Some people get away with their bad behavior for way too long. But what would you do if a neighbor kept throwing things they don’t want anymore in the paddock near your house?

Well, this person found a very smart way to deal with the situation.

Let’s read the whole story and see what he did.

Quietly editing bad behaviour with *kindness*

Next to where I live there’s an open space/bush, surrounded on all sides by houses.

People regularly dump rubbish there and it’s infuriating to me.

It’s bad enough in a normal context. But it got worse.

(Context: I’m Australian, in Australia if you don’t want something you leave it on the kerb in front of your house and anyone can take it.)

So this house near the paddock had some chairs on the kerb, which no one took.

After a couple of weeks they were dumped in the paddock.

That wasn’t nice.

I tried to give the benefit of the doubt, maybe they couldn’t take them to the tip? Maybe they were moving and in a desperate rush?

A couple weeks later they put another chair and some office stuff on the kerb.

And sure enough, when no one took them, they dumped them in the paddock.

It was now a problem.

This became a regular occurrence. Garden stuff, furniture, electronics.

They were clearly having a big clear out and using the paddock as their personal dumpster.

Most annoyingly, 90% of the stuff they dumped, would easily fit in their kerbside bin. All of it would fit in their car.

Then he had an idea.

After fuming and thinking, I decided I would just considerately return the items.

I walk through this paddock every day, so every time they dumped something, I’d pick it up, and put it back on their kerb.

This went on for weeks, they’d dump it, I’d return it.

They’d dump it again, I’d pick it all up and kindly return their lost items.

They were finally fully trained.

Finally the dumping stopped, the items I so generously returned to them were jammed into their bins and it’s been months since they’ve dumped something in the paddock.

I don’t know if this is pretty revenge or not, but I cannot tell you the joy it brings me to think of them walking out that first morning, and seeing the items they’d secretly dumped through the night all neatly returned, and their frustration as their junk kept returning to them.

Problem solved… with kindness.

I wonder how Reddit reacted to this.

A reader compliments his strategy.

This commenter shares an experience.

What a coincidence!

A compliment.

Rings a bell?

Don’t you just hate when that happens?

Another reader chimes in.

How to Train Your Neighbor 101.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.