Man throws out dish at potluck after finding animal hair; woman who brought it cries.
There are few quicker ways to hurt someone's feelings than to insult their cooking skills or general hygiene. No one wants to be looked at as incompetent in the kitchen or dirty. Even if it's technically accurate in the moment.
In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he was wrong for throwing away a full dish at a potluck after discovering an animal hair.
He wrote:
AITA for throwing away a full dish at a potluck because of dog hair?
My (28M) friends and I have potluck parties every so often. One of our rules at this is it has to be store or restaurant bought. We had a food poisoning incident and so we just said no homemade dishes. Everyone has been cool with it. At our most recent one, a friend invited someone that I had never met before. She (20's F) brought her own homemade dish.
I guess it was communicated that it was a potluck, but not the rule. Whatever, first time, we left the dish out. She brought mashed potatoes.I took a serving. Noticed some dark spots. I just thought it was pepper. I felt something weird in my mouth and fished it out. It was an animal hair. Played around with it and found a few more. I was absolutely revolted and threw away the dish.
I didn't care that it was mostly full and people were in line for food. I immediately get yelled at for throwing it away. I tell her that dish has animal hair in it, it's disgusting. I ask her if she is trying to make us all sick? She starts crying, calls me an @$$hole and just leaves the party. I found out she has four dogs, if I knew that I would have never gotten a scoop of potatoes. It was pretty mixed on how I handled it. AITA?
The internet kept it real with OP.
OLAZ3000 wrote:
I cannot imagine anything worse than a potluck where everything is store bought hahahahaha. ESH.
gardenroom15 wrote:
Dog hair mashed potatoes or not, your pot luck sounds terrible.
Eastern_Alps572 wrote:
ESH. Yes, the dish needed to be thrown away but you could have handled it better. Nobody wants that sort of public humiliation and it could have been a side conversation instead of something so dramatic.
Crazy_Past6259 wrote:
NTA. You found more than 1 dog hair in a scoop of mash and immediately threw the dish away even though people are queuing for it. If I’m your friends, I’ll be thanking you profusely for saving me from eating dog hair mash. Eww.
I don’t really see what else can OP do? It is disgusting and people might get sick from eating food that is contaminated - it has dog hair in it, what else can be inside?! Having 4 dogs doesn’t give you the right to feed people your dog's hair. I’m still grossed out.
Abba_Zaba_ wrote:
YTA for yelling at her and causing a scene. Also, YTA because wtf kinda potluck only allows store bought dishes?
Where I come from, you show up to a potluck with a store bought dish, you ain't gettin' invited back to no more potlucks, ya'hear? Most people take reasonable precautions with food safety. Just because ONE person ONE time made a mistake is no reason to stop having normal potlucks.
ToastMmmmmmm wrote:
YTA. You could have removed the dish from the table and taken her aside, shown her the dog hairs and not caused a scene. Yes, it’s revolting but public humiliation isn’t called for in this case.
While people are having a hard time coming to a unanimous consensus, it's agreed that OP could've handled it with more grace, and that the potluck itself doesn't sound fun.