Woman refused to pay kids who shovelled snow from her drive - but there's a twist

A woman has refused to pay the children who shovelled snow off his driveway and believes she’s justified because there’s a twist to the story.

The woman posted about the incident on Reddit’s Am I The A**hole sub, in which people ask other Reddit users to determine if they were in the wrong or not.

Explaining the situation, the 26-year-old said she lives in the Midwest of the United States, which had been hit with about 14 inches of snowfall.

She wrote: “I work from home and received a knock at my door today. There was a group of like four 12 year old-ish boys, and they had shovelled my driveway and sidewalk and were now requesting payment. They expected $15 each.”

But, she explained that the children hadn’t asked her if she wanted her driveway shovelled before doing it.

She went on: “I was really confused because they never knocked to ask if they could shovel my driveway. They just did it without asking and were expecting to be paid.”

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The woman explained to the boys that she didn’t have any cash, but they produced a phone and said they had their mum’s Venmo account she can transfer the money to.

She told them she had planned on shovelling her driveway at lunch and, had they asked her, she would have said no.

The woman then said: “The kids got really upset, and were like ‘You're not going to pay us for our work??’ But again, I didn't ask them to shovel my driveway.

“They started yelling at me and I just kind of shut my door.”

A few hours later, the woman explained, one of the boy’s mums came to her door demanding that she pay the children, saying “She was proud of her boys for using their snow day to help people, and I was being really ungrateful and going to make them turn to drugs next time”.

The woman said she still refused, adding that she didn’t want to “re-enforce bad behavior”.

She explained: “Just because they're children and people feel the need to let them get away with whatever, this is just not a cycle I want to perpetuate for these kids.

“You can't manipulate people into paying you for something they never asked for.”

The woman added that she was being called a “heartless monster who took advantage of children” on the neighbourhood website NextDoor.

But, most people responding to the post were on the woman’s side, agreeing that she shouldn’t have to pay for a service she never asked for.

One person wrote: “NTA [not the a**hole]. Shakedowns are against the law. Fire back on nextdoor if you care about that, but this is a perfectly acceptable hill to die on.”

Another agreed, commenting: “NTA- it's a common scam in my area of people doing ‘helpful’ tasks and then asking to be paid for it.

“Firstly I never gave permission for you to be on my property and 2ndly I never agreed to paying for you to do a task I do each week/month. That's not being helpful that's scamming.”

Someone else added: “It’s obvious where those kids learned their bad and intrusive behaviour.”

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