It’s hard to find a good roommate, I know, but lowering your standards isn’t the way to do it.
AITA for filing charges against my roommate and suing her for my hospital bill?
h ttps://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/is776e/aita_for_filing_charges_against_my_roommate_and/
This happened several years ago.
I was a 20F and in college. I was living with my two best friends. One of them was moving out so that she could move in with her boyfriend. I placed an ad looking for another roommate.
That’s how I met Erin. Before she moved in she informed me that she was vegetarian but she wouldn’t have a problem if other roommates weren’t. She moved into our apartment a month later.
DANGER! There is not one vegan alive that is okay with other people NOT being vegan.
The next day after she moved in she cooked breakfast for us. I was surprised. We didn’t ask her to and by her own words “she wanted to do something nice”.
One day. One single day.
She had made pancakes, bacon strips and hash browns. I am deathly allergic to few things.
So, I immediately asked her what was in the food, but I didn’t mention my allergies (huge mistake). She listed the ingredients and I didn’t find anything I was allergic to. [Edit: she told me it was regular bacon. Not that it was fake bacon or that it had soy]. I start eating and everything tastes a little off. I try the bacon and definitely something is wrong. At this point, she does a ” Ta da” and smugly told us “I bet it tastes exactly like meat”.
No question that smugly was the right word. There are reasons you get to know somebody before starting with the pranks.
I am freaking out now. I told her I am severely allergic to soy and asked her whether there was any soy. Now she is apologising and says she didn’t know and that she is sorry she lied and blah blah. I am experiencing anaphylactic shock: throat closing up, dizzy, the works. My bestfriend freaks out and calls an ambulance. I had to stay in the hospital for 2 days. With the US healthcare, the ambulance + my hospital stay racked up a lot of money. Money that I didn’t have.
In the meantime, I also filed a complaint with the police. Food tampering is a felony. I had a lucky break: my best friend had filmed the breakfast to post it on Instagram and she got the whole thing in video.
In the end Erin had to plead guilty to some low degree of felony. She didn’t get any jail time, but got community service. Once she was found guilty, I sued her for the hospital fees. I won that one too.
[I did all the legal things under the advise of my Uncle’s friend who is a lawyer. He said something about how it will be easy to sue if she had a guilty charge. I also did not have any contact with Erin during any of this under the advise of my lawyer].
When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Uncle-friend told her to sue, sue, sue. I’m in the camp of this being double jeopardy. Either criminal or civil charges would be appropriate in this situation but not both.
Erin’s scholarship was cancelled and she had to drop out. She also went into debt paying medical fees. I saw her on Facebook few days ago and she is still down on her luck. I guess a felony charge makes it very hard, no matter how small the charge was.
I’m having trouble connecting the charge to her situation. No reason that community service would have interfered with a scholarship. Two years should have been sufficient to pay off a two-day ER stay plus an ambulance ride. So what if Erin might have had to work off med debt instead of student debt? She’d have been better off without college regardless.
I know she is the asshole for lying about food. I wanna know whether I am the asshole for everything I did after. Because bottom line is, I basically screwed a person’s life because they put wrong ingredients on breakfast that they made only “to do something nice”.
Half-ass, I’d say. While I don’t approve of her double-dipping against Erin, I haven’t seen a case be made that Erin’s subsequent downfall was a consequence. And no, Erin was NOT trying to do something nice. There’s a reason God made us able to eat meat. People who reject that are damaged.
There’s a reason God made us able to eat meat. People who reject that are damaged.
Not simply damaged: false prophets. 1 Tm 4:3.
We know where they end up.
I think it’s a little strange to me that when Erin said she’s a vegetarian, the girl didn’t say something about her severe soy allergy. Didn’t she know what vegetarians eat and what was going to be brought into the house?
Nobody is more anti-vegan than I am but I wouldn’t call serving tofu bacon “food tampering.” It’s awful, but technically it’s still considered “food” by society at large because they don’t know any better. If the vegan had been told by her room mate that she was allergic to soy, then serving her soy bacon would be felonious.
Princess Erin wanted to convert others to the vegan element of the hive’s prog-religion. And like the rest of the smarmy, true-believer progs, she assumed that what Erin Thought Best should be what everyone thinks and does.
Perhaps you’ve witnessed this mentality in the U.S. over the past forty years? Just a guess.
That said, a felony rap is way out of line here. She should be punished firmly, but temporarily, not in a lifetime manner. Her crime was arrogance and smugness, not preconceived malice to cause injury.
A Biblical society would address her underlying spiritual dogma and deception, of course. But America is prog-central.
Vegetarians and vegans assuredly are not damned. Those COMMANDING others to veganism, or to eat bugs, or whatever else . . . those are the ones in trouble, and the reference is specific to the last days, which means now. But the coercive and mandatory aspect is essential to 1 Timothy 4:3. Be careful with blanket condemnations and damnations. God can sort them out without you.
Vegetarians are not vegans. Big difference. I’m not sure of the details, but vegans are far more strict about what they can’t eat.
I considered myself a vegetarian for many decades, with the exception of fish. Then I learned I was a “pescatarian,” which means I eat fish, but not beast or bird.
I haven’t eaten a hamburger in over 30 years. The last one I ate made me feel bloated and heavy, so I just stopped. No more fried either. I turned to “garden burgers,” which, I think, are made largely with oats.
I gave up cheese over a year ago. And fish that comes in oil. (Only fish in water now.) And coconut milk. And rice pudding. I did so because my doctor says I should lower my cholesterol. Part of growing older is eliminating things from your diet.
“Vegetarians are not vegans. Big difference. I’m not sure of the details”
I’ve been taught the difference several times and forgotten every time. Now I just remember “salad isn’t food. Salad is what food eats.”
If veggie-eating is a health choice then I don’t object. If it’s a “meat is murder” choice then I object with prejudice and snark.
Essentially, vegans are vegetarians, but vegans don’t eat dairy products or eggs. Vegetarians usually do.
Largely I am vegetarian, but not nazi about it. Started long ago for health reasons. I eat eggs to get protein, not averse to some chicken soup here and there. My friends all eat meat, what is it to me?
I don’t recommend my diet decisions to others, it’s for me, not them. My reasons in recent decades are spiritual, and concern gradual adaptation to the original Edenic condition. That world was non-predatory, in the way the King’s ‘mountain’ will be in the near future. There is no predation and no carnage on the King’s mountain, because He restores the Edenic condition in total, including the relational state prior to prey and predator. Which is our fallen, satanic world.
However, Scripture via Timothy explicitly OKs the eating of meat, in fact all meats, and goes so far as to warn direly against banning the eating of meats. Partly this was done to make clear to both Christians and Jews that the OT restrictions concerning food were, in large part, annulled.
Ray wrote “My reasons in recent decades are spiritual, and concern gradual adaptation to the original Edenic condition. That world was non-predatory, in the way the King’s ‘mountain’ will be in the near future.”
Where do you get your tree of life fruit?