However, I would have asked first, and in fact, have done so in the past. I know the bins are the property of the city and not the homeowner, but I have no idea whether or not my neighbor might be done filling their bin, even if it’s already at the curb.
In fact, yesterday I put our bins out at the curb before we emptied all the inside trash and recycle bins because I happened to have the garage door open when I finished up my yard work. If someone had come by in the meantime and filled up my bin(s) so I couldn’t fit the rest of my stuff in them, I’d be kind of pissed, too.
I know you wouldn’t necessarily know which neighbor to ask, but I’d just knock on the closest door and ask if they would mind if you consolidated your trash since the street was out of room for another bin. You may still have had some other asshole neighbor pick your trash out and deliver it back to you, but at least you’d know you did the right thing by asking someone first.
I would like to know little more about why you and **ftg **think this. I can see getting upset about stuff in my recycling a few situations:
[ol]
[li]It fills up or overflows my bins before collection day, inconviencing me.[/li][li]It is dirty, messy or othewise creates something I have to clean (the area around it, or the bin itself)[/li][li]It is something that, if found by the wrong person could get me in trouble (sex toys, drugs, or drug paraphernalia come to mind).[/li][/ol]
In this case it was the night before collection, we wash our glass and plastics before putting them in our bin, the bins were in a common area, and the most embarrassing thing was probably the box for a fertility test.
I guess I can see being upset if those kinds of things had happened to you before, but the response was not only out of proportion, it was time consuming and counter productive in that they made a mess on the common area to do it.
Jonathan
PS. I would note that I would not put something in someone’s bin if it was on or in front of their property, even on collection night without their permission. In this case I did not want to go up down the street knocking on doors.
I’m also in the camp that says you were a very, very, slight jerk…but your neighbor was a big one.
Perhaps you do clean your recycling well, perhaps you don’t. In any case, you’ve got your recycling bin, I’ve got mine, and we’re each responsible for the upkeep and cleaning of our own. Please don’t make me deal with your waste.
I don’t even want to think about whether or not your waste is clean, or whether you have sorted it properly, or whether or not you put the drugs in my bin for some nefarious purpose of your own. Just don’t make it my problem. Take care of your own shit.
Again, though, your neighbor was a much bigger jerk. He or she could have just asked you to not do it again.
I think you should have asked first, but the neighbor’s reaction was so out of proportion that it renders any mild rudeness on your part irrelevant. I certainly wouldn’t apologize. I’d be tempted to dump the garbage out on their porch for real.
Assuming that your recycling is dry, non-staining, leaking stuff, I don’t see anything wrong with what you did. It would be more ridiculous, IMO, to knock on someone’s door and ask to do this.
Trash, I feel differently about. As others have mentioned, people (my dad, for instance) are particular about how their trash cans are maintained. Throwing your half-eaten steak in someone’s can is asking for an ass-kicking. But recycling? Who gives a toss?
That’s also assuming that you sort your recycling correctly. Now we have the “toss everything in the bin and go!” recycling program, but before we had rules about what kind of boxes (corrugated cardboard, not cereal boxes, etc.) and so on. My wife routinely put cereal boxes in there and it annoyed me to no end.
Oh yes, your neighbor is a fuckstain. So he/she observed you surreptitiously, and gave you a little “reminder” not to do it again. Passive aggressive, much? My neighbor used to let her dog run loose and it would shit in my yard. So I asked her politely not to let her dog do this. Problem solved. Neighbor could have done the same; doing what they did took considerably more effort and possibly a missing mental gear. Moron.
I think you’re totaly missing what you did wrong. It’s not about what you put in their bins, it’s about being courteous and not using other people’s stuff without permission.
Kind of like borrowing a post-it note off someone’s desk at work without asking. We get post-it notes for free, as many as we want, so no one gives a rat’s ass about losing a single post-it note. But you don’t take something from someone’s desk without permission. No matter how trivial.
If you asked permission, it would be entirely different. But you didn’t. You messed with someone else’s stuff, you didn’t do any harm or anything, but you don’t use other people’s stuff without permission. You don’t borrow a snow shovel without permission either, even if you put it back in exactly the same spot in as pristine condition. It’s just common courtesy.
Your neighbor is a dickwad though.
ETA: Although Hippy Hollow thinks it would be “ridiculous” to ask permission, most things like table manners are inconvenient and “ridiculous” in their own way. But good manners aren’t about you, they are about showing respect for the people around you, even if some of the conventions are a little silly.
In a way I agree with you IRT asking permission. As I said, if for some reason I wanted to put my recycling in the bin in front of someone’s house, I would definitely ask first. In this case I had three options:
[ol]
[li]Put my bins out streetside either completely blocking what little though acces was left or the sidewalk, or behind the garbage cans making life that much more difficult for the recycling guys.[/li][li]Knock on all the doors on my street, asking each neighbor if I could use their bin, then having them show me which unmarked bin was theirs.[/li][li]Just put it in the least empty bins, spreading it around so no one’s overflows.[/li][/ol]
I chose 3. as the least obnoxious. If this ever happens again (the street work is finished for now), I will make an effort to get my stuff out there before it fills up and let someone else worry about it.
