To think the bloke who told me off for taking grit out of the grit bin should fuck off

[Birdbox181]

This morning, I had to get my elderly neighbour to a hospital appointment. She has bone cancer in both hips. Her drive way was very slippery this morning. A fall for her could be fatal. She's on crutches.

I drove to the nearest grit bin I could find, filled a bag for life, probably a quarter full and put it down on her front door step, drive way and the pavement outside her property.

As I was putting it into my bag a bloke stopped and reprimanded me, telling me it's not for private use. I explained the situation and but he wasn't interested.

What an absolute cock.

Are you a woman? Ime another bloke would have been left to get on with his manly business. Neighbours round here often collect bucketfuls to spread at junctions where braking creates ice patches and don't get asked what we're doing with it.

Officious twit. When he's old and immobile and in terror of a fall he'll feel very differently (and wish he had neighbours as caring as you).

I don't see why the distance makes any difference at all. Completely irrelevant.

I would have told him to, get fucked, and probably made matters worse.

You don’t need to explain yourself to noisy, self important men. This should be your only learning point from this experience.

Of course it makes a difference. Grit bins are for the use of people in the immediate area for use on public paths only.

You can't just drive about looking for a bin to help yourself to.

I can understand why you did it and he was a dick to address you in the way he did, but the fact is you did misuse the facility and he is right to say the grit is not for use on public land.

You're right, I shouldn't have even engaged in conversation. I thought he was just being friendly at first until the lecture started.

YANBU. You were doing a good deed.

There's a certain type of man with a sense of superiority who likes to lord it over women. He likely wouldn't have confronted another man.

We had a grit bin installed by the Council at the end of our street a couple of years ago. Apart from when my DH used it last year to spread the salt on the road, I have only seen 2 other people use it. One was the Evri delivery driver, who put some in a bag in the back of their van, the other a neighbour who did similar the other day, but I've no idea where they were going with it.
Whilst on the face of it it seems a bit cheeky to help yourself for personal use, in reality the cost of a few shovels full of grit is a lot less than the cost of the NHS treating an elderly person who has a fall. So on that basis, I don't have a problem with it. (And yes I know the grit is paid for by the LA not the NHS but it's all tax payer's money ).

It is for public use to spread on the roads and pavements. That's why they are mostly positioned at junctions.

A few greedy homeowners carting it away fir their own drives leaves the roads and pavements untreated.

The sex of the people in the conversation is irrelevant.

Of course it makes a difference. Grit bins are for the use of people in the immediate area for use on public paths only.

Yeah, this. I wouldn't have said anything. But he wasn't wrong.

I think the thing is, in this case it's probably justified. But in general, it's there for people to use to salt public footpaths that the council can't get to.

If everyone drives up to their nearest and salts their driveway, there's nothing left for everyone else is there? So a public resource is used for private needs.

Everyone can probably justify it by saying "well if I slipped it would drain public resources" but I'm just not sure if that's a good enough response. This weather was well reported and forecasted. If she was unable to leave her house, she had time to source her own grit or make alternative arrangements (such as patient transport)

Where does it say its only for use in the immediate area? If that was the case there'd have to be one on every road with a potential slip hazard. They're for use in any public area, not just for the street they're on. The distance really is irrelevant.

Easily done, you didn’t realise he was a dick head before he started lecturing you.

He may have been technically right, but under the circumstances pragmatically you were entirely reasonable. Your actions were a public good.

There's two grit bins on our road (Pennine moors, up a hill), it is really intended for road and pavements but sometimes people do fill a bucket for their driveway. In some ways it's excusable when you live on a steep hill - you don't want to skid across the road as you exit your drive - but I don't think it would go down well here if people came up from the non-hilly streets to fill a bag with grit...

You say cheeky; I say resourceful, and public spirited, under the circumstances 🙂.

If you look up on your council website it will say exactly the criteria around where bins are - which is to serve specific areas and it will say it's for use on public land only. It's pretty obvious that if people rock up from anywhere to nick grit to spread on their private land then it doesn't get used where it's actually intended to be used.

So, putting aside whether you agree with that or not and how he spoke to you, the man was correct.

Isn't it sad that everything boils down to money though.

The whole conversation just made me feel really sad (and angry).

And I can't believe any posters on here think I was wrong because the bin wasn't on the ladies street.

If everyone did that there wouldn't be any left in the grit bin for people to use on the roads and pavements where they live

@rainbowunicorn this is such a stupid argument. Everyone isn't going to do it are they, because most people don't need to. Do try and apply some common sense. It's not as if this guy thought he had better reprimand OP as if he didn't, then the whole neighbourhood would be there taking all the grit just because they could! He is clearly a self important tosser who wanted his tuppence worth. Very much doubt he'd have said a word if OP looked like Duane the Rock Johnson.

Under the circumstances, which I have already stated, it's understandable why OP did what she did and I think any reasonable person would, once explained, would go "oh, fair enough then", and not be a tosser about it as this guy clearly was.

But that's a separate discussion to "was OP entitled to take the grit and use it as she did?", and, strictly speaking, the answer to that question is no.

Did this happen? Did a few greedy homeowners fall upon this grit bin like a plague of shovel bearing dementors and empty it causing a disaster?

No. One woman who was trying to get her cancer patient elderlly neighbour, which lets' face it could be any of us one day, used a bagfull to get her there.

That's what happened. Let's not get all dramatic.

How's a random guy going to know all that story though, all he's seeing is someone filling a bag.

@canyouletthedogoutplease but that's not what it's there for.

If OP cares so much, why not get a 10kg bag on Amazon for a tenner and make sure her neighbour is always safe, instead of stealing public resources?

In your circumstances I would have done the same. But I don't think it was unreasonable for him to remind you that it's not for private use if he thought you were nicking it. If he carried on after you explained, then yes, he's a bit of a cock.