If you're planning on going away for an extended period of time, it's not unusual for you to call on your neighbours to ask if they'd mind watering your houseplants or feeding your fish while you're not at home.
But one man has been left infuriated after his neighbour asked him to keep his eye on her house while she went on holiday for a whole month - and warned him that her fridge was faulty and needed to be regularly checked to make sure it was still working to keep her food fresh.
Initially, the man agreed to go over to her house and check the fridge but told her there would be two weeks of her holiday when he would be out of the house too, which his neighbour had no problem with.
And while the fridge was fine while he was away, the man then suffered a health scare when he returned and ended up forgetting about his neighbour's faulty appliance - until it was too late.
In a post on Reddit, he explained: "My partner and I moved into an apartment building a few months ago, next to our neighbour (we'll call her Sarah).
"Sarah is friendly to us, and vice versa, but we've never had a conversation and the only interaction we had before this was when she asked me to help her to move something out of her house. But just before Christmas, she asked us if we could please check in on her apartment while she was on vacation, and said that her fridge would sometimes trip and could we just make sure it wasn't left off for long.
"We told her it would be fine, except that we would be away for two weeks during the time she was away. She said it would be okay. Nothing else was said, and we made sure it was on while we were here.
"We arrived home a couple of weeks ago and checked the fridge first thing (it had been on the whole time, no harm done). In the last week, however, I had a health scare and my partner and I were very focused on that; taking me to the hospital, taking medication, dealing with quite an immense amount of pain, etc. I'm still sick, and immuno-compromised.
"During this time we may have been the a**holes because we didn't think to inform our neighbour, as she was meant to be gone for a month, and last week had been one month since she'd left. It honestly slipped our minds as we were so focused on other things."
As the man's neighbour has been away for longer than anticipated, she got in touch this week to ask him about the status of her fridge - and it wasn't good news.
While the man had been too ill to check the appliance, it had switched itself off and had caused all the food inside to start going mouldy - including a "freezer packed full of rotting meat".
The man explained the situation to his neighbour and offered to help her clean it when she came back home, but the woman wasn't having any of it, as she demanded he cleans it up himself so she wouldn't have to deal with the smell.
He added: "Yesterday she sent me a message asking me to update her on her fridge. We went in to check and it was a disaster. [There was] mould everywhere in the fridge, and the freezer was packed full of rotting meat. I tell her this, and tell her we don't mind helping her clean when she comes back.
"Her response? 'Do you mind just cleaning it, because I don't want it to smell when I come home.'
"My partner goes back in this morning and tries to pry the rotten meat from the freezer and immediately nearly vomits. This is something that requires a professional team to come in with gloves and masks, not something that we can help with.
"Would I be the a**hole if I told her no, and that she needs to get someone in to do it professionally? My thinking is that if it had happened while we had been away, would she still have asked us to clean it? And who goes away for six weeks with a broken fridge filled to the brim with meat? Are we liable to pay for anything?
"Please let me know, and if we are the a**holes we'll be sure to make it up to her! Just not sure how to navigate this."
Commenters on the post were firmly on the man's side though, with many saying his neighbour should have cleared out her fridge before going on an extended holiday - especially if it was likely to break down.
One person said: "She knew her fridge was faulty and should have seen to that before leaving for an extended period. (Or at least made sure it wasn't full of stuff.) You have had things to deal with that take precedence over a neighbour's malfunctioning appliance. She could always arrange for someone to go in and deal with it before she gets back if she doesn't want to wait and deal with the smell."
While another added: "It's your neighbour's own fault for keeping so much meat in an appliance she knows is malfunctioning."
And a third wrote: "You were nice enough to check but it's not your job to clean it. Let her know that if she hires someone to do it you can let them in, but that's about it."
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