I reckon something like this may have happened in this instance – the neighbour had more stuff to put in the bin, but came out and found it full. Why else would the neighbour make the effort to go out and look in their bin before it’s been collected? Unless they’re just plain jerks.
I can see your point about not using something that isn’t yours, but when it comes to things like post-it notes, 1. they aren’t anybody’s property - they’re the company’s property, and B. one post-it note taken off the bunch is not a big deal in anybody’s book (except a weirdo). It’s not like taking someone’s stapler or hole-punch (there is a special level of hell reserved for people who do things like that).
As for the OP, the only way I can see anyone normal minding what you did is if, as others have said, someone came back to their bin and it was full of your recycling. Other than that, they were the jerks.
I’m all about good manners, but coupled with common sense. I’d prefer people to not traipse over my yard, but if their frisbee or ball is there, and I’m home after a day’s hard work, please, get it yourself and don’t bother me with such petty matters. (Front yard, btw, not the back. Perhaps not the best example but I think you get where I’m coming from.
I think if the OP saw that the owner was around, accessible, yes, they should ask. Truth be told, we know how incredibly ridiculous the neighbor is by his/her reaction. If the neighbor had said, “Hey, could you not put your recycling in mine,” he/she’d be in the right and the OP should acknowledge, apologize, and move on.
If I was sitting at my desk and somebody wanted a post-it note, I would expect them to ask me. I wouldn’t expect them to hunt me down on the other side of the office if I wasn’t there - just take the damn thing!
Likewise, if my neighbor came back from the end of the court to my front door to ask me if they could put stuff in my recycle bin the night before pickup I’d think they were a bit of a fruitcake - a nice fruitcake, but a fruitcake nonetheless. If I’m standing right there - yeah, ask me. Otherwise just put the stuff in the bins - It’s What They’re There For.
I agree that the neighbor was being unreasonable. But in a society I think we need to respect others’ right to be unreasonable in our minds - at least with respect to their property.
I experience a similar situation regularly. When walking my dog, I clean up after them with a plastic bag which I then tie and carry home. But on garbage day I drop the tied bag in the nearest can at the curb. No one has ever said anything yet - heck, I don’t know if anyone has ever seen me. But in the back of my mind I always think some idiot might say something about it. I think their doing so would be stupid, but I’m not sure it is my place to say they are wrong.
I’m sure I have some attitudes about my property that many others might consider unreasonable. Nevertheless, I would expect them to respect the manner in which I use my property, no matter what they think of it.
Good lord it’s GARBAGE. Who has an attachment to trash? The neighbor is a nut. Besides, it was a special circumstance.
I agree however that it is courteous to ask; in fact my neighbor did ask one time. They were moving and had a bunch of stuff. I was surprised to be asked and of course said yes. Afterward I thought it would have been a bit presumptuous of them to just dump crap in our Curbies, so asking was the right thing to do. But lord, if someone did what the OP described I would not care in the slightest!
Nor would I care if walked-doggie poo were placed in my can, Dinsdale. I think we had a thread on this very topic one time and if I recall there were some “no poo dropping” opinions, FWIW.
I agree. But at least in some cases, I think everyone has the right to be a nut in whatever area they personally consider important. Can make neighborly relations difficult. Also can be a bit of a hassle trying to determine all of the possible ways someone might be unreasonable while moving about a society.
Moreover, don’t know that you ought to simply rely on what the law permits. In many situations I believe a considerate neighbor goes beyond the minimum the law requires to avoid unnecessarily inconveniencing their neighbors.
Yeah, I couldn’t imagine caring if someone dropped a tied bag of poo in my can, but it crosses my mind that someone might. Doesn’t keep me from doing it, but does cause me to be somewhat discreet about it.
I remember one time soon after I moved to a new place a neighbor 3 doors down came out yelling as my dog pissed on the parkway in front of his house. Never crossed my mind that someone might object to dog urine. But I remember a thread here where many people expressed concerns (unreasonable IME&E) about urea burning out their lawns, etc.
I vote that you were more presumptuous than I would have been to put your things into other bins, but I am pretty conservative about such choices.
I also vote that your neighbor’s response was weirdly extreme and inappropriate. I think they should not have cared, unless there’s some unthought-of additional consideration here. Their reaction would have me puzzling over what else might have been involved.
The whole topic is loaded with big feelings for what reasonably seems like tiny issues. Human territoriality may be aroused. Perhaps there have been other episodes like this for that neighbor.
In general I think human interactions should happen with, on both sides, a prejudice towards being more than fair. There should be some window of overlap between what each party does and accepts. Various situations have some special kind of pathology that messes with this in surprising ways (witness flame wars).
I also think fences make better neighbors (though this particular situation would not be a candidate for a fencing solution, of course).
I ruled this out because a) it was after 10pm, b) the bins are on end of the street, 20-500 yards from the normal location, and c) since I spread our stuff around, someone took recycling out of multiple bins and bagged some up and put the rest our garbage can, and d) they did it the next morning between the time the garbage people came and the recycling people came.