Home ownership has a lot of unpredictabilities, but one of the biggest ones? Who moves in next door to you.

You can’t control who it is or how they run their household, and sometimes the way they do things affects your way of living too.

Read how this Redditor deals with one particular woman looking to sell her house. She’s set on having the final word to her neighbors before she moves, but this couple already knows how her plan will backfire.

We need to shorten our hedge to 3 feet max? Okay!

I was reminded of this by some recent stories here about HOA, residential fences and so on. Hope you enjoy!

My husband and I developed an unpleasant relationship with one of our neighbors, mostly because this lady liked to adopt kittens (whom we adore) and then basically throw them outside, where they invaded our backyard and preyed on cute native wildlife like tiny birds, chipmunks, bunnies and so on. There’s a bylaw against this, and we made some use of it while she lived next door.

That is so sad! I’m a firm believer that people should have to take a test for adopting animals, just like driving a car.

After a couple of years, we found out that she was selling and moving away.

Yay!

However, she was still mad at us, and she shared her feelings with her real estate agent.

The agent thought it over and called the (very nice and polite!) bylaw officer to visit us because the hedge between our two properties was technically too high. It was maybe six feet high and needed to be half that.

Huh, one of those weird little laws you’ve never heard of until you do, I guess.

There’s no real reason for this rule, since we are on the outside of a bend in the road and visibility is fine, but whatever.

My husband readily agreed to have at this lush, beautiful green hedge, and got out there right away with his heaviest equipment.

I quickly realized why he was so cheerful about this big job. As he cut the hedge to half its height, of course most of the greenery was trimmed away, and the result was a stark and (temporarily) sad-looking collection of bare branches and twigs. He carefully cleaned up after himself, and we kept an eye out for the agent.

*Grabs popcorn* for this suspenseful moment…

We were so lucky to be there when she next arrived and emerged from her car!

Let’s say that my husband’s malicious compliance did not exactly improve the curb appeal of the next-door property!

She stood there for some time, then noticed us regarding her from our living room with gratified expressions, and marched away.

So very satisfying, we still sometimes mention it to each other.

Wow, talk about perfect timing on this one. And what can she even say, considering she requested the hedge be cut in the first place!

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

One Redditor upholds this story as an example of what the subreddit should always be.

Another user was confused on what the neighbor’s preferred outcome would have been from the start.

And this user realized that she may have assumed it wouldn’t turn out like that at all.

I wholeheartedly agree that this is the perfect example of malicious compliance.

It’s a polite, respectful story that illuminates a plan that’s clearly flawed.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.