When you live in an area where your neighbors and you have a shared drive, everyone should pitch in to keep it nice.

What would you do if your neighbors were always using your part of the driveway, and even your yard, when turning around, and they never helped to shovel the drive?

That is what happened to the neighbor in this story, so he completely stopped shoveling the area, letting them struggle to do it on their own.

I think he had every reason to stop doing this work for them. Read through the story and see if you agree.

Inconsiderate neighbors had to bust their butts shoveling

I live in a group of four homes on a pipestem shared driveway.

This sounds like a nice place.

I’m at the end facing the main road. The other three are turned 90 degrees facing the shared driveway.

They all have generous (4-6 cars) concrete driveways off the shared. The shared is asphalt that runs right up to my garage.

Ok, let’s see what this is all about.

I also have an apron at the edge to allow me to turn around in. The neighbors are able to turn around by simply backing out of their drives onto the shared driveway.

Part of my “yard” is a long 10-12 foot wide grass strip that runs along the driveway down to the road.

Parking issues are common when there is a shared driveway.

The neighbors have always presented parking challenges with extended family or renters/roommates or hosting events.

They block half the shared driveway for parking. Making deliveries or emergency access to my home difficult.

These people don’t do anything for his property, why should they get to use it?

They try to turn my grass strip into their private parking and got petty and damaging when told no.

They don’t help maintain the strip, they don’t pay taxes on it, they don’t legally own it. When it’s normal amounts of snow they don’t shovel or salt the shared driveway.

He seems to really want to have a good relationship with his neighbors.

I have salted the entire driveway multiple times to ensure I don’t slide out into oncoming traffic. They walk up into my front yard and drive, peer into my car, and tried to use my front yard as a public path to the neighborhood behind me.

There’s an entire field to the right of my lot that they can access to do this. There’s no need for them to trespass like this. I put up no trespassing signs. I give each house a small Christmas gift and card, and with one exception, never receive a thank you or acknowledgment or return card.

Driving on a driveway doesn’t cause much damage, though.

Their visitors/friends/family/deliveries/service people all drive right past their driveways, all the way down to my car/garage door to then turn around when they could have done it in their big empty driveways.

That’s extra wear and tear on my driveway instead of theirs. All of that to paint the picture. Annoying.

He is going to have to teach his neighbors to be more respectful.

Entitled, but nothing so significant that it’s worth saying or doing anything. The exceptions being the trespassing and the strip parking.

So, the snow we got has been awful. It was all I could manage to repeatedly shovel out my own driveway. I just couldn’t do anymore. I couldn’t even fully clear my own. Only two thirds.

Why would he help them when they do nothing for him.

Oh. In the past when it has snowed, they clearly see I haven’t cleared it yet but still drive up into my drive to turn around packing it down, making it harder and icier for me.

So, my petty revenge was watching them bust their butts digging out the shared driveway. Which they barely did.

Sometimes, this is the only way to teach neighbors a lesson.

It’s just enough for one car to squeeze by. The opening to the main road is tricky to turn into at the moment, but doable.

I have 4-wheel drive. Be nicer to your neighbors and maybe I’d have overextended myself trying to help.

He has no reason to feel bad for letting people care for their own property.

Be a selfish jerk, suffer the consequences. They have a whole house full of adults to shovel to my one.

I don’t feel the slightest bit of empathy for them.

Some people just feel entitled to the work of their neighbors until they realize that it isn’t happening anymore.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who ends up with a problem of their own after calling the city about a shed.

Read through what the people in the comments have to say about the situation as well.

Large rocks can cause a lot of damage.

A simple fence would make it so they couldn’t drive on the grass.

This would be quite effective.

When someone is doing something nice for you, don’t take advantage of them. They might stop what they do for you and make your life more difficult.

At the end of the day, this guy just did what he should have been doing from the beginning.