Man hears oven timer for roommate's cookies, leaves them in to burn, she gets frustrated.

Learning how to live with roommates is an ongoing process. Everyone has different pet peeves and different flaws, and the only way you can truly learn how to coexist is through constant communication and trial and error.

In a roommate situation, it's often the smallest and most petty things that can bring out conflict. And sometimes, the only way to settle an argument is to bring in a third party to judge the situation.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he was wrong for not taking his roommate's cookies out of the oven when they went off.

He wrote:

AITA for letting my roommate's food burn in the oven?

One of my(23m) biggest pet peeves is people invading what I am doing. For example, if I am in the kitchen doing something and step out for a few moments. I hate if I came back and someone has 'cleaned up' after me. Unless obviously something was in the way or they needed to use something. But I hate when people don't just mind their business and leave stuff how it was.

I hated when I lived at home and my mom would tidy up my room when I wasn't around. Nothing crazy but say I left a shirt hanging on my bed frame. I know exactly where that shirt is. Now I am coming back looking for it and it's in a new spot. I ask my mom, she doesn't remember where she put it etc etc.

I just am a big believer in minding my own business. I strongly dislike if I am making something in the oven and have a timer set and it goes off and someone takes it out right away and turns the oven off. Usually, I want to leave it in a bit longer or maybe that was just the first step and it needed to be checked on. Even if that was the time for it to be taken out. I would much rather people just mind their own things.

So I extend this courtesy to others and it's very much in my nature to mind my own business. Usually what other people are doing isn't on my radar and people point out how I am usually in my 'own world' a lot. My roommate(22f) on the other hand is the complete opposite. She has to be part of everything. If I'm watching something, she asks what I'm watching.

If I look at my phone and laugh she asks why I'm laughing etc. It's not a problem. A lot of my friends are like this and I don't find it annoying, it can be endearing. She's like this with everyone. But she grew up in a big household whereas I was an only child so she has some different tendencies. She can be absent minded and easily distracted.

She'll almost expect people around her to be watching out for her. She'll have water boiling on the stove and wander to another room. Also she has the annoying(to me) tendency to 'clean up' after me or other people that are in the apartment She was baking cookies in the oven and I was in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal. I was also wearing airpods.

She left the kitchen for a while and eventually I heard the oven going off faintly through the airpods but it wasn't my business. Eventually she came rushing into the room and took the cookies out. They weren't burnt to the point where they smelled but her chewy cookies were solid. She told me I should have heard the oven and took them out.

I told her if that's what she wanted she should have told me to listen for the oven and I would take them out and that you can't just assume someone will. She said it was rude.

The comment section quickly filled up with hot takes.

redditmomentpogchanp wrote:

You're NTA in this particular circumstance, but you sound like an a**hole in general.

fischy333 wrote:

So I don’t mean this to be offensive in any way, but are you autistic OP? It’s not an insult—but your post seems to indicate a few things that may be symptoms, such as having a specific way you like things to be, being inflexible in people disturbing your patterns, space, or routine, applying your own thoughts about the way things “should be” to other people even though you say you recognize they are different.

You cognitively seem to understand that she thinks differently but you can’t seem to think or understand from her perspective, and not picking up on certain social cues. Because I am reading deeply into what you are saying, I’m going to say NTA because I feel like calling you an a**hole is too far for just ignoring a timer that maybe you shouldn’t have.

To be clear, I don’t think it was the “correct choice” to ignore it but I think there is something else going on here that is preventing you from understanding why this wasn’t the correct choice and I’m not going to call you an a**hole for that.

Leather-Bike845 wrote:

YTA. You shouldn't have roommates. You don't share space well and don't seem to have the interpersonal skills to be able to live peacefully with one.

holliday_doc_1995 wrote:

You take a long time to talk about how your roommate is spacey and annoying and about all of your own personal preferences. It was a lot of “this is how I need to do things and this is how my weird roommate does things wrong.” You could have told her the timer was going off, it’s not that big of a deal.

Have you considered that you not telling her about the oven is as upsetting to her as it would be if she had taken your s**t out of the oven and turned it off? How about treating people the way they want to be treated rather than treating them the way you want to be treated?

Gryrthandorian wrote:

YTA for the simple reason that you would rather make a point than be momentarily inconvenienced on principle. I very much dislike people like you and avoid them at all costs at work. When you have a roommate you do things for each other. You don’t have to take the food out but if you hear a timer and she didn’t you say something.

This feels like it’s punitive because she cleaned up in the kitchen and you didn’t want her to. Most people clean as they go. You should try it. Quit keeping score or you’re gonna have a bad time.

_mmiggs_ wrote:

NAH. Both you and she have ways of interacting with alarms and ovens that work, but they're not compatible. She was in the middle of cleaning the bathroom, or whatever she was doing, and thought 'I hear the alarm. No problem - OP was in the kitchen, he'll take my cookies out, so I can take a couple of minutes to finish this thing up'. And she's upset that OP ignored her alarm.

When OP is baking, he thinks 'there's the alarm I set to tell me that it was about time to pay attention to the oven. I'll go check on it in a couple of minutes, when I've finished reading this chapter in my book'. And OP is upset that flatmate has auto-removed his uncooked cake from the oven.

You need to talk to each other. You have different assumptions, and are each just assuming that the other one shares your assumptions.

The internet seems to be divided on this one, with more leaning towards YTA than not, but what seems unanimous is that OP and his roommate need to have a clarifying talk.