Helping out your neighbors after a snowstorm shouldn’t come with stalker-level expectations.

When this homeowner spent his afternoon clearing snow for his elderly neighbor and a friend nearby, a woman wandered up convinced he was the HOA worker she’d been calling about.

What started as a polite request quickly turned into a persistent neighborhood pursuit he couldn’t shake.

Read on to find out what finally got her to stop.

I’m NOT shoveling your walkway and I’m NOT with the HOA.

In my community all of the homes have driveways and garages. But it also has additional off-street parking along a service road that circles the neighborhood.

We’ve been snowed in with sub-freezing temperatures for the last week and a half so now that we got a few warmer days, it was time to start digging out.

So one homeowner went out to start making some progress on the snow.

I went to shovel out my spare vehicle which is on the service road and I decided to wear my full winter weather getup that I use while working in construction.

Parked in front and behind me were both my elderly next door neighbor and my friend who lives on the other end of the neighborhood so I shoveled out their cars also.

I was right there, I didn’t mind, no big deal. I took care of it.

But here’s where the real drama started.

After finishing up the 3rd car, this woman with “Karen” tendencies walked up to me saying “Helllooooooooo!!!!! Yes! You! I’ve been waiting for my walkway to be shoveled out. Are you going to do it today?”

Ummm… no. I had no idea who she was or why she thought I was the one that was going to do her shoveling.

The homeowner didn’t even realize she was talking to him at first.

It took me a minute to figure out what she was trying to convey because at first I thought I might have shoveled out her car by mistake (thinking it belonged to my friend) and now she was mad that I did it.

I dunno. She didn’t scream or create a scene. But I’m guessing that she thought I was with the HOA and I was coming to shovel her walkway.

The HOA is another story completely.

To give this context, my HOA is not that great.

The good thing is that they don’t bother you with stupid rules or give anyone a hard time.

But the not-so-good thing is that they’re not easy to get a hold of and they’re slow to respond when you need them.

Ordinarily, snow shoveling would be within the HOA’s purview.

Like with many other things, it’s their responsibility to do snow removal.

You can either handle it yourself or you can wait 3 weeks. And when you call them up, it goes to an answering machine.

So it became clear all this lady’s frustration with the HOA was coming out onto him.

So I’m guessing that the lady called the HOA and then saw me outside shoveling a little while later.

I don’t know if she’s new to the neighborhood but for as long as I’ve been living there, it’s kinda been an unwritten rule that if you’re able and willing to shovel your driveway, you also shovel out half of the street in front of your driveway so that you don’t create a patch of ice that’s hard to navigate.

The neighbor continues to complain to him, so finally he just sets her straight.

But anyhow I went on to shovel my elderly neighbor’s walkway and the whole time the lady is pestering me about when it’s going to be “her turn” because she’s got places to go and things to do.

That’s when I realized what was going on and what she was thinking. And I simply said, “I’m not with the HOA. I live here.”

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And maybe she didn’t understand but she practically followed me around the neighborhood while I helped some of my other neighbors.

This Karen needs to take her issues to the HOA, not an unsuspecting neighbor.

What did Reddit have to say?

This user went through a very similar situation.

This commenter thinks this homeowner could have made a quick buck if he really wanted to.

Good deeds can be pretty time consuming.

Many homeowners in an HOA don’t bother to really understand the rules.

This Karen needs to realize that a snowsuit isn’t a uniform and he doesn’t work for her.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a man who was so upset about dog messes in his yard that he involved the whole neighborhood in the solution.