Some parents can be really strict when it comes to dealing with work around the house.

Imagine moving back home as a young adult and agreeing to do a lot of household chores.

Would you take your time to make sure you did these chores perfectly, even if it took weeks to complete one chore, or would you prioritize getting the chores done quickly?

In this story, one guy choose to take his time and do things perfectly, but his mom got impatient with his progress.

On a rainy day, she forced him to do yard work, so he made sure she’d regret it.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Fine, I’ll pick up the leaves your way.

When I returned home after dropping out of college, my parents were understandably upset, so I readily agreed to take responsibility for a portion of the house work in addition to my applying for jobs and trying to get back to being a college student (so I wouldn’t have to pay back all my student loans right away).

Anyway, one of the jobs I agreed to do was to clean up the leaves from the backyard.

Because my parents had seemingly NOT been dealing with the leaves while I was at college, there were a LOT of leaves in the yard.

The leaves in the yard consisted of a top layer of dry leaves (those which have been dried by the sun), and a thick layer of wet leaves (wet from rain who knows how long ago, and kept wet by the protective top layer.

Here’s how their backyard is set up…

In our backyard there are two sections, a main section consisting of grass (I’ll refer to it as G. Sect., or Grassy Section), and a section about two-thirds the size occupied primarily by small bushes and trees.

The smaller section is covered in pine straw, which is supposed to protect that area from growing weeds (So P. Sect., for Pine Section).

Because of the trees, lots of leaves fall into that section, and because our dog often runs around the entirety of the yard, those leaves get mixed in with all the pine straw.

This is a problem!

This makes it difficult to remove the leaves from P. Sect. without also removing the straw.

When picking up leaves from P. Sect there are two methods one can use to avoid removing all the pine straw from the yard along with the leaves:

1. Using the rake and then only picking up the leaves, then raking the pine straw back into P. Sect. This method is fast, but leaves the grassy part of the yard covered in straw, dirt, and leaves too small to be easily picked up. This looks terrible.

2. Using our Leaf-Vac to pick up the leaves and not the pine straw. The problem with the Leaf-Vac method is that while it is the most effective method in terms of separating the leaves from the straw, it can be a multiple day project as the Leaf-Vac gets clogged by wet leaves.

This is where the story picks up!

On to the story:

What I decided to do (to try and do the best quality work I could do) was pick up the layer of dry leaves with the Vac, empty the Vac into yard bags, then wait 30 minutes to an hour (or longer) until the top portion of the wet leaves had been dried.

Then, I would pick up the newly dry leaves and repeat the process. This of course, was very time consuming.

Sometimes, on a very humid day, it took at long as 3 hours for the top portion of wet leaves to dry enough to be picked up by the Vac.

It really did take a long time.

However, it was a very neat method as it kept the pine straw in the garden portion of the yard, removing only the leaves, and didn’t make a mess of the grass portion of the yard AT ALL.

This process went on for several weeks until I was ALMOST done removing all the leaves from the yard (the yard looked great in the areas that had been completely cleaned up, by the way).

During those weeks I had argued time and time again that despite being such a long process, and despite me often appearing to be lazy by not working in the yard (the waiting periods, during which I would ALWAYS be doing some other kind of housework, be it vacuuming, cleaning counters, cooking, training the dog, etc. NOT being lazy), MY method was the best method for cleaning up the yard to make it presentable, which presumably was the goal.

UH OH…

My detail oriented work was cut short one RAINY day when my mother got fed up with the work “not being completed”, threw me out the back door with my work-gloves and SANDALS to wear, a rake, the PAPER yard bags, and the CORD-POWERED Leaf-Vac.

She then locked the door, and told me that I wasn’t allowed to come back inside until the work was done.

What happened next was Malicious Compliance.

He knew he method wouldn’t work!

I went and did the rest of the yard using the method she had been asking me to do. The rake method.

Needless to say, by the time I was done, the grassy yard was covered in mud, pine needles, and those too-small-to-pick-up leaves.

But that isn’t the only revenge.

Also, since she told me I was to wait on the back porch for her to let me inside after I finished, I walked straight up the white-painted back stairs, onto the white-painted back porch/patio and paced around a bit before finally removing my mud-caked sandals, and knocking on the door to tell her I was done.

Because I had been wearing the sandals she gave me to wear, my feet were also filthy.

When she let me inside, I walked barefoot across the wood floor and living room carpet on my way upstairs to take a shower.

His mom clearly didn’t understand his method, and her request to get the work done right away really backfired.

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user knows mothers can be wrong.

That’s right! This user loves this guy’s perfectionism.

This user thinks this guy’s process was too extensive!

This user can relate with this guy!

This user hates what the mom did here!

Being impatient can really backfire.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.