"AITA for turning the family potluck into a silent war?"
I come from a family of cooks and bakers. My dad works in a restaurant as a chef and my mom worked in a diner back in the day (she's a stay-at-home mom). Me and my siblings have been encouraged from a young age to try our luck in the kitchen and I've developed a love for desserts quite quickly.
Every first week of December my family organizes a Christmas potluck. This year I brought cinnamon rolls. It was the first time I made them and they were really sticky and gooey. My brother brought an open jar of olives. And that shocked me.
He is a professional baker and I know that he could have brought something better (he also is very very lazy). But I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt first. Maybe he had a lot of stress at work. Also I knew from my SIL that there are currently some issues there (but I won't go into that).
So I asked him how everything was going. He was quite chipper. Not only to me but also to the others. Talking long and drawn out about how perfectly everything at work and at home was. (My SIL wasn't there but I've talked to her in the mean time and she said that at home everything has gotten better as well).
So there wasn't any reason to go so low effort. But ok...I have no horse in the race so I just made a little comment. But then he said something about how disgusting my cinnamon rolls were and that even the trash would be too good for them and that was the last straw for me so I hid his jar when he wasn't looking.
When my mom came later that evening she noticed immediately that there was no food with his name tag and she was pretty upset. He explained that his food had vanished but she didn't believe him and they bickered for the rest of it. I didn't say anything but now I feel bad.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
MarionberryPlus8474 said:
ESH. He was a jerk about your dish, you shouldn’t have hidden his olives. You both need to grow up.
Edymnion said:
YTA, yeah. You would have been fine if you had simply fired back some kind of "At least I made something, as opposed to Mr.-Jar-of-Olives over here! You didn't even bring NEW olives, its an opened jar, you just grabbed something out of the fridge and brought glorified leftovers!"
But the simple fact is you escalated, sabotaged him, got him into a fight with someone that didn't need to be involved, then sat back and enjoyed the crapshow you started. That makes you TA here.
ESH. Y'all both need to grow tf up. You sound 10 years old.
YTA. What I would have done is asked him why he only had time to bring and open jar of olives from his refrigerator.
SillyMoose25 said:
ESH - neither of you sound mature enough to be at the stage where you can have jobs, but seemingly you are.
PopRocks314 said:
YTA. If he's "Talking long and drawn out about how perfectly everything at work and at home was," there's a very good chance he's trying to cover and compensate for stressors that are going on in his life that he doesn't want to/isn't ready to talk about.
Don't assume that he didn't have a reason to "go so low effort." You made a snarky comment that was met in kind, and then escalated with some petty, childish behavior.