Aibu to have reported the dustbin lorry to the council?

[Bumpyroads]

Bit of back story us and our next door neighbours quietly dislike each other. Nobody has really said anything but I know we both annoy each other from what is said about the street. They moan about us, things we do etc.

Recently they have been playing loud music in the garden at the weekends in a passive aggressive way. This started when they complained about our chickens being noisy ( we have rehomed the chickens because of this but thats another story) the reason I'm saying all of this is because in general I am just in a bad mood about our neighbours and don't know if this has tainted my reaction.

So next door neighbour is a bin man, he wasn't at work.
Bin lorry come and parks up across my drive . Workmen get out and go in neighbours house/garden for 40 minutes having a drink and break. All this time I was unable to get off or access my drive. There was a bin lorry parked unattended across it.

So husband rings to complain to the council. They were confused as on their tracker the lorry was supposedly elsewhere. They also agreed 40minutes was excessive but said they must have been emptying bins? No they were having a cuppa at my neighbours! Council are going to investigate, I suspect they were taking unauthorised breaks and turning the tracker off.. maybe.

Anyway the reason this has also annoyed me so much is our neighbours have lived hear 30+ years and act like they own the street. Complain about anything we do (leaves from our trees fall in their garden for example.) They are 60+ and set in their ways and we are a young family. Tbh I just dont think they like us, we normally don't rise to it and smile and wave etc. But this time I had had enough and complained.

Aibu? And have we just started ww3?

yep. Don't piss off the binmen!

I’m a manager for a waste collection service and if this had been one of our crews, we would want to know about it.

Well if my friend came round for a cuppa and were parked infront of my neighbours drive I would have told them to move.
They bin men were wrong because you cant park over someone's drive.
If we had done the same to they neighbours they would be the first to complain.

This is the first time we have been petty I am not proud however they have been petty many times in the past and we have not retaliated.
Their pettiness included leaving their led disco lights on a timer to come on at night in their garden while they went on holiday knowing they would shine directly into our bedrooms. That is just an example of many things.

I can’t express how little this would bother me. I reckon I’d be too busy to notice anyway.

I'm with you OP as we live in flats and there are couple of car parks and two recessed bays and kerbside parking. We are continually being blocked in by delivery lorries or visitors who double park, stopping some of us getting our cars out - even when there are spaces available. Last week a builder parked his van so that I couldn't get my car out of the recessed bay even though the car park 100 yards away had lots of space. I had to get a taxi to get to a hospital appointment (I tried ringing the number on the can but no answer).

They're just too bloody lazy and don't give a toss about inconveniencing other people. And you can't go and ask them to move as you've no idea which fiat out of 93 they're in.

Has anyone else noticed that there are frequently threads on Mumsnet where the comments and percentage statistics seem to be at odds?
I haven’t counted but in this thread there seem to be many people stating OP is being unreasonable, but the voting shows 65% thinks she’s not being unreasonable.
I don’t have a strong opinion either way in this thread.

I was wondering that

Thank goodness for your post, @BirdLandedonmyHead - I was beginning to wonder if I was in a parallel universe here!

OP, you have done nothing wrong in reporting people who were blocking your drive.

Not to your neighbour you weren’t.
But to a crew of workers doing an unpleasant but necessary job, in blazing hot weather.

My DD is a postwoman. Yesterday, in 30+ heat, one of the last customers on their round invited her and her colleague in for cold drinks - they were so grateful. I wonder if someone was watching them and rang the depot to complain about completely being inconvenienced in no way whatsoever by their van being parked outside whilst they had a break…

I sympathise - but it won’t actually be your neighbour who gets into trouble, will it?

Her neighbour IS the binman

And they could have blocked his drive not hers

So be petty with your neighbour if you must.

Knock on the door and get them to move offthe drive if you must.

But don’t do what you did.

You know it was shit. Or else you wouldn’t be but-but-but petty.

I do get it because blocking someone’s drive is inconsiderate but for me if it were a bin man, workman, delivery man etc it wouldn’t bother me if I knew where to find them. I.e at next doors property.

When someone does it on the school run they’ve abandoned the car so can’t move it even if you needed it.

This was my point as well. It was assumed I knew where they were.
They were also blocking my other neighbours drive and they definitely wouldn't have known where they were

Did you ask the builder to move? I have had tradesmen's vans block me in (bottom of a cul de sac) but they always move when asked.

You didn’t report them because you were inconvenienced by them blocking your drive

You reported them because you are in a petty war with your neighbours

That’s why you look shitty

What an odd thing to do.

Why would you chose phoning the council as your first port of call over, you know, knocking on the door and asking them to shift the lorry? Presumably you didn’t want to do the latter because you weren’t actually going somewhere and knew the lack of then moving your own car would make you look a bit of a knob?

You've landed some strangers in trouble with their employer and gained nothing for yourself. Not sure why you'd do that. Do you know why you did it?

Its happened more than once and I didn't want it happening again when I actually did need to go out or come home.
They parked there because my neighbour will have said its ok. They could have parked infront of his house but wouldn't of because this wife would have needed to use the drive when she came home from work.

I shouldn't have to go and ask them. Hey could have knocked and explained that might have made it slightly more acceptable.

@CaptainMyCaptain Did you miss where I said I rang the number on the van but got no answer and with 93 flats it would take ages to knock on the door of every single one to find out where the builder is?

Regardless, why should I have to? There were dozens of spaces. There's no need to block people in. He was still there when I got back three hours later, he wasn't just dropping something off quickly then going.

Hope you're not planning to sell your house any time soon, as you have now formalised a once petty dispute between you and your neighbours. Would it have occurred to you to report if if your neighbour did any other job? I think not

"I don't understand why they dislike us so much ".

Well at least you now know one reason why they dislike you so much.
The positioning of the lorry didn't inconvenience you on this occasion so you should have left them to it and minded your own business.
I think I understand why you are disliked even if you don't see it!

They could have parked a few meters further up the road where there are no houses. My guess is they didn't because they are not supposed to leave the lorry unattended parked in the road.

I think you've been really petty.

You should have asked them to move and not have chosen the nuclear option of phoning their workplace.

Don't be surprised if your neighbours retaliate. What you did was spiteful.