“Is He Just Being Kind?” — Man Spots Stranger Washing His Parked Car, Has No Clue What to Do

A man who moved from Flagstaff, Ariz. to Portland, Ore., experienced a bit of culture shock after he noticed, while working from home, that a stranger decided to walk up to his vehicle that was parked on the street and begin washing it.

Wyatt Lan (@wyatt_Ian) uploaded a viral TikTok post where he recorded the random person going about their work without provocation or any prior notice.

Flabbergasted and unsure of what to do, the TikTok user opted to just capture the man's actions on video and share his bewilderment with other folks on the application.

"There's a man washing my car outside — I don't know who he is. Like, I'm just working at my desk and I look at the window and he's just full-on washing my car," he says in the video.

He then aims his camera lens out of his window to show the random stranger in question working on his car with what looks like a specialized mop. Wyatt's vehicle is covered in suds — the man walks around the car and continually wipes it down.

"Like ... was it that dirty that he was offended or something? What the f--k?" he asks into the camera. "What do I do here?" the new Portland resident asks into the camera.

Folks who saw his clip obviously had a lot of questions for Wyatt, there were specifically a number of people who wanted to know if he ended up addressing the situation.

He ultimately did address what happened in a follow-up video. He begins his clip by first addressing what he found a bizarre reaction to his first clip, stating: "I've been getting a weird amount of hate, y'all are just weird. People are like, oh you recorded all that and you didn't go down there and say anything to him?"

Wyatt went on: "Yeah. I just moved to this city a week and a half ago from Flagstaff, Ariz. Tiny little town. Every day, all day, outside, these windows, there's people who scare the s--t out of me, screaming and yelling and doing weird s--t all the time," he says into the camera, indicating that his area isn't necessarily a place that you'd want to explore alone in the middle of the night.

He explained why he was reluctant to go down there and talk to the individual: "I didn't know who this man was. He wasn't doing anything harmful to my car, so of course I didn't go out there. had he been like bashing in the windows ... still wouldn't have gone out there. I would've called the police."

Wyatt added towards the end of his clip, "But yeah, very different settings than what I'm used to had this been where I've been living. I would be fine to go approach him because everyone's very friendly in Flagstaff. Here? Not so much."

Folks who saw his videos had varying opinions on the stranger's out-of-the-blue car washing. There was one woman who wished that they were lucky enough to have someone just appear like a deus ex machina of vehicular cleanliness: "I would like to know where I can find one of those."

Someone else thought that the man was simply fed up with Wyatt's inability to keep his car clean and finally just decided to do something about it: "I just imagine he was complaining to his wife about the condition of your car all weekend and he was finally fed up and decided to deal with it himself 😂😂."

Another TikTok user shared in Wyatt's confusion, as they wrote: "I wouldn’t know how to act. Like, get away from my car but also thank you?"

But it seems like there were other users on the application who also had similar experiences, like this one TikToker who penned: "My neighbor washed my car in the middle of the night one day."

One person thought it would be a good idea for Wyatt to not look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak, and to just allow the man to keep doing his work until the very last minute: "Wait until they're almost done and then go ask him what he's doing."

There was another user on the app who thought that the person was simply walking around the neighborhood proactively and performing work for people in the hopes that they would pay him: "What if he’s like those landscaping guys who fix up rundown yards of abandoned/neglected homes but he drives around looking for the dirtiest cars and washes them for charity/content lmfao."