And entitled Karen demands that I pay her son for mowing my lawn, despite the fact that I never

asked him to mow it in the first place. And even though I tried to explain the situation to this lady,

this Karen was freaking out and refusing to take no for an answer, demanding that I pay her son.

Here's what happened. I'm a 29-year-old male, and I recently bought my first house. I'm settling in,

and I really like the

neighborhood and a few neighbors even came by to say hello and that included a woman in her 40s

and her 13 year old son. Well, not long afterwards, I was on my couch one afternoon and I saw

this lady's son outside mowing my front lawn. Now I was confused since I had never asked him to do it

and he had never offered. So I went out and politely asked him why he was doing it. He said he did it for lots of neighbors, and quickly added that they gave him $5 for it. Now, I found it really weird. So I thanked him for the partial work that he had done before explaining that since I hadn't asked him or wanted him to do it, I wasn't going to be paying him.

He then said, okay, and then quietly left my lawn. Now, I figure that might be the end of it. It's just a kid trying to make some money, and it would have been resolved with no harm done, thus making it the end of the story. But the next day, his mom arrived on my doorstep and angrily asked me why I had not paid her son. Well, when she said

this, I basically repeated what I said to her son, but she just wouldn't accept it. She just kept saying that it was a kind gesture and that he does it for all of the other neighbors. It's only $5. It's not a lot of money. You could have given it to him if you wanted to. When she said that I kept trying to explain that an agreement like that needs to be set up ahead of time.

Otherwise, it's just nothing more than a random demand for money. But regardless of what I said, she basically tuned me out and ended up walking away as I was talking. And I was amazed the adult in the situation was handling this worse than the literal child was. And right now,

I'm wondering how much longer this will go on for. Well, that was last week. And every time I've

seen her since, she's stared daggers at me or made a show of crossing the street to avoid me.

I'm not instigating any further, and I really have no desire to speak to her. But I'm thinking

she might try to send her poor kid

back to collect the money or even mow the lawn again. Now, I have vented about this to my family and friends, and while most seem to agree with me, some said I should have been grateful and paid the boy and just told them from then on not to mow my lawn. Now, I can't tell if I've been the jerk here, or if my reaction to the entire situation was entirely justified. What should I do? No, I don't think you're the jerk at all. I do feel bad for the kid, because obviously they're just trying to hustle and make some money, but they did this completely wrong, and in a way that kind of like backs you into a corner, where if you don't pay him, you're going to be seen as a monster, but if you do pay him, you would basically be encouraging this behavior and you would be on the hook for any future endeavors. And that sounds incredibly annoying. Like seriously, who would just walk up and be like, okay, I'm going to mow this lawn and then ask for money? Like the better way to do this would be to walk up to the front door and say, hey, I'll mow your lawn for five bucks, and then you can go about doing it, but like, this is completely backwards. Now, with that in mind, it kind of makes me believe that this was intentional and that he absolutely did this on purpose and this is like part of his scheme and his mom is in on it in some kind of way. Like, just look at the way she reacted when you said, no, I'm not going to pay for a service I never asked for. She threw a temper tantrum and said, oh, it's only $5. Come on, you could have given it to them. And for me, when anyone's this pushy about money that I don't owe them, that's like a red flag I will never ignore. It really gives the impression that she's trying to work some kind of weird angle. So no, you are not the jerk in this scenario.

The way they did this was completely weird. And if I was in your shoes, I would have done the exact same thing. If you like Am I the Jerk, you're probably going to love Am I the Genius. Check it out, link down below in the description. Also, go to am I the jerk.com slash submit if you would like to submit your own stories. Am I the jerk for throwing my kid's happy meal out into the trash after my mom bought this for them, despite the fact that I made it explicitly clear that I don't want them having that. Because right now, my obese mother is angry at me, saying that I'm trying to bully her just like the doctors who were trying to get her to lose weight. Here's what happened. When I was a child, my mother had no concept of what healthy food was.

If it said diet on the box, it was okay. She would serve me cereal for breakfast, with dinners often being processed ready to eat junk or McDonald's. And after-school snacks were either cookies

or little Debbie snack cakes.

My mom is obese and I was almost 300 pounds when I graduated high school.

It was only after I moved out that I realized how unhealthy I was and it took me years to

...