Imagine renting a house with a yard. Would you be annoyed if the landlord told you to mow the yard, or would you find that request perfectly reasonable?

In this story, one renter is in this exact situation and finds the request really annoying. They comply anyway but in the more annoying way possible.

Let’s read all the details.

Mow the lawn? Okay.

This happened about 5 years ago now, but still fills me with fuzzy warmth.

We were living in a rented house in a very rural hamlet of about 20 houses, 60 people and 30 dogs.

The house was cheap, but falling apart, the landlord was the worst kind of jerk who’d pick up on anything he could blame on us, but not deal with minor issues like the central heating not working, or the stairs falling down.

The landlord’s parents lived next door, so there was a lot of snooping went on, and often he’d just phone from their house to harass us.

The landlord had a request.

Anyway, on this particular day, we get a phone call at 10pm, demanding I mowed the 1/4 acre lawn.

Yes sir, not a problem I will do that right away.

Now, a relevant piece of information here is that my lawnmower at the time was a cheap old Briggs and Stratton number which I found in a skip. It worked fine, but there was no recoil starter, and no muffler.

Time to comply!

So, I drag the mower out, start it using a half knackered drill and mowed the lawn.

Every freaking inch of it.

Was on until 1am, had a couple of neighbours come and scream at me, explained it was at the landlord’s behest and I didn’t want evicting, talk to the landlord.

Couple of days later the landlord comes to complain at me because I did exactly what he said to.

After that he just started trying to send a bloke around to mow the lawn.

I can see both sides of the situation.

It depends on the contract whether or not the landlord was being unreasonable or the renter was being unreasonable. If the rules stated that the lawn had to be mowed and grass had to be kept below a certain height, then the landlord was being completely reasonable, but that may not have been the case.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is the same question I had.

This doesn’t sound safe!

Time to do some quick math.

This person is worried about OP’s hearing.

This is kind of surprising.

That’s one way to handle the situation!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.