Homeowner Learns Neighbors Are Stealing His Power to Build House, Handles Situation Perfectly

Neighbors will often do each other a solid: watch each others' kids from time to time so the parents can have two hours to themselves on a date night and take a break from viewing their significant other as an enemy they live with. Maybe you'll let your neighbor borrow some power tools, or grab some fuel for their lawnmower when it craps out.

As a thank you, maybe you'll keep an eye on their house while they're on vacation and check on things from time to time while refraining from using their toilet because even though it's a relatively harmless thing to do: you have a problem with toilet exploration and it needs to stop.

Sometimes, though, neighbors can do things that make us want to tear our hair out to the tune of "Bad Blood" (Taylor's Version) they put on repeat while they perform their stretching routine...9 days in a row.

Other times they do things that may not only cost us money, but are presumptuous and a little too cavalier with our belongings.

This is what happened with TikTok user Mario Tims (@originaltimes4real) who posted a pair of videos about an incident involving a sub-contractor who was installing countertops in his soon-to-be-neighbor's home adjacent to his abode.

In the first clip, Mario records himself walking outside of his home to show how the neighbors are slurping up his power: "On a scale to 1 to 10, how mad would you be?"

His video camera then flips around to show a long extension cord running from his property to the neighbors' — it's evident that someone's getting power from Mario's juice.

The TikToker offered up an answer to his own question in a red-lettered text overlay, stating that he's currently at a 6.5 upon seeing that his neighbors simply decided to help themselves to his power.

He gave a breakdown of what was going on: "These people in this house next door are building a house, and they are running electricity to my house from the house that he's building. So I came early cause somebody they were doing it."

Mario capped off his video by further indicating he wasn't a fan of the neighbor's actions: "Uh, huh."

Folks who saw the germination of what looked to be a neighborly feud clamored for an update to the situation, and Mario obliged in a follow-up video where he shed some additional light on what went down with the very presumptuous extension cord.

As it turns out, Mario knew exactly who to call to address the scenario because the person who was building the house next door was the same builder who constructed his own home.

From the way the TikToker tells the story, however, it doesn't seem like the builder was on-premises or knew anything about the power being jacked from Mario's house, as the energy-victimized homeowner says, the builder was "hot" and properly livid because he arranged for the counter top installers on site to have their own independent source of power.

Mario showed off the temporary power solution in the video: a pole with its own legit meter to read usage and the whole shebang was available for his workers to use and they either ignored the box, didn't check to see if it was there, or perhaps they were completely unaware of the power box's existence.

"They can go to the pole and they can get power. He wasn't doing this, we talk to the company, the company of course, apologized, they said we sent a...subcontractor out, a father and son who were supposed to do it and he said they have no reason to be doing that," Mario explained, before adding that the building company promised to rectify the situation "immediately."

Furthermore, the business urged him to contact his energy company to assess any additional power expenditures that may have been incurred as a result of the subcontractors' using his exterior outlet and not the power that was provided to them.

Mario also used the second video as an opportunity to respond to some of the suggestions from users who came up with a lot of creative ways for him to rectify the situation, one of which included "strangling" the power pilferers.

The homeowner said he wasn't a fan of this idea and implored folks to never go out of their way to harm someone who never laid their hands on them, as peeved as he was that they decided to go on his property and grab his power.

While this type of Mr. Rogers-esque life lesson does seem to come out of left field, it is a pertinent piece of information that many homeowners could benefit from: coming in hot at your neighbor's from the get-go might not be the best idea. Even worse would be to get all up in the grill of laborers you probably know next to nothing about. Meanwhile, they know right where you live.

Mario went on to say in his update that after contacting the power company he was told that they didn't notice any strange aberrations or jumps in usage — instead, the inverse seemed to be the case with a rep from his energy provider stating that the last two months were his lowest energy usage months ever.

He said that he was going to continue to monitor the situation with the energy company and ensure he wasn't getting hit with an unusually high bill, as he wasn't sure how long the sub-contractors were using his outlet and how much power their equipment drew, a caption in his clip seems to suggest that he's not looking to cause a big stink over the incident.

Sure, he said that he was going to let the new neighbors know when they moved in (hopefully after welcoming them first) that a couple of the builder's employees were using his outlets, but the message he left to his fellow TikTokers urged them to tow the line of positivity, and maybe curb that "let's burn down the neighbors' house," talk.

Mario writes in the caption for his video: "I've been with so many families who experience sickness and death. The thing they've always taught me is 'Every minute we spend being mad, is one less minute we spend being happy.'"

And while there were several commenters who said that they were miffed, like this person who couldn't believe that the workers missed seeing the power pole: "omg, the power pole was RIGHT THERE. I would be so annoyed!" and another who said they would use the incident as an opportunity to get some money from their neighbor: "They would be paying my bill for the month"

There were other users who praised the level-headed, thorough, and understanding way Mario was able to ultimately solve the issue in a cool, calm, and collected manner, without being a pushover.