L🫪

Last Thursday, my neighbor told me I was selfish for putting a lock on my own trash bin. She’d canceled her collection service because she’d decided to use mine. Our collection company charges by bin size. Extra bags need prepaid tags. There are only two of us, so we pay for the smallest bin. For several weeks, I’d put one bag in at night and find the lid barely closing by morning. Once, I couldn’t fit our kitchen trash inside. I kept it in the garage until the following week, wondering how we’d suddenly started producing so much. Then I checked the driveway camera. At five in the morning, my neighbor came over carrying two bags. She went home and returned with another. When I asked her about it, she didn’t deny anything. She said collection was too expensive, and my bin usually had room. “The truck’s coming anyway. What difference does it make?” I explained that I was paying for the space, and sometimes her bags left no room for ours. She sighed and said she’d stop. The following week, she did it again. So I secured the lid overnight and arranged to unlock it before the truck arrived. On collection morning, I went outside with the key. The lock was still there. So were three bags of her trash, stacked beside the bin on my driveway.