So, I’m really at my wit’s end here and need some perspective. I’m 23 years old and I live with my roommate Mia who’s 25 in a small apartment we’ve shared for about a year. Mia’s cool sometimes, she’s fun to watch movies with, but she has this super annoying habit of eating my food without asking. Like, I’ll buy groceries for the week, come home from work, and find my leftovers gone or half my snacks missing. Once, she ate an entire lasagna I made for a potluck, then laughed it off like, “Oh, it was just too good!” No apology, no replacing it.
I’ve tried talking to her about it, like three times. First time, I was super chill, just said, “Hey, can you ask before taking my stuff?” She nodded but kept doing it. Second time, I got firmer, and she promised to stop. Third time, I was kinda pissed and told her it’s disrespectful, especially since I’m on a tight budget. She rolled her eyes and said I was “overreacting” because “we’re like family.” I’m not her mom, though!
Last straw was last week. I bought some expensive cheese and crackers for a girls’ night I was hosting, and Mia ate all of it while I was at work. I was done. I went online, bought a cheap mini fridge with a lock, and now I keep all my food in there. Mia freaked out when she saw it, calling me “petty” and “untrusting.” She says I’m making the apartment vibe “hostile” and that locking my food is like accusing her of stealing. Now she’s barely talking to me, and our mutual friend thinks I went too far because “it’s just food” and I should share. I get that locking stuff up isn’t exactly friendly, but I can’t afford to keep replacing my groceries. AITA for getting the mini fridge? How do you deal with roommates who don’t respect your stuff?
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So, I’m really at my wit’s end here and need some perspective. I’m 23 years old and I live with my roommate Mia who’s 25 in a small apartment we’ve shared for about a year. Mia’s cool sometimes, she’s fun to watch movies with, but she has this super annoying habit of eating my food without asking. Like, I’ll buy groceries for the week, come home from work, and find my leftovers gone or half my snacks missing. Once, she ate an entire lasagna I made for a potluck, then laughed it off like, “Oh, it was just too good!” No apology, no replacing it.
I’ve tried talking to her about it, like three times. First time, I was super chill, just said, “Hey, can you ask before taking my stuff?” She nodded but kept doing it. Second time, I got firmer, and she promised to stop. Third time, I was kinda pissed and told her it’s disrespectful, especially since I’m on a tight budget. She rolled her eyes and said I was “overreacting” because “we’re like family.” I’m not her mom, though!
Last straw was last week. I bought some expensive cheese and crackers for a girls’ night I was hosting, and Mia ate all of it while I was at work. I was done. I went online, bought a cheap mini fridge with a lock, and now I keep all my food in there. Mia freaked out when she saw it, calling me “petty” and “untrusting.” She says I’m making the apartment vibe “hostile” and that locking my food is like accusing her of stealing. Now she’s barely talking to me, and our mutual friend thinks I went too far because “it’s just food” and I should share. I get that locking stuff up isn’t exactly friendly, but I can’t afford to keep replacing my groceries. AITA for getting the mini fridge? How do you deal with roommates who don’t respect your stuff?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> Hey mods, sorry if I didn’t make this clear enough! The action I took was buying a mini fridge with a lock to keep my food safe after my roommate Mia kept eating my groceries without asking. I might be the asshole because Mia says it’s petty and makes our apartment feel “hostile,” and she’s upset that I don’t trust her. I’m worried I might’ve gone too far by locking up my stuff instead of trying harder to talk it out, since it’s made things super tense between us.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
NTA. She’s saying that because if you believe her and stop locking up your food she can continue to steal it.
I mean, she is stealing.
NTA
They are crossing your boundaries and gas lighting you when you tell them how you feel. You are dealing with a narcissist.
NTA She’s a thief and you’re protecting your food. She doesn’t like it? Too bad.
