Guys Buys Regular Milk to Prove Lactose-Intolerant Roommate Was a Thief. Was He an A-Hole?

Living with other people is tough. We learn this early in life, if we have siblings, but sometimes living with friends (or strangers) as a young adult is even tougher – you don’t share blood and DNA, and you’re paying your own way, so it can be hard to make concessions.

This guy lives with two others, and they share all of the bills except for their groceries. They don’t eat food that isn’t theirs, and everything in the cabinets and fridge is labeled with their names.

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.

But, there’s an issue.

OP’s food sometimes disappears when he didn’t eat it, and the particular problem seems to be his almond milk, which is gone before OP has had one or two servings.

He’s confronted the one roommate he’s sure is responsible, but he denies drinking it.

This issue has been going on almost a year and I’m sick of it.

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.

OP is pretty sure which roommate it is because he and the third guy go to work at the same times, and the third guy has also had food go missing.

What’s funny is that the thief roommate is extra possessive over his own food,

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.

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.

Things came to a head when the almond milk was empty again. OP buys almond because he likes the taste (ugh), but his roommate is actually lactose intolerant.

To catch him in the act, OP purchased a gallon of regular dairy milk, then poured it into the almond milk container to see what would happen.

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.

It worked, because the roommate had some tummy issues.

The next 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?”

He was pissed at OP, though, and thought it was a bullsh%t move, regardless of the food thing.

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.

The third roommate thought the punishment fit the crime, but some of their other friends think that making the guy sick was a step too far.

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?

If you’re curious what the internet thinks, read on!

Talk about blaming someone else for your own mistakes.