Homeowner says he acquired 'the rights' to his neighbor's fallen leaves by paying them $1, all just to get back at a leaf collection company that had failed to collect his leaves earlier, leaving most of his pile behind

“Leaves are falling all around…” 

Autumn and fallen leaves are something that go hand in hand. A real marker of change and the shifting of the seasons... There's something soothing and romantic about the idea that has made its way through all areas of music and popular culture.

But there's nothing soothing and romantic about leaves if you're a property owner who lives in an area where the season delivers a dumping of wet, decaying leaves that you have to somehow get rid of… 

It's like getting a massive snowfall that doesn't melt and, according to the information provided in the ensuing discussion, the piles of leaves host any number of undesirable things… 

This was the case for this homeowner, who says they live at the end of a cul-de-sac, describing their wedge-shaped property with dozens of oak trees. Leaving them with lots and lots of leaves but very little curb space for leaf collection.

Lots of leaves and very little curb… This sets the stage for the collection company's own “willful ignorance” and the homeowner's malicious compliance as payback.

There were ownership requirements, too. Each homeowner needed an individual subscription, neighbors could not combine their piles, and the leaves had to belong to the subscriber and come from the current year.

The leaves had to be “within 5' of the owner's curb, but on the road.”

AND

“At least 15' from a mailbox”

The homeowner explained this in their own words:

That's a lot of rules for the simple task of picking up leaves… We're approaching the complexity that local city parking enforcement agencies employ just to trip people up.

You'd have to imagine that the rules only existed simply so the company could find a way out of providing the one service they were paid to do…

Which seems to be the case since the homeowner goes on to describe the effort they put into not picking up people's leaves.

All these rules presented a problem to the homeowner, who, especially with the mailbox rule, had, as we discussed earlier, very little curb space and a LOT of leaves.

So he called the company to sort it out.

“No problem.” They said.

But “No Problem” turned out to be quite the problem. When the company strictly applied their rules and didn't pick up even half of their pile.

You might have noticed something already that the homeowner says they soon figured out…

There were limits on everything EXCEPT the height of the pile.

Here lay the answer to their problem.

They describe how they got to work:

It was hard work, but it paid off when the company had to come back several times to collect the entire pile.

unclewombie, commented:

I am super confused here. I am Aussie and we don’t have anything like you are saying so I have some genuine questions:

Why would people come to pick up leaves? Don’t you just mow them?

If not, why would you remove them? Leaf mulch is exceptional for your soil. If you raked them into circle around the base of your trees and just left it till summer you would have huge soil improvement.

How come you had to pay your neighbour’s? Couldn’t you just say hey to save you the hassle I am taking them into one hilarious pile? Mate other streets here would be donating lol.

How does a company exist to even pick leaves up? Like there is that many people they can make a living off this, are these leaves like dangerous?

The homeowner, nillanute4283, replied here with new information, giving some backstory as to how the current arrangement for leaf management came about, explaining how the area where they live used to burn the leaves and how this is now banned in “the area of the United States."

Fair questions, stranger from the land of danger.

1. It's a lot of leaves and most of them fell within two days. They covered 1/2 acre of land, 3 to 6 inches thick and I could see no grass. Attempting to mow/mulch them would have burned out my lawn tractor motor. Even mulched, I think they would result in a significant layer that would suffocate the grass before they could break down to feed it. I might try mulching next year though.
2. I paid my neighbors so that I could legitimately claim the leaves to be mine. To be fair, they thought I was mental. This is something I did so I could meet the letter of the law that only "my" leaves were in the pile. In case you were confused like others were, I paid $1 to each neighbour (3 of them), not $1 for each leaf. Since this whole game was inspired by this subreddit, I wanted to make sure I fully met the "compliance" requirements.
3. The danger is leaf burning. The swanky neighborhoods in the county (a district approximately 480 square miles (774 sq km) in area) includes over 33000 homes outside the limits of the established cities. There's still a lot of farmland in this part of the U.S. To maintain lawns (in many cases, lawn standards are enforced by neighborhood associations called Home Owners Associations or HOAs), leaves are raked / blown / gathered, but most individual home owners have nowhere to put them. They used to burn the leaves, but it would result in a smoke haze that would last weeks and trigger every asthmatic. Hospital visits would skyrocket. Even before all the respiratory complications with C*VID, the county had banned leaf burning. Since they banned burning, though, they had to provide an alternative. They chose to contract with the largest lawn service company in the area, who used the contract to build up a fleet of leaf collection trucks. They collect leaves in the fall and the spring. I don't know if those trucks get used in the winter and summer.