‘I graciously helped myself to half a freezer's worth of meat': Resident uses power outage during storm to get back at outdoorsy neighbor after paying out of pocket for car repair

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Aug 28, 2023 7:00 PM EDT

A storm can be your ally if you play your cards right. To be fair, there probably won't be many opportunities to use a storm to your advantage, but never say never.

One person, u/Valladian, stumbled upon a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get back at his neighbor, who had committed the very non-neighborly act of denting in OP's car, and then denying he had anything to do with it. See, this neighbor, who for the sake of the story we'll call Chester, had a Jeep, which he used frequently for camping trips.

The Jeep in question is an important factor, as it was this car that broke OP's car window and dented the passenger side's car door. Well, technically, it was the person driving it, but you get the gist. OP asked Chester about it, and to his surprise, Chester denied any wrongdoing, and blamed the damage on 'teenagers'. After calling insurance and being advised to pay out of pocket, OP was understandably bitter. How could his neighbor be so… unkind?

Barely two weeks went by before OP got a chance at revenge. Chester informed him that he was going up North to 'rough it up with nature' for a week, and asked OP if he could watch over his house. Despite still being annoyed with Chester, OP agreed. As luck would have it, a nasty storm decided to pay a visit to their town. I don't know about you, but usually, people's reactions to storms vary from intense worry to fury. Mine sure would, anyway.

When OP went to check on Chester's house, he found four large freezer chests in the garage and was struck with a brilliant idea. The idea in question involved the circuit breaker and a penny. To find out how the events unfolded, scroll down. Next, a head mechanic revoked his employees' privileges after they finished 400 bags of chips in just 3 weeks.

