As the saying goes, if you play stupid games…

You’re gonna win stupid prizes!

And this story really reminded me of those words of wisdom.

Check out what happened!

Force me to move my business? Have fun getting home.

“Some years ago I worked for a small local business run by a small local family from the not-so-small family home.

The family home was a large 20+ bedroom home that had been bought and run by the family as a hotel a few decades previously.

At this time, however, it was a home for the parents with part of the building converted to be office space for their business.

The house sat on the banks of a river in a rural location and afforded me wonderful views of the countryside when I had the opportunity to look out of my office window.

It was fairly idyllic.

To access the property there was a private road off the main road that accessed their drive and then passed through the family’s property to their neighbour’s property on the same riverbank further downstream.

The neighbour had a legal right of access to the private road as there were no other means of accessing his property.

The business they ran started out as a man-with-a-van operation that quickly grew to the point that they employed a dozen or so employees (including yours truly) and as a result, they started receiving more and more traffic to their home in the form of employees, clients and deliveries.

There was a problem…

The neighbour got a little annoyed by the increase in traffic, including large delivery lorries.

We were never entirely sure why he was annoyed as his property was too far away to be bothered by the sound of the vehicles and the lay of the land was such that he couldn’t see them either.

The employees arriving and leaving work meant a handful of cars arriving in the morning and leaving in the afternoon and the deliveries would be 3-4 vans per day and a similar number of lorries per week.

Hardly excessive, especially when you couldn’t see or hear them. Nevertheless, annoyed he was and decided to take action.

Remember when I said the house that had been bought as a hotel. Well, it seemed that the family had never mentioned a change of use to the planning committee.

Not so much of a big deal when you go from being a hotel to a home but a pretty big deal when you go from a home to operating a business.

The neighbor had to stick his nose in.

The annoyed neighbour noticed this discrepancy and immediately contacted the council’s planning office and they immediately contacted my employers.

After much bureaucratic wrangling they were offered a choice. Change the business back to a hotel or apply for new planning permission to become a home.

An application to change to use to cover the business they were currently running would be met with failure as such a business already had a complaint against it from a neighbour.

So the house went back to being a hotel (Actually, more like a massive Airbnb but still within the planning permission) but even that didn’t go smoothly.

Changes in the law over the intervening years meant that the current access to the property didn’t meet the regulations and a new entrance needed to built further up the main road to then join onto the private road a little closer to the house.

This was done with no complaints by the family because it meant that A) Their Dad got to play with a digger while constructing the new entrance and B) The seeds of revenge had been planted.

As the neighbour also ran a business from his property, that he did not have planning permission for, then the revenge would seem obvious to someone, like me, who is not possessed by a vengeful demon of the pettiest kind.

Things were about to get PETTY.

This kind of tit-for-tat was beneath my boss however and he began to formulate an act of even pettier vengeance while still appearing to be firmly placed upon the highest of moral high grounds.

He built the new entrance, as required.

He allowed neighbour access to his property, as required but, as stipulated in the original right of way agreement the neighbour must use the old entranceway which had been left intact specifically for this purpose.

However, as my boss did not want to cause any confusion to his new business’ guests and because he had granted a local farmer grazing rights for his sheep in the bit of land the old access road went through, he gated the old access road.

So nobody who wasn’t supposed to use it could use it and no sheep could make their way onto the main road. In fact, he gated it twice.

Then he locked both of the gates and gave copies of the keys to the neighbour.

The first gate was as close to the road as possible, just barely enough room to get a car off the main road and then it opened inwards.

Any vehicle entering through the gate had to pull up to the second gate in order to have the space the close gate 1 behind them.

Gate 2 however opened outwards so any vehicle needed to back up to a closed gate 1 in order for gate 2 to be opened.

This was annoying!

The whole process of driving onto his property now meant the neighbour had to pull up to gate 1 as close as possible, get out of his car and unlock the padlock to the gate and drive through to gate 2.

Get back out of the car to close and lock gate 1 and then back the car up to gate 1 and unlock and open gate 2.

Drive through gate 2, get out of the car again to close and lock gate 2 and then continue on his way.

Occasionally the keys for these locks that were owned by the family would get lost and the locks would need to be replaced.

The neighbour would always receive a new set posted through his letterbox so he would always have the access he was legally entitled to.

It’s just that he always seemed to be out when the locks needed to be changed and he would have to walk down to his property to get the new keys then walk back to get his car in.

The new entrance had a sign attached to it and a camera pointed at it.

The sign read that it was private land and that trespassers would be fined.

Gotcha!

The neighbour used it once and then received a photograph of his car trespassing on their property and a warning that further infractions would result in fines.

He never tried to use that entrance again.

As all of this meant that the business that I worked for now operated out of an industrial unit.

My view of the British countryside was replaced with a view of a factory wall I felt very little sympathy for the odious little git that stuck his nose into other people’s business.”

Here’s how folks reacted on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another Reddit user shared their thoughts.

This individual chimed in.

Another reader was impressed.

And this person shared their thoughts.

I bet he didn’t see that coming!

Hilarious.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.