Mom gets revenge on vegan neighbor for stealing her kids' Halloween candy as 'tax.'

What do you do when your neighbor decides to steal your children's Halloween candy as payment for a simple favor?

It's spooky season, indeed. So, when a frustrated mom decided to consult the moral compass of the internet otherwise known as Reddit's 'Am I the As*hole' about whether or not she was wrong to shut down a vegan mom on her high horse, people were quick to help deem a verdict.

"AITA for not telling a vegan mom that the candy she stole from my kids and was eating, wasn’t vegan?"

My neighbor, 38F (super vegan) has 2 kids. I (26F) also have 2 kids. My apartment complex didn’t do traditional trick or treating on Halloween. Residents were advised to set out prepackaged individual candy bags on their patios/front door areas if they wanted to participate- but the traditional “knock on door, physically hand strangers candy” was not permitted.

So, Halloween comes and the kids are all dressed up and each building has a scheduled time where the kids go door to door. I ended up having to work late so my neighbor offered to walk my kids around with hers at our buildings scheduled time.

About 45 minutes later my kids came home with a small bucket of candy (6 little goodie bags each from individual apartments that participated) everything was fine, and my kids didn’t say anything weird had happened. They were just excited to eat candy once they got home lol.

The next day I took my kids to the park directly across from our apartment complex. My neighbor was there with her kids as well. The kids were playing and she took out one of those individual goodie bags with candy in it from her purse and started to loudly rummage in it.

She ate several pieces of candy and my daughter eventually noticed, ran up and asked if she could have a piece and my neighbor responded “nope, this is my tax candy, remember that this was my reward for taking you trick or treating last night.' I was a little weirded out by that statement and asked what she meant.

She said that since she is the one who had to take the kids out, she took FIVE bags from each of my kids as a “tax.” Her son then chimes in and said “you only took two bags from us!” she responded with “but I’m your mom, I was doing a favor so they get a higher candy tax.'

I was thinking about how to respond when I noticed that she was holding a starburst candy and decided to just smile and nod and go back to watching my kids. I let her continue to finish off the bag of candy and then said “hey, aren’t you vegan? You know a lot of those candies are made with animal products right. “

I explained what gelatin was and how a LOT of those candies are made with it. She was horrified, googles it and then told her kids that they were leaving. She said something about how she was going to be sick and stormed off.

Now she’s giving me dirty looks every time we see her and won’t let her kids play if she shows up at the park and we are there. My husband thinks I’m an as*hole cause I should have either- not said anything about the gelatin, or said something right away when I noticed.

I don’t think it’s my job to tell a vegan what is and isn’t vegan though, and she deserved it for stealing candy from little kids.

Later, she edited the post to include:

Edit: When we got home from the park after the gelatin incident, I sat my kids down and asked why they didn’t tell me that the neighbor took half of their candy. My oldest kid is six and my youngest kid is four.

Six year old explained that as they went door-to-door during their designated trick-or-treating time she would have my four year old grab two bags instead of one from each apartment for the majority of them, she explained it to my kids that they were grabbing extra bags for her to be handed over at the end as taxation.

So either freaking way she was directly taking candy from my kids or taking candy from other kids through mine.

Of course, the jury of internet strangers was eager to weigh in on this neighbor versus neighbor parenting dilemma. Here's what people had to say about this mess...

bratthecat said:

NTA gelatin is like the first thing you figure out isn't vegan anyways and I say this as someone who did try veganism. It's takes 0 effort to google that and also 0 effort to not be a dick to kids.

ElectricMoccoson said:

NTA - Ignoring the fact that this candy-tax is just a sugar coated way of thieving candy from children, it's not your responsibility to inform someone if something is vegan or not. If this mom didn't know how gelatin is made, that's her issue and not yours.

spookybae95 said:

NTA. You would be if she had an allergy to something and didn’t tell her, but this was just good petty revenge. She’s the asshole. Literally taking candy from babies? What kind of person is this?? She took almost half of your kids’ candy.

That’s insane. It would have been bad enough to take a bag from each child, but two from hers and five from yours? No. What a horrible person. Also, I was a vegan for seven years and don’t know how she wouldn’t know gelatin is typically an animal product. Lmao good job OP. This was 100% deserved.

So, there you have it!

Everyone agreed unanimously here that this mom wasn't wrong to give this vegan a reality slap even if it was an act of hilariously petty revenge. What kind of fully grown adult parents decides to give themselves a sugar salary by stealing from excited kids celebrating Halloween? Good luck, everyone!