Whether you’re living with roommates or working in an office environment, when you have communal food areas there’s always a risk of things going missing every once in a while.

Sometimes this is a genuine mistake, when someone takes what they thought was theirs – or assumed was communal – leaving you out of pocket.

But when they realize their mistake, these people will surely make things right, whether that means replacing what they took or ensuring they don’t do so again.

When the man in this story confronted his roommate about taking his food, however, the roommate outright refuted the accusation, leaving him with little choice but to plant a trap.

Read on to find out what happened when the thief’s identity was revealed.

AITA for switching to regular milk to prove my lactose intolerant roommate keeps stealing from me?

I share an apartment with two other guys, 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 this issue has been going on almost a year and I’m sick of it.

One of my roommates, R, keeps stealing my food.

Let’s see what has happened to make him so sure that R is stealing from him.

I get home from work and containers with my leftovers in are sometimes missing (despite having my name written on them), and 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 used it once or twice.

I’ve confronted R about this many times, which has caused a lot of arguments.

He outright denies it and tells me I’m crazy, even though it’s so obvious.

But all the evidence still points towards him.

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 that 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.

And after another occasion of being stolen from, this guy had finally had enough.

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 R and prove he was the one stealing from me, since he’s lactose intolerant.

The next day, Saturday, we got back from work and R was mad. He yelled at me that he was stuck in the bathroom for 40 minutes with diarrhea because of my milk, which he was using to make a shake.

I only responded with, “So you’re the one who’s been stealing then?”

Uh-oh. Let’s see how R reacted to being caught red-handed.

He freaking exploded.

He admitted he was “sometimes” drinking my milk and eating my food, but he was more mad about the fact that I switched the 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 trying to make it seem like I was making it up.

My roommate backed me up and thought it was kind of funny he got payback for stealing from us.

And the drama didn’t end there.

It’s a little tense right now, and my other 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 nonsense.

I told some buddies what happened, and a few think I was a jerk for that.

But 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 the one in the wrong?

AITA?

The truth is, if R had just admitted that he was taking his roommate’s food and apologized for it, it would never have come to this.

Sure it inconvenienced R to have a reaction to the dairy milk, but if anything will teach him not to take other people’s things – and then gaslight them about it – it’s this.

It’s not like he has a deadly allergy, it just made him sick, and hopefully will make him think twice before stealing again.

Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.

This person agreed that he wasn’t wrong to take measures to catch the thief.

While others added the caveat that he should only have done it if he knew the full extent of the effects of dairy on his roommate.

Meanwhile, this lactose intolerant Redditor agreed that, with the guy’s mild symptoms in mind, the plan was a good one.

Steal all you want, but the consequences could be unpleasant.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.