If you’re a regular frequenter of Reddit, you know that roommate issues abound – and that a good number of them revolve around folks taking and eating food they didn’t pay for.

OP wasn’t a college student but he did find himself with a couple of college roommate while on a long-term job assignment.

I had taken a R&D internship for a food company over the summer in Keokuk (the armpit of Iowa for those unfamiliar).

For housing accommodations the company had set me up in the local college dorm that was previously a retirement home so it basically had individual rooms and bathrooms, but one large commercial kitchen.

It was summer and the school didn’t have a summer program, but allowed 2 fall students to move in at the beginning of the summer.

One was rarely there, but the other was constantly in the building and often times had multiple friends over.

He figured that not eating other people’s food from a shared kitchen was a rule that went without saying. When he realized he was wrong, he figured a chat or a note would do the trick.

Given the kitchen set up, we all stored our food there and it’s a pretty no brainier you shouldn’t take from others, but immediately I had various food items going missing or being consumed regularly (sodas, empty boxes of cereal put back on the shelf, etc.).

I initially posted a sign on the fridge to not eat others food and also confronted both about having food go missing after the sign was up, but it didn’t stop whomever from stealing my food (particularly when I’d head out of town for weekends).

When that turned out not to be true, he decided to get creative with some of the food additives he worked with, spraying super spicy bits on some of his food.

After complaining about the situation to my manager during my job they helped formulate the perfect ProRevenge.

Given I was doing R&D work on food products, I was responsible for getting various ingredient samples to use for new recipes. My manager suggested I get some capsaicin extracts for my “research” even though we weren’t doing anything in that realm for flavor profiles.

Well I found a company that had various scoville unit extracts and I asked for a variety to see what worked best for our applications. Well did they deliver with some small 2 ounce bottles of 50K, 100K, and 250K scoville extracts!

I ended up putting the 250K in a travel sized spray bottle (mixed with some water to help as a carrier) and wearing gloves and a mask (borrowed from work) doctored the common food items being stolen with a liberal spraying of my mixture (mainly cereal, chips, crackers, jug of milk and the lip/top of a few soda cans).

For the snacks I actually put some into a separate bag and left them open to dry before mixing back into the original packaging. I did this in a different dorm room in my wing as I know well enough how potent this can be in enclosed spaces.

Sadly, he was out of town when his little experiment paid off, but at least no one stole his food anymore.

I did this right before another trip out of town and when I returned I found some of the chips and cereal and milk was missing plus 2 of the 3 cans of soda I had doctored. I never got to see the result and no one ever said anything, but none of my food went missing for the remaining month of my stay.

I hope the experience was enlightening for them and they still remember the time they played with 🌶️ 🔥.

Did OP go too far? Let’s see what Reddit thinks!

Another food technologist has some more suggestions.

It seems many people have gone this route, in fact.

This person thinks OP should have gone even harder.

But this commenter has a warning for others…

This person thinks there’s plausible deniability, though.

I don’t know, this seems pretty harmless.

Unless they have a secret health condition or something.