Roommates. They’re just the worst, aren’t they?

Even when you very carefully lay down a series of rules designed for peaceful cohabitation, there’s always somebody who thinks they’re above the law of common decency and that those rules need not apply to them. What’s to be done about such people? Do we just grin and bear it? Do we resort to confrontation? Should confrontation fail, what then?

A Reddit user found himself asking these questions when he was forced by circumstance to plot a devious trap for his roommate “R.”

Read on:

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.

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.

Yeah, he’s getting stolen from… for sure!

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.

Sounds like a class act!

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.

Yeah, sounds typical of an a&&hole…

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.

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?”

What happened next? Oh… boy… howdy…

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.

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?

This was, of course, posted to the infamous forum “Am I The A**hole,” in which scenarios like this are posed and a sea of random Reddit jurors determine who exactly is the a**hole. What did they decide? Let’s find out.

Most agreed, he’s in the clear.

Turns out this might be more common than you’d think.

And how dumb was this roommate?

The entire prospect of roommates is flawed.

It’s a question of severity.

This about sums it up.

Good thing it didn’t go too wrong though…

This guy’s asking the real questions.

Meg here took it a step further.

Bottom line: ya did good, but it could have been bad.

So before you go taking similar revenge on a bad roommate, maybe check and make sure you’re not going to, yanno, severely injure them with your little prank. That would be a much less funny story.

But what do you think about this situation?

Tell us in the comments.