Shutterstock, Reddit
If someone sees you outside working on your landscaping, they may think that you are hired help rather than the homeowner, and it can be an innocent mistake.
What would you do if someone not only thought you were a worker, but had some very racist things to say before indicating he want to hire you?
That is what happened to the woman in this story, so she went off on him, and scared him off, resulting in him damaging his vehicle while driving away.
Today I was out in my front yard weeding.
I’m sure this is important for the story.
Nothing I was wearing looked like any kind of uniform or had any logo on it – in fact, I was wearing paint-stained shorts and a t-shirt that had both seen better days.
I was on my knees wielding a weed knife. It’s a great tool, and if you do any gardening, I highly recommend it. I’m sure it would make an excellent weapon in the event of a zombie apocalypse, as well.
Someone needs her attention.
I live at the top of a busy T-intersection, so I paid no attention to the cars passing by, until I heard, “Hey! Hey! HEY! YOU!”
For a moment, I honestly thought it was probably that brat Brandon’s mom from down the street (Brandon’s mom stands on her porch and yells “Brandon! Brandon! BRANDON! Brandon! Brandon!” incessantly. Brandon ignores her because his mom never actually leaves the porch to make him do anything), except that the voice seemed to be coming from right behind me.
This would be unexpected.
I turned around to find a white Mustang sitting in the middle of the intersection (and pretty far into the oncoming lane) and a middle aged guy hanging out of the drivers side window, while a middle aged woman with an 80’s helmet hair/Margaret Thatcher do leaned over him.
“What do you charge for yardwork?” the guy asked.
She isn’t catching that they want to hire her.
Now, I’d been out in the sun, sweating, for a few hours, and not thinking about much other than the other chores that needed doing today, so I wasn’t too swift on the uptake.
“What yardwork?” I asked.
“Yardwork, yardwork! Gardening, mowing, that kind of stuff! What do you charge? Who do you work for?”
It is funny how oblivious she seems to be.
Seriously, I must have had a touch of sunstroke, I was so slow. “I work for [insert name of company I work for, name of which does not indicate their business]. What are you asking about?”
For the record, I don’t live in the kind of neighborhood where people hire gardeners. Even the elderly people, some of whom are weirdly obsessive about mowing their yards, don’t do more than hire some kids to run a lawn mower across their grass.
It sounds like most neighborhoods.
Most people on my street just have grass or ivy, but the previous owners of my house made an attempt to landscape, so I’ve continued and improved it. It certainly doesn’t look professionally done, though. I think you can see where this is going.
“What. Do. You. Charge. For. Yardwork? Is your boss around?” At this point, it was clear the guy was starting to think I was a bit slow, too. Then came the really choice bit. “The rest of the yard crews around here are all [RACIST TERM]. They won’t do a thing if I’m not there to watch over them every second. I want to hire decent white people to do my yard.”
Now she has it figured out, and I’m sure he is upset.
The light bulb finally dawned. I stood up. My knees probably made a godawful sound, but I did it without moaning. I replied in a monotone. “I don’t work here. I live here. This is my yard.”
“Don’t give me the runaround. This neighborhood is much too expensive for a girl like you. Who’s your boss? I don’t have all day here.” All this was said in a very belligerent, “don’t you know who I am” tone.
I can see where the confusion comes in.
At this point, the synapses had woken up and were firing again. Mr. Mustang thought he was in [Expensive, High Tax Borough] which borders my much less expensive, lower tax borough. [High Tax Borough] is about 5 blocks over.
You can’t actually tell you’re in a different municipality unless you look at the house prices, which run half again to twice as much as my neighborhood. When you get a bit farther over, on the other side of the cemetery, you get into the really pricey, fancy area of [High Tax Borough], where quite a few people do, indeed, hire yard crews (who are, in fact, mostly Hispanic).
I’m sure everyone knows this guy is an idiot.
But they have much, much bigger yards than mine. In other words, Mr. Mustang is an idiot.
I wasn’t too happy about the “girl” bit, either. I’m 42. I’m starting to look it, or at least within 5-10 years of it.
Whatever her age, he should have been more respectful.
Maybe I looked even a little younger due to my shabby clothes, unkempt hair, and lack of makeup, but still, I’m pretty obviously past the “girl” stage. I’ve also learned that you should never, ever assume that appearance = income.
“This is my yard and my house” I told him coldly. “You’re in [Low Tax Borough], not [High Tax Borough]. Get your racist self the heck out of here, you’re blocking the intersection.”
Oh, I’m sure she used much better phrasing.
(This is paraphrased slightly. There were more swear words in what I actually said. A lot more swear words, and some other insults, but this is the gist of it. Also, while all of this was going on, several cars had driven up to the intersection, honked at Mr. Mustang, then drove around him. It’s sadly not uncommon for douchebags to block our rather narrow streets while they do…whatever it is that they do.)
Oh, is his wife going to pretend to be offended?
Mrs. Mustang (I assume) gasped, Mr. Mustang went red in the face and started to make like he was going to get out of the car.
So, I held up the weed knife and started ostentatiously wiping the dirt off it (this worked really well with the dude who drove by last summer while I was working on the front yard and yelled some choice insults at me).
He is easily intimidated.
Mr. Mustang drove off real fast and nearly hit someone coming in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, he missed them.
However, he managed to clip his passenger side mirror on one of the parked cars and knocked it clean off.
She is just being a good neighbor.
When he stopped to retrieve his mirror, I managed to catch his license plate number and left a note on the car he hit.
Here’s hoping Mr. Mustang’s car insurance premiums go up, he finds out he actually lives in my [Low Tax Borough] and not the fancy neighboring [High Tax Borough], and all the grass in his yard dies.
Some people are just jerks and think that they are better than everyone else, and this guy sounds like one of them.
Read on to see what the people in the comments had to say about this story.
Here is someone who experienced something similar.
This would get real annoying real quick.
Hey, she was just cleaning the knife.
Yeah, this was really good.
This jerk got put in his place.
If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.
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