r/AmITheAsshole: Vegan wants to evict omnivore tenant using vegetarian clause in the lease

[lemonsharks]

Tag needed: r/AmITheAsshole or "am I the asshole subreddit"

Question: I rent out a studio in the basement of my house. Is it very explicitly stated in the lease agreement that tenants are not allowed to bring any non-vegetarian foods onto the premises.

About a week ago, I saw what was clearly a meat package inside of a grocery bag that she was unloading from her car. When I confronted her and pointed out the lease agreement, she gave me an extremely bewildered look. She claimed ignorance, which I told her was no excuse whatsoever since she willingly signed the agreement. I pulled the agreement out on my phone and showed her the clause. I told her to immediately either discard the package along with any other non-vegetarian foods inside the bag into the outdoor trash bin, or take it off of the premises. I also told her to do the same for the apartment within 3 days, after which I will conduct an inspection. She screamed at me and told me to go to hell, refusing to discard the package that she was carrying.

When I conducted the inspection, I very predictably found several meat packages and a carton of chicken broth inside of the refrigerator. I documented what I saw and gave her an official 15-day notice to quit, after which I will begin the eviction process if she does not comply. When I handed it to her, she went hysterical and started crying. She's claiming that I'm violating her "human rights" and that she'll starve to death.

Answer: You're the asshole.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/hug5om/wibta_for_evicting_a_tenant_who_repeatedly_brings/

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Content warning: In the comments, the OP compares meat-eating with slavery and the holocaust.

Comments

[lemonsharks]

This is literally the first time I've seen a unanimous decision about anything on AITA but there is not one single reply taking the OP's side. And I definitely agree OP is the asshole.

[minoanmiss]

I think the "Am I the asshole for telling me wife she couldn't go out wearing the Classical dress she wove herself?" was also unanimously "yes, you are the asshole," (not least because the guy considers his wife's hobby so contemptible he called the dress a 'toga' which anyone who knows about the classical period would know is the wrong term). OTOH I don't want to go back and check.

Also, wow, what an asshole this LW is.

[lemonsharks]

oh man THAT guy. THAT GUY. I spent the entire post going "chiton. chiton. Chiton. CHITON. ChItOn. CHIIIIITTOOOONNNN >:|"

[delight]

Even I was doing this.

I don't know anything about historical fashion, but my SO studied Classics and specifically Ancient Roman clothing. The fact that I managed to absorb 'chiton' means that OP should have as well.

[lemonsharks]

Like, it may also have been a peplos. but it was definitely not a toga.

[minoanmiss]

I mean, I'm not expecting That Dude to know this particular factoid, but by saying that he was not only deliberately saying "I don't care enough about my wife's hobby to learn ANYTHING" but he was inadvertently calling her a whore. (In Ancient Rome the only women who wore togas were streetwalkers. I would imagine those were cut rather differently than the male toga.)

Also, I admit to really loving that people called the Vegan LAndlord LW out on the bigotry and obnoxiousness of comparing meat eating to slavery and the Holocaust.

[lemonsharks]

I know, right? That LW's wife deserves a partner who cares about her hobby and also goes, WHOOPS, I see I may have had the wrong garment, did you sew a peplos? Will you make one for me? and not like the one she has.

Occasionally Reddit's four collective brain cells all congregate on the same AITA post, and it's a beautiful thing when they do

[jadelennox]

I usually assume that the unanimous YTAs are performance art (like the guy with the weird use of the office fridge), but I've known so many (a) landlords and (b) militant vegan/vegetarians, that I totally believe in this OP.

(ObDisclaimer: I've been a vegetarian for 33 years, just in case it looks like I'm veganshaming. I am definitely not veganshaming. I am absolutely asshole-loud-PETA-vegan-who-compares-meat-eating-to-the-holocaust shaming.)

[thedivinegoat]

Unfortunately two unanimous posts have come up in the last couple of days.

(CW, ableism in both posts)

AITA - someone fired and now criminal charges bc they pranked me

WIBTA if i made my daughter's hearing an incentive?

That last one got deleted, but the bot caught it

[lemonsharks]

Holy shit these are infuriating - I do the startle and sometimes cry thing due to PTSD myself, and it's never occurred to me that some asshole would do that. I guess I've been lucky to work with a bunch of people who just ... don't try to deliberately traumatize their coworkers.

(I also can't believe it occurred to Jerk #2 to take his daughter's cochlears but not her screens. Or to swap the phone for a device with better parental controls.)

[conuly]

I'm really hoping Jerk 2 was a troll.

