Neighbor's Yard Service

[Jeff Higgins]

It's fall, of course, so that means leaves everywhere. My 84 year old neighbor lady uses a yard service to, among other things, take care of that. So, today, they showed up with their leaf blowers and cleared her yard and driveway. They blew it all into the street, which is bad enough, but so that all of those leaves were not left in front of her house, they blew them a bit down the road - and left them at the end of my driveway. And drove off.

I'm a bit too stoved up right now (hip surgery three weeks ago) to have made it down my stairs, to the front door, down the stairs to my driveway, and down my driveway before before it was becoming obvious they were just going to leave them there.

My wife told me to talk to her, get their number, and give them a call. Nope. Not happening. I'm not like that. Instead, I'll be here next Tuesday, a little more mobile. She is the last house on our dead end, and they park their truck across the street from her, nose-in to a barricade at the end of the street. My plan (if I can drive by then) is to wait for them to finish, get in their truck to leave, then back my Land Cruiser down my driveway and park them in. I will then demand they call the company owner, telling them I will not move until he comes out personally.

We will resolve this politely, very explicitly, at that time.

[masraum]

Yowza! Gotta love crappy, non-thinking, lazy work ethics!

You should paint their trailer baby poo yellow!

[rwest]

Too much too soon Jeff.

Unless they have done this multiple times with you pointing it out without them correcting. Just call the company and give them a chance to make it right.

[Baz]

Please get this all on video, Jeff!

[Tishabet]

Originally Posted by rwest

Too much too soon Jeff.

Agree. Imagine for a moment that you have just climbed into your truck to head home for the day when some guy you don't know appears and his first move is to intentionally block your only means of exit.

[john70t]

aka kidnapping?

The City gave me a warning letter because some light snow got shoveled into the street. Once. Leafs gum up sewer systems.
Call the company and let them know workers are being stupid and lazy.
Next time you'll have to hire your own service to clean up their mess, and you will be sending them a bill.

[LWJ]

Before you confront them. I would call the city / county / whomever has jurisdiction. In my town, you are a bad person if you blow leaves onto the street. (which, I did a little bit of today. Mind you, I picked up far far more prior to blowing so the net is less leaves.). If your town has a similar code, tell them and let them be the bad guy.

Good luck. I have 75 trees and I know my neighbors all hate them about now.

[look 171]

Most people are good about it if you talk to them instead of pissing them off blocking them. Do we really think they work for a big company, or a legit outfit? Around here, most are one man show with a helper, a relative or something that have no work and that's all they do. Lots of them are illegals. When the deportation started, I couldn't get anyone to come out to service the yard, or my hauling company was backed up with no one working. I don't know, maybe different up in WA?

[wdfifteen]

I hope your hip is felling better. I would call the city and report them. You can confront them and let you know how pissed off you are. They can issue fines.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by rwest

Too much too soon Jeff.

Unless they have done this multiple times with you pointing it out without them correcting. Just call the company and give them a chance to make it right.

Yep ... talk to the guy first in person too... go from there.

Take Ed along ... he's not nearly as intimidating

[ramonesfreak]

In 2012 because I got laid off, I worked on a landscape yard service crew for a year. Oh the horrible stories I could tell***….being stuck in a truck with 3 of the biggest losers on the planet breaking every DOT rule in the book. From them trying to drive into black kids on their bikes to taking craps in people’s yards, not strapping down the 2 zero turns and property damage, omg. We lost two large accounts…trailer parks… because someone saw my co-worker crapping up against a tree….everywhere we went, Brandon was crapping in yards.

Anyway, your neighbor is going to have to call and complain and threaten to drop them unless they fix the situation. Unless they think they will lose the account, they will not give a *****.

I like the blocking idea and it’s probably what I would do but I think you are going to be dealing with cops and making enemies of people who don’t give a ***** about anything in life. The company I worked for….the boss and two others, was basically a rolling racist drug cartel. Weed smoke pouring out the windows and lines of coke every hour to keep them all going. Absolutely terrifying to be a passenger in that truck.


***one day we (the boss and the 3 of us workers) spent about 4 hours clearing a massive amount of bushes, hedges and trees from someone’s back yard and moved it all to the curb…..probably 50 feet long and 5 feet high pile. I kept thinking, why do these people want all this nice stuff cut down? We did a nice job and left.

