It’s just not a good idea to use any of your neighbors’ resources without their permission.

Sure, it might seem harmless, but the whole thing could lead to some bad feelings.

The guy who wrote this story had a talk with his neighbor and now he want to know if he acted like a jerk.

Read on and see what you think!

AITA for telling my neighbor to use their own water?

“My wife and I moved to a duplex last month. We’ve lived in apartments our whole lives and never had to pay for water/sewer/garbage and now we do. We haven’t gotten our utility bill yet (comes every two months) and I’m dreading the number.

There is a detached garage building at the front of the lot. On this garage unit are two faucets, one on their side and one on ours. When we moved in, there was a hose already attached to our side so I thought the previous tenant just left it and bought myself a nozzle.

He’s a bit worried about this.

We recently noticed that the neighbor’s wife will use that hose several times a week to water the garden area and wash shoes. I was looking for the right time to ask them about this and it just so happened today she walked by while I was building a shelf in the garage.

I asked if the faucet was connected to our meter or theirs and she said she’d ask the husband.

He came out a few minutes later and asked what the problem was. I asked the same question and he said we can check by closing the valves on our side but added I was the first to ask and the previous two neighbors never made a big deal out of it and that his wife only used it to water the front lawn.

But here the wife interjected and confessed she washed shoes a few times a week (which she had to as I was just there 10 minutes before when she was washing shoes). He cut her off and said “No, you don’t, you never wash shoes”.

Lo and behold that faucet is attached to our water meter. I asked if the hose was his to which he answered yes and then he asked if I would like to move the hose to the other faucet to which I nodded.

I could tell he was pretty upset from the earlier comments and he was continually grumbling stuff like: “oh ok since you want to be so strict”, “my wife only uses like 3 cents of water”, “I was gonna give you a power washer to help wash your car but ok I guess not”, and stuff like that.

Guess he was pretty flustered as he couldn’t unscrew the hose. He came back with a wrench and still couldn’t do it.

He was tired of waiting for this to get done.

While he was gone a second time, I unscrewed the hose (he probably loosened it, I’ll give him that), took my nozzle off, and screwed the hose onto his faucet.

When he came back, he saw it was done then talked to me a little about putting a “Smile, You’re on Camera!” sticker to our backyard door as he was concerned about dog walkers not cleaning up after their pets on our front lawn (I obliged and the sticker is on our yard door).

Should I have just let them use our water?

She doesn’t really use too much and he could be right about the 3 cents (ballpark).[The way I read the water billing here we pay $5.29 per CCF for the first 10 CCF, $6.17 per unit thereafter.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This reader said he’s NTA.

Another person agreed.

This Reddit user had a lot to say.

Another individual spoke up.

And this reader weighed in.

It doesn’t sound like these folks are gonna have any backyard BBQs anytime soon…

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.