Woke up to the sounds of crinkling cellophane last night. When I turned on the light, I found my roommate blinking at me like a blinded raccoon with one hand inside my low blood sugar kit. She snuck into my room in the dark to steal the package of gummy bears because she was ‘feeling hypoglycemic’. Mind you, this is the same woman who devoured half a package of chips ahoy in the previous afternoon and currently has three different kinds of cookies in the pantry and an entire shelf of ice creams in the freezer.
That kind of behavior is inexcusable! Does your a$$hat of a roommate understand that what she did endangered your life? Reading this has made me furious!
This housemate is pretty good about food. I get the gummies in 24-packs, so I don’t mind if she takes a few as long as there’s still some left in the box. I just loved the ‘oh shoot, if I don’t move maybe she didn’t see me’ face when I caught her.
The stories I could tell about some of my past roommates, though… Don’t get me started, or I could be here all day.
Sorry, but that excuse doesn’t wash. “Well, I know it’s for medical purposes but I’m only taking a little” is like saying, “well, she has a lot in her checking account, she won’t miss a little”.
As for booby traps, I can think of several. Here are two:
Mousetrap (high maintenance because you have to keep setting and unsetting it, but very entertaining). DON’T use a rat trap; under the right circumstances they are powerful enough to break a finger.
A decoy kit that contains ex-lax instead of gummi bears.
I’m sure you can think of others. Seriously, a booby trap is not the answer. Ethical behavior is the answer. That’s a lot tougher to create since that door is locked from the inside.
Haribo Sugar-Free Gummy Bears. Keep your regular ones where you can get to them, but these would be the perfect revenge decoy. Very similar function to Ex-Lax.
Sounds like maybe some vague boundaries need to be clarified. If you sometimes let her take things, but leave it up to her to decide whether it’s appropriate, I think that’s a recipe for disaster. I’d just tell her that anything in the “low blood sugar kit” is totally off limits. If you buy extra, put it in a place where you agree that she can have some.
If she were my roommate, I’d sit down and have a major heart-to-heart discussion and let her know that because of your D, the food she pays for is hers, and the food you buy is yours, and both of you need to never eat each other’s food. Period. No exceptions. End of discussion. If that doesn’t work, kick her to the curb.
Yeah… Out of the 27 housemates I’ve had in 8 years of university housing and another three years of sharing houses, I can remember 2 who didn’t steal my food at some point. I used to try your approach, rgcainmd, but they rarely honored it and it lead to things like the girl who opened cracker boxes from the bottom, ate the contents, then put the empty box back on the shelf looking unopened. At this point, as long as I have enough food on hand for a few days, I let it slide and run to the store to replace whatever the scroungers take.
To be honest, it really annoys me when non-diabetics talk about being “hypoglycemic” when they haven’t eaten in a while or when they’re just hungry or feeling unwell. Unless they truly have been diagnosed with hypoglycemia as a medical condition (which most have not) most of them are not low and have NO idea how dangerous a true, insulin-induced low is compared to just feeling a bit hungry. If someone does have hypoglycemia as a true medical condition, or even decides to self-diagnose themselves as having such, then they should take the same responsibility as someone with diabetes and always have some food on them. In my experience, most people who say they have “hypoglycemia” do not take this responsibility, and then complain to others about having “low blood sugar” and needing to get something to eat and making a big deal about it, which annoys me even more. It’s like people who say they are “allergic” to something when they haven’t been diagnosed by a doctor as having an allergy, just because something upsets their stomach or, worse, because they dno’t like it. Both of these claims undermine people who deal with the real, potentially life-threatening thing on a daily basis, and I wish people would stop. No one would ever say they had cancer or diabetes if they didn’t have it, so why is it okay for people to say they feel hypoglycemic or are allergic to something when they aren’t?
Yes I have to try to bite my tongue every time sometimes I fail… even on this forum when people who aren’t even taking meds that can cause significant hypoglycemia rant and rave about it… let alone people who don’t have any condition whatsoever
I don’t know…that sounds just plain weird! She snuck into your room to eat your emergency food. (I got that right, right?) How about the thought that she should not go into your room unless she actually has your permission?
That is just plain manners. Regardless of the Diabetes, she should respect your space!
I learned this trick from a T1D Mom with children that were non-diabetic and kept begging for her emergency life savers she kept stashed in her purse. For low blood sugar, you should try stocking some glucose tabs rather than gummy bears. They don’t taste good so your roommate won’t steal them and they work much faster than gummy bears. Because you only want to eat them when you have to, it’s much less tempting to “over-do” the hypoglycemia cure.
I have no suggestions on what to do with an adult roommate that “steals” your emergency stash of candy for hypoglycemia.
Does your a$$hat of a roommate understand that what she did endangered your life? Reading this has made me furious!
Seriously, a booby trap is not the answer. Ethical behavior is the answer. That’s a lot tougher to create since that door is locked from the inside.
