January 20, 2025 at 5:21 am

The City Skipped A Homeowner’s Yard Waste Pickup, So They Turned The Collectors’ Job Into A Weekly Game Of Petty Persistence

by Benjamin Cottrell

Source: Getty/ReeseImages, Reddit/PettyRevenge

Some battles in life aren’t worth fighting — but some annoyances beg for a little pettiness.

When city trash collectors skipped one homeowner’s bins full of branches, they decided to make them pay for the oversight by putting out one branch at a time, turning garbage day into a game of stubborn persistence.

Read on for the full story.

City wouldn’t pick up my yard waste, so I sure showed them!

A few weeks ago, I did some trimming on the large bushes and trees in my yard, cutting the branches that were hanging a bit low or a bit too far out from the landscaping.

I ended up with two large yard waste bins full of branches, which I put out by the curb for pickup.

Later on, the homeowner came home to quite a surprise.

The next day, when I came home from work, the city had picked up the yard waste for everyone else in my neighborhood — just not mine.

In their mind, the homeowner followed every rule.

I couldn’t figure out why.

The bins were full but not overflowing, and they weren’t overly heavy, as I was able to easily carry them out to the curb.

The branches were between 3-4 feet long at the most, and I’d left similar bins out before, which always got picked up without issue.

I even checked online to see if I’d inadvertently violated any sort of restrictions but didn’t see anything that could explain it.

They can’t believe the trash collectors would just leave the bins without explaining why.

I sort of wish the pickup people would have left a note telling me what the problem was.

I was kind of annoyed, but not enough to call and complain about it.

So I emptied out the bins in a discreet area to the side of my house.

But the homeowner wasn’t going to let this little oversight fly.

And for the past few weeks, every pickup day, whenever I wheel the regular garbage bin out to the curb, I’ve also been putting one of the yard waste bins out… with exactly one branch in it.

And they have been taking it each time.

The homeowner can’t believe how much extra, pointless work the collectors have to do now.

Which means they have to stop the truck at my curb, someone has to get out, check the bin, see that the only thing in it is one branch, and then take the one branch.

This is slowly, in tiny increments, creating more work for them than if they’d just emptied the two full bins to begin with.

And they’re prepared to play the long game.

I intend to keep doing it until they acknowledge it, or I actually need the bins for yard work again, or until I get bored — which probably isn’t going to happen.

If they didn’t want extra work, they should have done it right the first time!

What did Reddit think?

This commenter thinks they may know why the bins weren’t originally collected.

Source: Reddit/PettyRevenge

Maybe this petty revenge is going over the trash collector’s head entirely.

Source: Reddit/PettyRevenge

This user isn’t too impressed.

Source: Reddit/PettyRevenge

If the homeowner had waited a little longer, maybe the trash collectors would have made it right on their own.

Source: Reddit/PettyRevenge

Fed up with the collector’s negligence, this homeowner fought back.

Slow and steady? This homeowner heard slow and petty.

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