too, and went on shouting bad-mouthed, and giving me the impression, that also somewhat on the expense of the work they were to do. So once when I had enough of such comments aired wide and loud, as mentioned above, I just opened the window wide and asked loud enough to make them hear "Do you think that me saying such things like 'your cocksucking friend' would make you stop, or I have to push you off the scaffold?" Then it became silent for the rest of the day...
However one evening when I got home from work, found a note on the corridor door saying we should keep that entrance and the window at the other end closed for the duration of the works, ad today someone tried to break in to their flat during the day... Well, we tried to keep the window closed, though some people living in the same corridor used to open it anyhow. Well, the old woman living next to the entrance used to open that door and make it stay like that with the lever, as we could see her doing so now and then. And she wouldn't get it in her head somehow, whenever we asked her not to, that it just gives way to burglars. Well, the funny thing was that one day, soon after that neighbor put up the note, this old woman was sitting next to the corridor window on a chair she'd brought there, and her hubby stood next to her. For our surprised question what happened, they said she felt very bad. Now, for that we really didn't feel like commenting. Whether she felt so bad because that neighbor had put there the note, or because it made her realize something, stayed uncleared.