Bin cleaners told DH to fuck off

[Rudeness101]

The neighbours have recently started getting their bins cleaned and the bin cleaner keeps moving our bin to the middle of the driveway creating an obstacle when we return.

DH saw them earlier and went to explain the issue and ask they kindly put the bin back when finished to which the guy told DH to fuck off. DH was taken aback but repeated that he’s having to stop the car in the street to move the bin to then drive in, to which the cleaner again told him to fuck off and started laughing.

His colleagues then joined in calling DH a cunt and the pair of them left laughing. DH wrote an email of complaint to the company but learned they’re a small family owned firm. Therefore quite likely one or both of the men are probably related to the owners.

DH is trying to take the high ground and assume they were having a bad day but that doesn’t solve the problem and inconvenience of the cleaners blocking our driveway. The bin is cleaned the same day they’re emptied so not possible for us to hide the bin away, and the street and properties are small so it’s not like we can leave our bins out elsewhere.

We also don’t know the neighbours well enough to think they’d change companies.

WWYD?

But family business or not, they still need customers for it to survive. I highly doubt that they tell prospective new customers that they will freely and wantonly verbally abuse their neighbours for making perfectly reasonable requests.

If I were having a regular service of this kind and a neighbour told me that the people doing it were a bit grumpy or sullen, I wouldn't think too much about it; but if I knew that they were actively abusing and mocking (even bullying, by the sounds of it) my neighbours (let alone annoying them by needlessly moving their property too), I'd be cancelling forthwith.

It's just such a stupid, pointless thing for them to do - especially when running a business in the community. I can only assume that's 'just' the kind of people they are - probably the same kind who routinely shout at women, overweight people, non-white people in the street as they drive by, and guffaw at how amazingly clever they think they are.

What I mean is I doubt they will go “ this review will lose us business .. pack it in you two” Apples not falling from the tree and all that.

Stay home one day when the bin cleaners are due (park elsewhere) and spread something sticky over the bin handle as soon as the bins are emptied but then leave it in the usual place.

First thing I'd do is tell the neighbours what is happening. If they are decent people they should have a word with the cleaners

If there's no satisfactory response then is there anyway of blocking entry to your drive?

Or final solution pour something nasty on your bin lids .

Gosh your poor DH! If a neighbour came and told me that this had happened there is no way I would use them again. I’d far rather be on good terms with neighbours than I would carry on using scum like this.

Sorry, I am absolutely dying at “bin cleaners” 🤣

Even if I hated my neighbours, let alone didn't know them, I wouldn't tolerate this from tradespeople I was paying on my property. It would be the last time they cleaned my bins and I wouldn't tell them why.

I suppose the issue you might have is your neighbours might wish to give them the benefit of the doubt and chance to explain themselves, at which point they are nice as pie, only to scratch your car on the next visit.

For all those confused by bin cleaning, it's unlikely the same bin is being cleaned weekly. I have 4 bins, each on a 4 weekly collection so a different bin goes out each week. Each bin is cleaned 4 weekly.

The bin cleaners follow the bin lorries and clean straight after them being emptied. My bins sit beside the stairs into my back garden.

£13 every for 4 weeks for clean bins, no smell wafting in my garden and my bins being put back for me rather than left in the middle of the street by the council is worth it. I couldn't be bothered to get my pressure washer out every Monday to do it myself.

Speak to your neighbour, I would be mortified to think anyone I've paid for a service had verbally abused my neighbour.

If one of my neighbours came to me and told me someone I employed had said what the opening poster describes, I'd get rid of the person/company I had employed.

apart from the fact I'm a good and reasonable person (of course I am 😆) it's in my best interests to stay on good terms with my neighbours rather than an anonymous employer.

Tell your neighbours that you're not happy .

Also leave a factual Google review.

Tell your neighbours. If I were them I'd be telling the cleaners to Fuck Off!!

Please tell me you're not my sister. This is exactly the sort of thing that would happen to my BIL!

Unfortunately the sort of people who will call a stranger a cunt in the middle of the street - even though that stranger is a neighbour of a regular customer - are not people you are going to get anywhere with.

I would probably tell the neighbour though, and hopefully the neighbour will apologise to you on their behalf and agree to have a word with them. They may be more inclined to listen to the neighbour as he or she is'paying them.

Or they might just tell the neighbour to fuck off or the neighbour might tell you to fuck off and you then need to decide whether to start an ongoing multi-year feud.

Well I have never heard of bin cleaners or considered cleaning my bin, so there’s one in the eye for them.

I am now imagining bin cleaners being a bit like bin weevils.

Fill it with concrete blocks and cover the handles with burglar paint, although I accept that might be cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Petty but I think I'd be out pressure washing my own driveway and bins when these two idiots turned up.

Equally I absolutely would mention this to the neighbours. I don't know my neighbours that well or have any great affection for them but if they told me this I would find someone else to clean my bins, I'd not want to give my money to scruffs or have this kind of thing going on outside my house.

1. Speak to your neighbours. I would be affronted if I’d employed someone to do a job for me and they’d verbally abused people.
2. Leave a Google review
3. Local Facebook and name and shame them (screenshot your review so people know you’re serious)
4. Come back to this thread with an update about what your neighbours say/do and what happens with step 2 and 3

They don't sound very nice at all. I wouldn't be happy if they were my bin cleaners and you were my neighbour and told me, in fact I would stop using them.

I gave up getting my bins cleaned and do it myself. Often mine would turn up very late, when it was getting dark.

Once they missed them altogether so I phoned the company who said they would speak to the cleaner. They then rang me back to say, no, he has cleaned your bins today! I said obviously not, I do have a ring camera you know, anyway they reluctantly came to to clean them but since then I thought I'm just as well doing it myself.

I’m so surprised! I’ve got to my mid 50’s without knowing anyone had their bin cleaned, that there were companies specifically doing it and that people paid to have it done every week! Just how dirty do peoples bins get? Don’t you use bin bags?

I always throw a bit of disinfectant down my bins then jet wash them.

It is needed here, the bin men like to 'amalgamate' everyone's rubbish and stuff it all in a few bins as high as possible with the lid up, so they then don't have to wheel them all to the lorry. On a few times since they've started doing this in the summer, it's then been left with maggots in, probably as a result of someone else's maggot invested rubbish being dumped in my bin by the before being emptied.

Lol our council binment stick al the bins in the middle of the driveway for done obscure reason.

It's a minor inconvenience

I would suggest to neighbours that this is one of those things in life that is for people with driveways (I don't have a driveway)

This really.

i know it's awkward, but needs must.

id happily use a different company if the company I was using spoke to my neighbour the way they spoke to your DH & id share on 'Nextdoor' (& Facebook too if I used it)

The council would be hearing about that! & I'd expect it to stop! I don't want someone's bin juice & maggots in my bin (where it's all bagged up & the actual bin is kept clean.