College Student Sues Roommate After She Fed Her Vegetarian Bacon And Incites Discussion

Jan 11, 2022 by apost team

Living with roommates has the potential to be really great or really terrible. It gives you a chance to bond with your existing friends if they are also your roommates or make new friends. However, some roommates can become a living nightmare and really make the living experience a horrible one.

A woman went to Reddit in September 2020 to reflect on something that happened during her college years. The original poster (OP) explained that she was 20 years old at the time when she was living with two of her friends. However, one friend moved out, so she and her other roommate needed to find a new roommate. This is how they met Erin.

Erin is vegetarian but was clear that she didn’t care if other people weren’t. One day, Erin decided to make breakfast for everyone consisting of pancakes, hash browns, and regular bacon. It turned out that she wanted to prove that vegetarian bacon can taste just like real bacon and lied to her new roommates about what they were eating.

The problem is that OP has a severe allergy to soy, which is in vegetarian bacon, and ended up going to the hospital. This resulted in huge bills, all of which OP sued Erin for and made her pay. However, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was wrong for her extreme reaction to what seemed like a nice gesture from Erin and asked Redditors for their thoughts. This sparked an online debate as people tried to figure out who was right and who was wrong in this predicament.

In her Reddit post, OP explained that Erin, a vegetarian, moved into her place a month after she and her friend posted an ad for a new roommate. “The next day after she moved in she cooked breakfast for us,” OP said. “I was surprised. We didn’t ask her to and by her own words ‘she wanted to do something nice.’” Erin made pancakes, hash browns, and bacon.

“I am deathly allergic to (a) few things,” OP said. “So, I immediately asked her what was in the food, but I didn’t mention my allergies (huge mistake).” After Erin listed off the ingredients and said it was regular bacon, OP didn’t find anything that could do any harm, so she figured it was fine to eat. However, once she started eating the food, she noticed that the bacon tasted different than usual. 

OP continued, “At this point, she does a ‘ta da’ and smugly told us ‘I bet it tastes exactly like meat.’” Shortly after, OP experienced anaphylactic shock as she has a severe soy allergy. Her throat closed up, and she was very dizzy. Erin immediately apologized for lying as she didn’t know about the allergy. 

The best friend called an ambulance, and OP was rushed to the hospital, where she stayed for two days and racked up a huge bill. OP also filed a complaint with the police since food tampering is a felony. She explained, “My best friend had filmed the breakfast to post it on Instagram and she got the whole thing in video.”

apost.com

Erin ended up pleading guilty to a low degree of felony and had to do community service. “Once she was found guilty, I sued her for the hospital fees,” OP said. “I won that one too.” Erin lost her school scholarship, dropped out, and went into debt, paying OP’s medical fees. As of September 2020, she was still having a hard time getting back on her feet.

OP said that Erin was wrong for lying about the food, but she feels like maybe she is wrong, too, for everything she did to Erin afterward. This Reddit post has since sparked a debate, as Redditors themselves seemed to be torn on whose side to take. Ultimately, the majority of users agreed that OP and Erin were both wrong to some extent.

One user commented, “It does seem like she was trying to trick you into eating (a) meat substitute, which is a rotten thing to do, but I also think it was your responsibility to ask ‘does this have soy (other substances to which you are allergic)?’ explicitly or to otherwise inform her or anyone else who prepares food you’re going to eat that you have life-threatening allergies.”

One user agreed, saying, “It isn’t up to someone else to guess your allergies. You ruined someone’s life because you couldn’t be bothered to say anything about your allergies and ATE THE FOOD ANYWAY.” However, another user disagreed, saying, “Considering I expect zero soy in ‘actual bacon’ I’d say that being told it’s regular bacon is the tipping point for me.”

At the end of the day, OP decided to stand by her past actions and said, “You guys can keep whining all you want but that doesn’t change the verdict.”

Who do you think was wrong in this scenario? Let us know, and feel free to send this to your friends and family, too.