'She didn't like my way, so I did it her way': Returning college student gets back at parents for interfering with yard work project

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 18, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

These parents were hoping their kid could provide them with a pristine lawn. It's a goal that many suburban and rural homeowners spend a great deal of time thinking about. People love to have a perfect lawn: it makes their whole property look well-kept and cared about. But it takes a ton of upkeep, especially for those with a huge property or tons of trees or plants that also need to be maintained. 

At least if you're a couple with older kids, you can have them help with the yardwork. You can have your kid start raking leaves when they're like 8 years old, and by the time they're a teenager, they'll be ready to pitch in with other parts of yard work like leaf-blowing or weeding the garden. 

This college student seems like they went the extra mile with yard work to try and make up for dropping out of school and moving back in with their parents. They realized that their parent's yard was a little trickier to deal with than a lawn full of grass, and they had a nice method for dealing with it… until the day their mom got a bit too impatient. 

Up next, read about the two "worst lawyers ever," who accidentally gifted their employee an early retirement and a full pension (oops!). 

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    Cheezburger Image 10405309184
    via Jon Tyson on Unsplash
  • 02
    Fine, I'll pick up the leaves your way.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 03
    Some background: 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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 04
    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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 05
    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
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 06
    often runs around the entirety of the yard, those leaves get mixed in with all the pine straw. 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:
    via u/SerMeliodas
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    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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 08
    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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 09
    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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 10
    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. 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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 11
    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 depite 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,
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 12
    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. 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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 13
    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 r/MaliciousCompliance. 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
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 14
    needles, and those too-small-to- pick-up leaves. 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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
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    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.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 16
    Writer's Note: Let me know how I did! This is my first ever post on a subreddit, so if my formatting is weird, that's why. I'll try to fix any odd formatting if you tell me what's wrong.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 17
    Also, please be nice when commenting about my mother. She may have made a mistake, but I still love her. She IS my mom after all. Everybody makes mistakes, what matters is whether or not we learn from them.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 18
    SerMeliodas OP I honestly didn't expect this post to be so controversial. But then again, I guess this IS Reddit.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 19
    abeazacha Lock your son out in a rainy day def is above the "mistake" line for me, ngl.
    via u/abeazacha
  • 20
    upr3 Great story but. Your mom sounds like a bit of an
    via u/upr3
  • 21
    SerMeliodas OP She was mad because I dropped out. I can't really blame her for being angry.
    via u/SerMeliodas
  • 22
    DesktopChill ::chuckles:: was she mad when you got done? I personally think it was funny..mama doesn't always know best.
    via u/DesktopChill
  • 23
    SerMeliodas OP She actually seemed more mad at herself than at me. Honestly, At that point I didn't care if she was mad at me, she didn't like my way, so I did it her way. By the way, I had tried to tell them before college that applying for student loans is not the way to go, and that grants and scholarships are the way to go. They signed me up for student loans anyway. Thanks mom and dad, I'm going to be in debt forever!
    via u/SerMeliodas

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autumn malicious compliance mother malicious-compliance-reddit leaves mom malicious compliance reddit parents fall outdoors chores funny
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