Does This Guy Owe His Roommate A New Epi-Pen?

As someone with a peanut allergy, I can attest to the fact that epi-pens are stupid expensive – and they’re also super necessary. They’re also stupid expensive for the fact that they expire after three years and you’ll hopefully never need to use it, but that’s a topic for another day.

This day, we’re discussing a roommate with a peanut allergy, and a man who thought his food would be safe enough in a private mini fridge.

Everyone in the house is aware that the one roommate has a peanut allergy, and so they are all diligent in labeling any and all food with their names and whether or not it contains an allergen.

OP has a mini fridge in his room for drinks, and after his girlfriend made him a traditional dish that contained peanut sauce, he stored the leftovers there without labeling them.

This is a throwaway because my friends have Reddit and I don’t want them to find this.

I have a housemate (Jilian 26f) who is severely allergic to peanuts. There are 5 of us who rent a house together and we all agreed to put a label in our food containers to help keep Jilian safe and avoid contamination. I have a mini fridge in my room where I store my drinks so that I don’t have to go to the kitchen if I want a drink in the middle of the night.

Well last Friday my Filipino girlfriend gave me an authentic Filipino dish for lunch at work. It’s called kare-kare, it’s an ox tail stew with a rich peanut sauce. It’s in a glass container, and I saved some so I can have it for dinner.

Later, he was confronted with the news that he’d “almost killed” the peanut-allergic roommate. She had to be taken to the hospital after ingesting some of his leftovers.

The roommates were drinking and went searching for more beer, finding his dish in the process.

When I got home I put it in my mini fridge but I forgot to eat it that night because we ordered pizza for dinner. Saturday I went out with my girlfriend and got home at around 9pm.

When I arrived Jilian’s girlfriend (Trish) confronted me saying I almost killed Jilian. I didn’t know what she was talking about, she went on saying how irresponsible of me to not label the food in my mini fridge. I asked one of our housemates wtf happened and he said Jilian had an allergic reaction to my stew because I didn’t put a label on the container.

I told them it’s inside my personal mini fridge and how dare they enter my room. Trish said they were looking for beer when they saw my stew. She and another housemate ate it, Jillian only tasted it and she had an anaphylactic shock where they had to use her EpiPen to stop the swelling.

Everyone is mad at OP for not labeling the food and think he should replace the epi-pen the roommate had to use, but he’s feeling like this wasn’t his fault, since they were not supposed to be in his private space at all.

Trish then demanded that I need to pay for the EpiPen. I told them that is not going to happen. If anything they should apologize to me for trespassing and stealing my food. They called me an a$$hole.

She and 3 housemates said I nearly caused Jillian her life and the least I could do is apologize and pay for the EpiPen. AITA?

For what it’s worth, the woman who actually had the anaphylactic experience expects no such thing, and realizes what happened wasn’t OP’s fault.

Edit/update: So I visited Jilian in the hospital today and she apologized to me for what happened. It was an accident. She said she didn’t eat my kare-kare but took some rice. She didn’t realize that some sauce got on the rice bowl, so there was clearly a cross contamination.

It wasn’t her who went in my room, it was Trish and another housemate, Ian. I will be charging them for the stolen beer and food.

I will definitely buy a lock after this incident. Thank you all for your advice, judgement and awards!

Does Reddit agree with the magnanimous (and lucky to be alive) roomie? Or should he be paying for her new epi-pen?

Reddit, is weighing in below!

First, perhaps they will learn a lesson. Perhaps.