A university student got revenge on a flatmate who repeatedly stole his food by tricking him into eating a dessert heavily laced with chilli powder.
The student, who lived in shared accommodation during his studies, posted on the online forum Reddit to explain how he stopped the persistent theft from their communal kitchen.
Reddit is a massive online platform where users can post stories, join discussions and vote on content, usually operating under anonymous usernames rather than their real identities.
Posting under the username BandAccomplished555, the student explained that his former flatmate had a long-standing habit of taking his groceries.
The flatmate would eat the food and then pretend he had no idea what the student was talking about when confronted over the missing items.
Stolen birthday cake
The situation escalated when the student brought home a birthday cake intended for his sister. He wrote his own name on the box and placed it in the communal fridge for the night.
By the following morning, the birthday cake had disappeared.
When the student asked his flatmate about the missing cake, the thief looked at him seriously and suggested that the student must have eaten it himself and simply forgotten about doing so.
Rather than arguing with the flatmate, the student agreed that it was a possibility and immediately began planning his revenge.
Chilli powder trap
A few days after the birthday cake was stolen, the student bought a large, fluffy cake covered in bright red icing from a local shop.
After eating a single slice himself, he took a bottle of chilli pepper powder and sprinkled it generously over the top of the remaining dessert.
He placed the spiked cake back into the shared fridge and left a note on it claiming he did not know who it belonged to, but inviting anyone to eat it if they wanted.
The flatmate took the bait and ate the dessert. A short time later, he walked into the kitchen with an expression that the student described as looking like someone who had survived a deep betrayal.
The student noted that he looked back at the flatmate and suggested that the thief must have eaten something but simply could not remember doing it.
He added in his post that he still occasionally thinks about the expression on his former flatmate's face.
Gummy bear revenge
The incident is not the first time a Reddit user has resorted to extreme measures to stop a roommate from taking their groceries.
The story follows a separate recent post on the same platform where a different user detailed how he and his university friends dealt with a serial food thief.
In that case, the group of students took a dirty revenge on their flatmate by tricking him into eating gummy bear sweets that caused him to suffer from severe diarrhoea.