NTA. Your housemate and friend are. I don’t know why people insist on protecting people’s shitty behaviour but it’s awesome that you refuse to. Good for you
Locking your food is not “like accusing her of stealing.” She feels that way because she IS stealing. She is taking items that don’t belong to her, that you paid for. She should feel embarrassed. NTA
You know you’re not the a. Stay petty queen 😘
You know you’re not the a. Stay petty queen 😘
Nta. If she feels like you are treating her like she’s stealing, it’s because she is. She was relying on your food so she could save her money. Total BS and guilt-tripping you for not supplying her food is also BS. She needs to grow up and understand roommates are not parents that feed you. She is quickly moving into the territory of having to find a new roommate to live with when the lease is up.
NTA
Flatmate relentlessly steals food despite being asked not too…
You take action in securing your own food…
Flatmate says YOU have created a hostile environment … the gaslighting hypocrisy from your Flatmate is frankly astonishing ..
Of course NTA. She literally admitted that she stole your food so you don’t even need to accuse her of stealing. She steals. She is now mad that she can’t steal. If she weren’t a thief, your locking up your food would have no effect. But she is really mad…because she is a thief.
Might be time for a new living situation.
“How do you deal with roommates who don’t respect your stuff?”
NTA. Getting your own fridge is the top recommendation in the roommate subs.
Tell her it’s called “FAFO”.
Stealing: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice.
She is, by literal dictionary definition, stealing. NTA
NTA and Mia needs accept reality. You’re not “accusing of her stealing.” You’re taking an action to lock up your food because she IS stealing.
Obviously you are NTA. Mia is the one who has created a hostile living situation by not respecting you and disregarding numerous requests to stop helping herself.
I’m tempted to armchair diagnose her as having issues with compulsive eating (because who eats an entire lasagna?!) but that’s frankly not your issue to deal with even if she is.
You are wholly justified and should probably start looking for a new living option.
NTA – send your mutual friends the bill for groceries or ask them to take her grocery shopping and foot the bill! People are always so free with other people’s money
NTA
It’s just food, and yet your friends who say that would probably balk if you asked them to buy your roommate food because it’s “just food.”
NTA at all, people like that are insufferable. It’s accusing her of stealing? No, it’s pointing out the fact that she’s stealing. What a dumb response by her.
She clearly can’t be reasoned with. The only way to deal with an unredeemable and bad roommate is to get a different roommate, unfortunately.
Food colouring is your new friend! Next time you leave something out, don’t poison it with chillies or laxatives, just squirm a pliers of food colouring inside the middle. Like a colour bomb doughnut.
If she takes things that arent hers she can’t complain if it back fires on her.
Tell her it was for a lucky dip game, she lost, now you need more
NTA. I wonder what would happen if you added price tags to all the food. That lasagne was $20 and she eats it she owes you $20.
NTA. This is really a question of privilege. She doesn’t understand what having a tight budget means. You need to call this out and tell your friend too. Tell her I don’t have the financial luxury of sharing my food. Maybe Mia does but I am not as privileged as she is. Tell Mia that too. That will probably stop all this guilt tripping.
“locking my food is like accusing her of stealing”
Wow, isn’t it wild how shameless people can be? It’s just like when someone cheats on their partner and then gets offended when you call them a cheater. Like, how dare you describe exactly what I did!
Don’t be mad at someone for calling a spade a spade, be mad at yourself for being the spade. If she didn’t want to be treated like someone who can’t be trusted around food… maybe she should’ve stopped acting like someone who can’t be trusted around food. NTA
NTA and send her an itemized bill for the stuff she took. She probably didn’t tell her friends the truth about how often she did it or how much it cost.
If “it’s just food”, then she can just pay for her own.
She is stealing. Unless you pool money and groceries, or you are eating a reciprocal amount/value of her food, eating your food is stealing. Next time she says you’re treating her like she is stealing, point out she is.
No doubt if you did eat her food she would be outraged. (I don’t recommend this as it legitimizes what she has been doing).
NTA, but this is likely a downwards spiral in the roommate relationship so be prepared to move out and keep other things safe.