[lemonsharks]

Me tooooooo

[green_grrl]

Yeah, this guy was crazy. I remember I was looking at AirBnBs for a trip and one was very clearly, “This is a vegan house and vegan kitchen. Please do not cook meat here.” I was traveling with my Mom who was a definite meat eater, so I thought, “Fair enough, next.”

It sounded like this guy buried a sentence in the lease, and then started trying to throw this woman’s grocery shopping in the trash. Definite AH! Frustrates me as a vegetarian, that I get people acting weird around me because they’ve run into someone like him in the past.

[lemonsharks]

I got the same feeling about small print in the lease, and that's the kind of big lifestyle imposition really, really requires the landlord's clear disclosure at multiple points in the process.

(Also, I can think of several GI related medical conditions that would make the vegetarian clause not hold up in the US, but I also know that if I'd been the tenant in this picture I wouldn't want to continue being neighbors with Vegan McControlface

[sporky_rat]

Yeah, I'm one of those people who would love to have a vegetarian diet but uh, my body doesn't do so well without some red meat to help keep stuff going so....landlord would have to deal.

Absolutely YTA.

[naath]

I'm not clear on if "in the basement of my house" is a separate dwelling; UK law gives lodgers (in the same dwelling as you) nearly no rights. I think if this were a *shared kitchen* it would be reasonable to impose my kitchen rules (whether 'no meat' or 'no treif' or 'no nuts' or whatever), but if it is a separate kitchen then it is not reasonable, except to demand a proper cleaning when they leave.

[kelly_holden]

Those are also my thoughts. His kitchen, his rules sure; but separate kitchen he gets no say as long as it isn't damaged.
The OP says "studio", which implies a kitchen to me, because if it didn't have such facilities it would just be a room, not a type of flat. And then there's the bit about him needing to inspect to find the rest of the meat, which at least says there's a separate fridge. Also, I think he would've noticed almost immediately if it was being cooked in his kitchen, especially if the tenant didn't know about the clause to hide the meat.

[lemonsharks]

Unfortunately, the op doesn't ever identify his location--though he uses US spelling throughout the post and comments, which may or may not mean anything.

I, too, suspect he would have noticed meat being stored and cooked in a shared kitchen sooner than this.

[adrian_turtle]

I think there is a small but non-zero chance there was reasonable disclosure of the lease condition in the lease, but the tenant signed it thinking, "yeah, yeah...I'm going to spend 16 hours/day on campus anyway. The only reason I want a kitchen is to make coffee and keep yogurt, and maybe reheat pizza." Then the pandemic, and they aren't eating out all the time. If you signed a lease 3 years ago, would you check it now to look to see if there's a clause that didn't seem important when you signed it?

But the question wasn't whether the landlord was acting within the boundaries of the law. (Maybe. In some jurisdictions. Just barely. If you happened to get a pro-landlord judge.) The question was whether the landlord is an asshole. (Yes. So very yes.)

[heavenscalyx]

I remember I was looking at AirBnBs for a trip and one was very clearly, “This is a vegan house and vegan kitchen. Please do not cook meat here.” I was traveling with my Mom who was a definite meat eater, so I thought, “Fair enough, next.”

Right? When we were attending LandDyke Gatherings years ago, the rule was that the main kitchen was vegan, and if meat was going to be cooked, it was going to be in a different location, and they preferred that people who were eating meat also eat in a different location than the main eating area. And that was cool because it was carefully and explicitly laid out in the ground rules. (There were always more strident vegans who were upset about the grill and meat cooking, but it was up to the hosts in the end and the hosts were generally persuasive enough to garner consensus-1.)

[annotated_em]

<Carolyn Hax>Wow.</Carolyn Hax>

[ioplokon]

Yeah, this is such an asshole thing - like I already think restricting guests (beyond reasonable notice and like 'let's not have a secret extra roommate who none of us agreed to live with') is bullshit and restricting diet goes so far beyond that. Especially when you are not even sharing a kitchen/fridge/utensils. I'm happy to keep things vegan life or kosher for housemates (though, admittedly, this is easier for me as a vegetarian) but it's totally wrong to want to control someone's diet when they have their own fridge, utensils, kitchen. Once money changes hands, this person is not your guest, they're your tenant and they need the freedom to live their life in peace.

Also this reminds me of a live in landlord ad that was like, 'I am vegan so there can be no meat or dairy products in the fridge. Except for the fish which I occasionally eat.' like, fuck off!

[lemonsharks]

I can get behind, "look, we share a ventilation system so can you please not cook bacon all the time or douse yourself in Chanel #5?"

But definitely not my tenant must join my religion adhere to my standards of moral purity

[ioplokon]

The worst was when I went to look at a studio (duplex; no shared space but landlord lived in the other unit) and the landlord was like, 'btw no guests' - like, my dude, why do you think people pay for a studio?