Emily Duprie
Having roommates comes with its complications, and no situation is ever perfect. One of the biggest initiators of fights between flatmates is money. “Who owes who what?” is a fairly common question when living with multiple people. Every once in a while, a roommate can strike a nerve just right, and make us do some questionable things to achieve justice.
One frustrated Redditor came forth on the subreddit “Am I The A-hole?” and asked if he had gone too far after he replaced his mistreated almond milk with real dairy in an attempt to catch his sneaky roommate. After the roommate fell into his trap, World War 3 broke out.
This story is from about two years ago, but it’s still relevant as ever. Those of you with roommates you might be suspicious of, take notes. Read the original poster’s story below along with some of the top comments and let us know what you think!
This clever poster by the name of (u/gottmilk_) asked the subreddit: “AITA for switching to regular milk to prove my lactose intolerant roommate keeps stealing from me?”
OP started off by explaining that him and his two roommates split all costs evenly except for their groceries, which they label respectively.
Me and 2 other guys share an apartment together and we split all the bills. The only thing we don’t split costs on is groceries. Everyone’s in charge of buying their own food and we don’t touch whatever doesn’t belong to us in the fridge. We put our names on everything so no one gets mixed up.
This issue has been going on almost a year and I’m sick of it.
He continued…
One of my roommates, R, keeps stealing my food. I get home from work and containers with my leftovers are sometimes missing (they have my name written on it), or my stuff finishes too quick. My gallon of milk for example. I buy almond milk because I like the taste. But it seems to finish after a week even though I’ve only drank once or twice.
I confronted R about this lots of times and that’s caused a lot of arguments. He outright denies it and tells me I’m crazy even though it’s so obvious.
After being gaslighted for a year, I would be pretty fed up too.
My other roommate and I carpool together because we both work the same early morning shifts around the same area so I know it’s not him. It’s always after we get back home and R’s already left for work that I notice my food’s gone. My roommate’s also had a similar problem but not as often as I do. I’m guessing cause R doesn’t like what he buys.
His other roommate got lucky, because R was steering clear of his things.
The funny thing is R buys a lot for himself and is even more stingy about his food. He will literally point out what’s his when he comes back from grocery shopping and tells us not to touch it.
Last week, my milk was nearly empty again and I got fed up. I went to the liquor store and bought regular dairy milk. I drank what was left of my almond milk and refilled the gallon with the one I bought. This was to catch/prove R is the one stealing since he’s lactose intolerant.
So, his master plan was set in motion.
The nxt day, Saturday, we get back from work and R is pissed. He yelled at me that he was stuck in the bathroom for 40 mins with diarrhea because of my milk; he was using it to make a shake. I only responded with “So then you’re the one who’s been stealing?”
Busted.
He freaking exploded. Yeah he admitted he was “sometimes” drinking my milk and eating my food but he was more mad that I switched milks than the fact that he was caught. I told him I wouldn’t have done that if he’d just stopped taking my stuff from the fridge or at least told the truth instead of tryna make it seem like I was making it up.
Justice was served, in the form of dairy milk.
My roommate backed me up and thought it was kinda funny he got payback for stealing from us. It’s a little tense rn and my roommate told me R is trying to convince him to agree to kick me out. Little does he know we’re both looking to move somewhere else together cause we are sick of his shit.
I told some buddies what happened and a few think I was an asshole for that. I feel like I’m not in the wrong here. He was taking my food and not even owning up to it and I wanted to prove it, does that make me TA?
Anyone who has ever had roommates has probably had at least one they didn’t completely get along with. If I had been noticing my (now rather costly) groceries going missing without compensation for an entire year, I’d be scheming too.
Redditors agreed that OP was not the “A-hole,” but rather a genius. Below are some of the top comments from the post. What are some other ideas you could think of to reasonably get back at a stealing roommate?
