Across the country, people are facing treacherous snowstorms . From just a few inches to over a few feet, these storms have caused numerous road safety issues, and have brought upon the dreaded task of shoveling to homeowners everywhere.
Of course, you could always hire someone else to do that for you, but what happens when someone does it without being hired, then demands payment anyway?
That’s what happened to one woman as she explains it in a Reddit post, asking people if she was in the right for not paying the children who cleared her driveway for her.
The woman jumps right into her story, starting with hearing a knock at her door.
“There was a group of like 4 12-year-old-ish boys, and they had shoveled my driveway and [sidewalk] and were now requesting payment. They expected $15 each,” she said.
“I was really confused because they never knocked to ask if they could shovel my [driveway]. They just did it without asking and were expecting to be paid.”
She was understandably surprised by this.
“I was really just dumbstruck and kind of said, ‘I don’t have any cash’ […].” The boys came prepared for this, saying they had their mother’s Venmo username and she could send the money there.
“Again, me just being extremely confused I started saying that I never agreed to pay them for anything. I was going to shovel my driveway at lunch time. If they had asked, I would have said no.”
Then the kids had their turn being confused.
“[They] were like ‘You’re not going to pay us for our work??’ But again, I didn’t ask them to shovel my [driveway]. They started yelling at me and I just kind of shut my door.”
It didn’t end there, as just a few hours later, the boys’ mom showed up and began yelling at this woman.
She raised a few points, but none good enough to sway the homeowner.
The mother claimed her kids should be paid because they put in the work, they did a nice thing, it was “only” $60, and “she was proud of her boys for using their snow day to help people, and I was being really ungrateful and going to make them turn to drugs next time.”
“This is where I started to get kind of mad,” the author wrote. “I said that I never asked for their services, and it was nice that they shoveled my [driveway], but I never agreed to pay them and they really should have asked first.”
Both women stood their ground.
“She insisted I pay them this time and they’ll ask in the future. But I don’t want to [reinforce] bad behavior. Just because they’re children and people feel the need to let them get away with whatever, this is just not a cycle I want to perpetuate for these kids. You can’t manipulate people into paying you for something they never asked for.”
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The post asked her if she was wrong to not pay them, as their mother was currently calling her out on the neighborhood social media app NextDoor.
The comments were in agreement that she did not have to pay these kids.
“Those kids are intrusive. It’s like someone jumping on your car in the middle of traffic, force-cleaning your windows and then expecting cash for it. […] It’s obvious where those kids learned their bad and intrusive behaviour,” wrote one comment.
“Don’t give them a dime,” another assured. “Thank them for their volunteer work, [then] get a camera installed because these angry kids are going to have disposable income from some sucker and they’ll probably egg your house or something.”
What do you think? Was she in the right, or should she have paid the kids? Let us know in the comments!
