Some communities and neighbors have a strong commitment to looking out for each other.
It’s lovely how people can bond over the most mundane favors and activities.
Like the one neighbor helping the others to prevent their windshield wipers freezing up in the snow.
Most appreciated it, but someone new to the neighborhood too major offense.
See if you think their malicious compliance took things too far!
AITA for refusing to help my neighbor and her two young children when their wipers were frozen?
I (59M) live in a major city in Ontario, Canada.
I live in a small subdivision and have 5 neighbors total on my street.
These neighbors did each other a favor as a routine and they loved doing it!
For the past few years during the winter when we’re getting a lot of snow or a bad storms, as I’m leaving for my overnight shift at around 8-9pm I’ll put my wife’s windshield wipers up on her car.
I’ll also do a quick walk around to my other 5 neighbors and put their windshield wipers up on their cars (obviously not if they’re outside or something, but if it looks like they’re in for the night).
Many of them forget to do this, as many of them have children and it typically slips their mind, and their wipers will be frozen to their car in the morning.
It’s just something nice I like to do to look out for my neighbors.
Things were great until this one neighbor came in.
They’re all always grateful of this and thank me for it.
Many of them started doing it too and there will be nights where I’ll forget to put mine and my wife’s up, and in the morning one of the neighbors has done it for us.
Anyway recently one of our neighbor’s moved and a new family moved in as of last week.
It’s a young couple and their two young children.
Trouble seems to be right around the corner..
The other night I was leaving for my overnight shift at around 9pm. It was snowing really heavy and we were supposed to be getting almost 30cm of snow and it was FREEZING out.
So I put my wife’s wipers up and do my usual quick walk around to the other neighbors.
I was hesitant when I reached my new neighbors house, as I’ve only introduced myself once, but did it anyway.
As I was putting the second wiper up on their pick up truck the husband came charging out of his front door yelling “HEY WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING TO MY TRUCK?”
I tried to explain to him I was just putting his wipers up to help him.
The new neighbor never gave this person a chance!
He continued to scream at me to “get the h*** off my property and don’t touch my s*** AGAIN!”.
The wife then came out and started yelling at me too.
I apologized and started walking away. Some of my other neighbors heard the commotion and came outside to see what was happening.
Even others in the neighborhood came out to explain!
They tried explaining to him too that it’s just something we do, both of them wasn’t having it.
And certainly enough, what goes around comes around!
Fast forward to this morning, I’m arriving home from my overnight shift and as I’m walking in I see the wife of this couple struggling outside to break the ice off the windshield wipers of the truck.
Guess she was trying to take her kids to school and the wipers were frozen solid on the car.
She sees me and yells over “Hey there! Do you mind giving me a hand please?”
I look over to her and yell back “No sorry, thought I was to never touch your s**t again ma’am” and walked back inside.
She yelled back at me “wow AH!”.
He got his “GOTCHA” moment but his wife thought otherwise.
Told my wife about this, she thinks I should’ve helped her because she was just trying to get her kids to school.
I disagree as I was just following what they told me.
AITA?
He was only trying to be nice to the new neighbors as per is routine but some people are always ungrateful!
And they got what they asked for.
Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.
This person has a decent analogy of the ordeal.
This person clearly has a grudge against the new neighbors.
This commentator shared a personal story that sounds very much like this one.
This person knows what the weather in Canada is like and is astonished at the neighbor’s reaction.
This person has a sincere advice for our writer.
Guess we would never help a stranger now!
This was definitely not the best way to make friends.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.