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Confrontation and being British don’t pair well, as one woman expertly demonstrated when she noticed her neighbours had stolen her garden furniture… twice. Watch the moment unfold below:
When Lia Hatzakis, a 29-year-old YouTuber from Warwick, noticed her recently purchased garden table set was missing two chairs, she figured they’d simply been broken by builders and chucked away.
But after closer inspection, Lia realised that the chairs had actually found their way into the garden of the house next door, where they were being put to good use by her neighbour’s bottom.
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Lia’s ‘jaw dropped’ when she spotted her neighbour sitting on her chairs, despite the fact their gardens are separated by a fence.
Achillea Kyriakou, Lia’s partner, retrieved the missing chairs through a shared alleyway, but soon after, Lia noticed the chairs were missing for a second time and decided to record what happened in a TikTok video.
Lia filmed herself as she discovered her chairs were in her next door neighbour's garden for the second time.
"I looked in the garden and the guy was just sat on it!" Lia said, before asking her neighbour for the chairs back.
"Hiya, excuse me, I noticed that my garden furniture is there, could I have it back?" Lia politely asked, with her neighbour responding: "I woke up one morning and they were just there," insisting that someone else had taken the furniture.
In true Brit style, Lia said she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, and the video went viral on TikTok, amassing over 2.5 million views.
Lia said she has had plenty of people commenting on the polite interaction, noting: "There were loads of Americans watching the video saying 'this is the most British reaction I've ever seen to asking for furniture back’.”
According to a 2018 study, us Brits really are one of the most polite nations in the world.
That year, Royal Society Open Science published research that showed Brits say ‘thank you’ more than anyone else in the world.
Scientists analysed interactions between people speaking eight languages across five continents and discovered Brits say ‘thank you’ 14.5 percent of the time, while Italian speakers ranked second, saying ‘thank you’ 13.5 percent of the time.
However, anthropologist Robin Dunbar noted that just because we share expressions of gratitude more frequently, it doesn’t mean we’re more grateful by nature.
Dunbar explained: “Expressing gratitude and feeling gratitude are not the same thing.”
Aisha Nozari