It’s surprising how quickly a small thing can escalate sometimes.

So, what would you do if the recycling truck showed up early and you weren’t ready? Would you save it for the next pickup? Or would you place it in your neighbor’s bin because the truck would be coming back down the other side of the street soon?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this exact situation and gets confronted by his neighbor after choosing the latter. Here’s what happened.

AITA – recycling cardboard

So, this happened about two weeks ago – on Christmas Eve. Our city has no limit on cardboard recycling, and it is collected separately from cans/bottles – in case your city is different and that factors into your decision.

Our recycling is typically picked up between 1 and 3 pm every Wednesday, with alternating weeks for each type.

On the 24th, it was cardboard, and we had a bunch in the garage I was going to put out when I finished work around 10 am that day. I had a meeting from 9-10, had booked the entire day off, but still had to attend this.

The recycling guys were passing early.

During the meeting, I heard loud music from outside around 9:30, which seemed odd.

It turns out that was the recycling guys coming early and moving quickly because many people didn’t have things out yet, so they weren’t stopping at every house.

I told my colleagues I had to run and try to catch the recycling guys, but as we are 3 houses in from the corner, they were already gone off of our street and into the side streets around us, but they would be returning to collect the other side of the street sometime later on their way out of our subdivision.

His neighbor was at the door.

I saw the neighbor across the road still had his bins out and full, so I took my cardboard, put it in a clear bag (allowed), and placed it with his. 1 bag… I compacted it down as much as possible, and it wouldn’t tie, but it Fit.

An hour later, my neighbor rings my doorbell, and I answer to see him there with my bag of recycling, asking, “Is this yours?”

I am not going to lie – he may have seen me, and our name/address is on some Amazon boxes, but anyway, so I said yes and that I didn’t think it should have been a problem, as we don’t have a limit.

He tried to reason with the guy.

He told me that I should have rang the doorbell to ask his permission before doing this, in an honestly self-righteous tone that was escalating.

I said, “Sorry, man, I know you’re a teacher and have two teenagers at home. I truly didn’t know who might still be asleep and taking advantage of the school closure, and I thought that would be a rude thing to do to you on Christmas. And again, I didn’t think there would be any issue with adding some cardboard since the guys flew past here so early, and I was in a work call.”

I reached for the bag to take it back and stick it in my garage for the next cardboard day in 2 weeks, and he grabbed it away saying, “No, you left it over with my stuff, and that’s fine, but you didn’t ask me!” and he turned to walk away with my bag of cardboard in his hand.

AITA?

Wow! He probably should’ve asked beforehand.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about what he did.

This person’s neighborhood doesn’t get petty.

This person doesn’t think he was wrong.

According to this reader, he needs to grow up.

For this person, they see both sides.

The man has a point, but it seems like he let it go in the end. Moving forward, he should simply ask.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.