Imagine living in a small, friendly neighborhood where neighbors are generally kind and helpful. If you volunteered to mow your neighbors’ yards for them, would you be willing to follow their specific requests, or would you insist on doing things your way?

In this story, one teenager is in his situation, and he is really annoyed by one neighbor who is very picky about how he mows her yard. She doesn’t seem to appreciate that he’s doing this to be nice and for free.

Keep reading to find out what happens when she insists that he mow her yard on a day when he knows it’s a bad idea to mow.

What do you mean you won’t mow my lawn when you can’t even mow your own?

To give some backstory, I’m a 19 year old in community college living in a small neighborhood in my parents old, small house.

I mow my own lawn, which is reasonably small, because there is no HOA and I can’t hire anyone to do it for me. (Also the sun and exercise is great).

Three of my neighbors are either elderly, don’t have the time, or don’t own mowers of their own, so I mow their reasonably small lawns for free at the same time I mow mine.

I live in a very close neighborhood, so while I may do mowing, another neighbor may power wash driveways or some such.

Two out of the three neighbors are great.

Let’s just say I mow out of the goodness of my heart, and get compensated with a bottle of cold water afterward by two out of the three.

The third, however, is where the malicious compliance begins.

The third neighbor is a very stubborn, forty-something year old lady who

1. Owns her own mower.

2. Can afford to hire someone to do it for her.

3. Is very specific about how and when her lawn gets done, even though it’s free.

She’s making everything harder by insisting that he use her mower.

Reason three ticks me off the most, honestly because she does not let me use my mower, or fix hers.

Seriously, it’s like she’s punishing me for volunteering to help her.

And this mower. Is. A. Piece. Of. Garbage.

The blades are dull, and she doesn’t let me sharpen them. It’s clogged full of old grass, she doesn’t let me clean it. And yet every time I ask if I can tidy it up, she snaps “Quit wasting time and just get the job done!”

This lady makes completely empty threats.

She is mean, entitled, and doesn’t care that I do four lawns in one day.

Even on days where I can’t mow the lawn because I’m feeling under the weather, or am just to busy with school, she threatens to call the “HOA” (again we don’t have one) and report me for running a business without a license, unless I get the lawn mowed.

I’m pretty sure of three things, you don’t need a license to mow a lawn, it’s not a business since I don’t ask for money or compensation, and that she doesn’t have the number for the home owners association that doesn’t exist.

One day is rained…a lot.

I honestly should have stopped volunteering to mow her lawn a long time ago, but I just never had the heart.

Except for last week.

It’s July, rainy, and very hot, and on the morning I was “scheduled” to mow, it poured like crazy.

Now those of you who mow lawns know, you can’t, or rather, shouldn’t mow your lawn directly after it rains for various reasons, and my neighborhood is pretty shaded so it takes at least a day to dry up.

The neighbor was furious.

So around five o clock in the afternoon, I’m just relaxing and enjoying the free time, when out of nowhere there is a frantic smashing of a fist on my door (I would call it pounding, but it honestly wasn’t).

Lo and behold, it’s SL (stubborn lady), looking annoyed as ever.

As soon as I crack my door, the yelling starts, and I’m almost blasted back as she tries to push my door open. I couldn’t make out most of what she was saying, but I did hear the words “lazy”, “brat”, and “millennial” thrown in there.

I’m pretty laid back and used to dealing with angry adults, so this doesn’t irk me all that much, but when she pushed the door open, that started to tick me off.

She insists on having her lawn mowed.

Then she started to talk in an understanding voice.

SL: WHY ISN’T MY LAWN MOWED?! I NEED IT MOWED RIGHT NOW!

Me: Ma’am it rained pretty heavily today and I can’t m-

SL: I DON’T GIVE A CARE WHAT THE WEATHER IS LIKE, YOU BETTER GET OUT THERE, I HAVE COMPANY!

Me: Ma’am, I’m not going to do your lawn, I didn’t even mow my own today. Please stop harassing me!

He decided to humor her.

SL: (with her teeth clenched and neck veins popping) if you don’t mow the lawn RIGHT NOW I will report you like I should have done a long time ago

Now while I could have argued, which I don’t like to do, I had thought of a better plan.

Me: sigh alright ma’am, may I at least use my mower?

SL: no way you snot nosed kid, I want my lawn exactly the way I like it.

He got to work.

My plan was in action.

So, grabbing her lawn mower, and seeing that her and her company’s freshly rained on “fancy” cars were all right on the edge of the lawn, I started to mow.

I only got about halfway through before the mower completely shut down due to clogging and the sheer dullness of the blade, but it all worked out.

He found the neighbor’s reaction pretty amusing.

Later that day after a nice shower and meal, I heard the reaction to my compliance, which was, to my amusement, the insane screaming and ranting about why the lawn was only half done and every car was caked in mud and grass.

I only got in trouble with her, as none of my neighbors liked her very much, and of course she threatened again to report me to the nonexistent HOA, to which I said go ahead, and then once and for all told her that I refuse to mow her lawn ever again.

She got what she asked for! Good for him for proving to her that her request was a really bad idea.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Another person who mows the neighbors’ lawns weighs in.

This person wouldn’t have been as nice.

I bet she never admitted that she was wrong.

This is funny!

She got what she asked for!

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.