That night, the client called and asked the boss why we didn’t show up to clear their back yard….oops, we were at the wrong house! I still wonder what that person thought when they got home from work and saw that some ghost chopped his entire back yard down.

***we were driving to the next job on a very busy 50 mph road when an empty 50 gallon drum on the trailer flew out and into traffic behind us. The boss was driving as usual and just kept on going….weed smoke pouring out the window like cheech and Chong.

[Alan A]

So some leaves were left in the road. Not on your property, but in the public road.
And you want to go to jail for attempted kidnapping because of this.

You may want to cut back on the pain meds. Overreacting much? Call the town like a normal person.

[ramonesfreak]

oh...and btw, I should have said I would want to block, not that I would block.......I think maybe I am like you....my first instinct is to resolve issues with some show of force, resistance to the evil and the scum, and basically saying F you enough ! I always end up doing the right thing as I am sure you do as well...we are alive and our records clean and we sleep ok at night having done so


The problem with blocking, other than the legality is that in my experience, there is about an 80% chance that the boss or owner is in the truck already. He knows and he does not give a damn and depending on the quality of that person that you piss off, now what are you going to do, force him to clean up the mess? How? Best to avoid pushing unknowns into a corner.....over leaves

[ramonesfreak]

two things that guide me through my day

1) I have witnessed or been the victim of countless injustices. What matters most to me, is that I have committed none. I need to remind myself of this daily because nobody else will. Good guys do NOT finish last.

2) to go through this life, far under the radar of all, is the most efficient way to achieve peace of mind on a day to day basis

good luck. feel better

[GH85Carrera]

Our next door neighbor uses a lawn service that is pretty good. They have a large team mow and edge his yard in 15 minutes. In a few more weeks when all the leaves have fallen, they come back with the leave blower brigade. Six men all rounding up the leaves into a large pile, and then into the grinder to be blown into the back of a truck with a covered bed. Those guys are amazing.

My master gardener wife points and grunts and I just mow and mulch the leaves and dump it all on the compost pile. All the grass and leaves get composted. The worms sure love the mulched leaves. We have a ton of the red wigglers. Some are huge, and evidently hungry. Of course I "get" to stir the compost with a shovel in the spring, and it is some dark rich compost.


The neighborhood just north of our uses a laws service for their green space. They just blow all the grass and leaves into the street. It is blatantly illegal. The city water bill I receive even states on the bill to not blow the yard debris in the streets. It all ends up in the storm drains, and can and will clog the storm sewers.

[ramonesfreak]

That’s how we did it. For most all yards except city lots, we blew the leaves onto a tarp and dragged it to curb. The boss turned the trailer into a giant box with plywood sides and a tarp cover and made a massive vacuum to suck them into the trailer box. Then we went to the local pumpkin or corn farm and blew them out into the field several times a day. 27 yards per day, 6 days per week.

[911 Rod]

Landscape monkeys. Nothing will change.
Make sure they stay off your lawn!

[wswartzwel]

Ironic.. I went home from work after reading this yesterday. My next door neighbor is blowing the leaves in my yard over to his yard. I stopped rolled down the window, and said, "Hey I think those are mine". Having good neighbors is nice. hope they don't move.

[wdfifteen]

We lived one house away from a T intersection. Our neighbor across the street blew his leaves onto the street, making them somebody else's problem. It became a real problem when it rained after he covered the street in leaves. Cars approaching the stop sign would start to brake, and it was like they were on ice. After a couple slid through the intersection into the trees on the other side of the road, someone, it may have been the sheriff, had a talk with him.

[Scott Douglas]

We have a gardener, so do the neighbors to the south of us. They have trees along our adjoining side yard, we do not.
Our gardener comes on Tuesday's, first thing in the morning @8AM. Theirs comes some time later in the day also on Tuesdays.
At first, theirs would tend to blow the leaves into our yard and just leave them there. I witnessed this happen a couple of times. The next time I saw there were leaves to be blown, I went out and made sure they understood that my gardener had already come AND that my yard was leaf free because of it. I told the guy on the blower that I expected my yard to be leaf free when he got done. The boss of the crew came over and I told him what I expected and he agreed with me.
Now, they blow from my side of the yard towards the neighbors before blowing towards the front yard where they pick them up. It's against the law to blow cuttings into our streets here. The one guy at the end of the T used to just blow his into the street but I've noticed he doesn't do that any more so someone must have talked to him about it. Maybe the guys in the big truck that are always coming and checking in the man holes to see what is clogging the sewers did.