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  • 01
    Property - H
    via @Canva
  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/Valladian 6 hours ago A neighbor hit my car and lied about it, so I ruined 300 lbs of meat while he was on vacation. This happened about five or six years ago. For some context my neighbor, we'll call him Chester, is your
    via u/Valladian
  • 03
    Font - stereotypical weekend outdoorsman type. He owns at least 10 different baseball caps, and they all have camo on them. He's one of those. He drives a Jeep, which will be important later, and usually spends his weekends either hunting, fishing, or prepping for 'when the bombs drop'. I tried to explain to him once that we were
    via u/Valladian
  • 04
    Font - within the fallout range of a major city, so if it got hit we'd be s either way, but whatever. Everyone needs a hobby, and some people's is collecting canned peaches. Two weeks before the revenge, I came outside to see my car had a broken window on the passenger side, and
    via u/Valladian
  • 05
    Font - that part of the frame was dented just above the door handle. I can tell immediately from the size and shape of the dent exactly what it was from. As I said my neighbor, Chester, drives a Jeep, and mounted on his front grill is a cable wench he uses for pulling stumps and whatnot. It juts out almost a foot and a half in front of the
    via u/Valladian
  • 06
    Font - bumper and is made of solid metal. Anyone with a picture of the wench and the shape of the dent in my car could CSI that sł just from eyeballing it. The dent is almost identically shaped, and situated at the same height the wench was mounted. On top of that, Chester lives directly across the street from me, and he likes to back into his driveway.
    via u/Valladian
  • 07
    Font - Conveniently enough my car is always parked on the street, so he has ample opportunities to hit it. I asked Chester about it, and without saying anything he shook his head while biting his lip like some clueless cartoon character. I then ask if anyone
    via u/Valladian
  • 08
    Font - who borrowed his car might have done it because the wench itself was pretty scratched up, almost like he's been ramming it into things all over town. Again, Chester silently shakes his head and then tries to tell me it was probably teenagers. No exposition mind you, he just blamed it on teenagers.
    via u/Valladian
  • 09
    Font - I was fuming, but kept my composure and went home to call the police and my insurance company to report it. I managed to get a competent police officer, who told me point blank that it was clear what happened, but without a witness it would be pointless to try and prove it. The insurance agent was equally certain of Chester's guilt but ended up recommending I pay out of
    via u/Valladian
  • 10
    Font - pocket for the repair. Since I was parking on the street, it was a factor the insurance company might use against me if I filed the claim. When it came time for them to recalculate and adjust my monthly rate I could see a significant increase. A few hundred out of pocket right now could save me several hundred a year going forward
    via u/Valladian
  • 11
    Font - if my rate was increased due to my own negligence, which is what the claim would, unfortunately, be categorized as. Raw deal for sure, but at least he was honest with me. Fast forward to two weeks later, Chester and his family are going up
    via u/Valladian
  • 12
    Font - North to rough it in nature for a week. And despite my cold attitude towards him in recent days, he asks me to keep an eye on his house while he's gone, since I'm the only person in the neighborhood that he trusts, apparently. I agreed to do it, not because I had any type of revenge in mind, but because he gifted me a
    via u/Valladian
  • 13
    Font - large case of beer for my service. His one request was that I call him if we have any extreme weather because he'd need me to check on something. Two nights after he left, we had a nasty storm. Wind, hail, and even a few rolling blackouts. The next morning I called Chester to ask what
    via u/Valladian
  • 14
    Font - he needed me to check on, but he didn't answer. Knowing Chester, he'd probably set up camp in some rural part of America with no dē 1 cell phone service, even though he asked me to call him if this happened. After a few failed attempts I went over to his house to inspect for any potential issues that might have arisen from
    via u/Valladian
  • 15
    Font - the weather. I figured he was probably worried about his garage flooding, since his yard was frequently a moat after heavy rain. I went into the garage and there was no flooding, but something caught my eye immediately. Four large freezer chests, lined up side by side, taking up a huge chunk of the wall. I peeked inside one and immediately realized
    via u/Valladian
  • 16
    Font - what Chester was worried about. All four of them were packed from floor to lid with meat. Some of it was still in packages from the grocery store, and some of it was wrapped in butcher paper. Likely game picked up from Chester's hunting exploits. But
    via u/Valladian
  • 17
    Font - on the top of one of the freezers was something else that seemed out of place. It was a red solo cup full of frozen water, with a penny sitting on top. I thought that was weird and dismissed it immediately, but curiosity got the better of me later that day when I got home. I decided to Google it, and what I learned instantly clicked
    via u/Valladian
  • 18
    Font - as a way to get the ultimate revenge on Chester for hitting my car and sticking me with the repair bill. There's an old life hack that people used to use when they went on vacation. You freeze a cup of water, then place a penny on top of it and
    via u/Valladian
  • 19
    Font - stick it in your freezer. If your power goes out, the water will eventually melt and the penny will fall to the bottom of the cup. If you return home and the penny is at the bottom of the cup, your freezer was off for an extended period of time, and now everything in it has potentially defrosted and become unfit for consumption.
    via u/Valladian
  • 20
    Font - I immediately got up and ran back to Chester's garage to scope out the legitimacy of my nefarious deed. As luck would have it, Chester's circuit breaker was hidden behind a tool shelf, not directly visible to the naked eye. Who would put a shelf in front of a circuit breaker? Chester, of course. So I promptly took the cup out of the
    via u/Valladian
  • 21
    Font - freezer and sat it on Chester's porch to let it get a little sun. After a few hours, the ice had melted enough that the penny slipped right to the bottom of the cup. I then put the cup back in the freezer, being very careful to position it exactly where it was when I took it out, before moving on to the last phase of my insidious plan.
    via u/Valladian
  • 22
    Font - I started blowing up Chester's phone with calls and frantic text messages. "Chester, where is your circuit breaker? I can't find it and your power is off. Get back to me, ASAP!" I did this countless times over the next two days before I finally got a call back from Chester. He told me immediately where to go in his
    via u/Valladian
  • 23
    Font - garage to find the circuit breaker, which of course I already knew thanks to my prior detective work. I sat the phone down and flipped the circuit breaker twice. Once to turn it off and then a second time to turn it back on, giving it just enough time to mess with the digital clocks on all his appliances. And with that, my revenge
    via u/Valladian
  • 24
    Font - was complete. All that was left was for Chester to come back home, which took another two days. When Chester got back home I was nervous, but eager to see if my charade had worked. The next day I got a knock on my door. It was Chester. He asked me if I wanted
    via u/Valladian
  • 25
    Font - some meat to give to my dogs. Apparently, the power had been off for too long and all the meat in his freezers had thawed out while he was gone, so he was throwing it out. I asked him how much he had, and he said it was probably somewhere close to 300 lbs. He didn't want to waste it all, so he asked if I wanted to give
    via u/Valladian
  • 26
    Font - some to my dogs. I, graciously, helped myself to roughly half a freezer's worth of meat. Some of which I stored in my own fridge, and the rest Chester was nice enough to offer to hold onto in his freezer until I needed it.
    via u/Valladian
  • 27
    Font - The kicker is that Chester had no idea the meat never actually defrosted, and was still perfectly good. That night I helped myself and my dogs to a couple of nice steaks, courtesy of ol' Chester himself, who was still busy walking the neighborhood unloading the 'tainted meat' on anyone who had a cat or dog that might want it. It was
    via u/Valladian
  • 28
    Font - at least four or five months before me and my dogs went through all the meat Chester had given us. I don't know if I made all my money back for the repairs on my car, but I didn't have to buy any meat for many a fortnight.
    via u/Valladian
  • 29
    Font - Original Fluff 6 hr. ago Genius to not actually spoil the meat. Odd this guy would hit your car and say nothing, but still trust you lol. 4 1.0k Reply Share
    via u/OriginalFluff
  • 30
    Font - awetsasquatch. 6 hr. ago I thought initially you were just going to waste all that meat, and was going to call you a massive a e, but this is way better lol, well done. 285 Reply Share
    via u/awetsasquatch
  • 31
    Font - Valladian OP · 6 hr. ago I thought he was just gonna toss it on his compost heap (which was large and could be smelled blocks away, another reason most of us didn't care for him) to
    via u/Valladian
  • 32
    Font - feed his tomatoes and whatnot. But the free meat was a nice bonus! The dude was a total dk when it came to accountability, but a total Chad when it came to community. Honestly,
    via u/Valladian
  • 33
    Font - he was not even my least favorite neighbor, in spite of him dinging my car. 136 Reply Share
    via u/Valladian

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nature outdoors neighbors penny storm defrost circuit breaker hail weather cars freezer camping food resident power outage fridge rain vacation meat
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