Enjoying spicy food or, to be more specific, hot sauce isn’t such a rare thing. And as long as it doesn’t hurt a person’s health too much, it’s not such a big deal, is it? 

Well, apparently there are some people who don’t think this way. Like the man in this story, who called his girlfriend’s friend a slur, just because she was using hot sauce in a funky way. And by doing this, he effectively strained his girlfriend’s friendships. 

More info: Reddit

Should you confront the person who belittles you for your silly but harmless habit?

Image credits: freepik (not the actual photo)

A woman who loves hot sauce and even carries it with her for emergencies went to a dinner with her friends

Image credits: Eric Prouzet (not the actual photo)

One of the friends brought her new boyfriend to this dinner, and he very quickly showed what an awful person he is

Image credits: RDNE Stock project(not the actual photo)

For instance, he kept making poor jokes at the others’ expense, being rude and so on

Image credits: TATastyFood

And so, when the hot sauce enthusiast started using her favorite condiment in a slightly odd way, this man proceeded to call her a slur, which caused her to tell him off and leave

The OP opened the story by telling everyone she loves hot sauce. And that her favorite brand is Tabasco, a sauce made from vinegar, salt, and tabasco peppers, hence the name. She loves it so much that for years she carried a mini bottle of Tabasco and mini packets for emergencies. 

Granted, she never took her own sauce to restaurants. She says it would be poor taste in her culture and not allowed in the restaurants. Here, people on this forum had mixed answers to whether it’s rude or not to bring your own sauce to a restaurant. For some, it seemed like quite a reasonable thing to do. For example, maybe a restaurant doesn’t serve a hot enough sauce that a person wants. Others deemed it as a rude gesture. 

Manners expert Thomas P. Farley was on the latter side of the debate. He said that by attending restaurants, people subject themselves and their palettes to the servers and it’s disrespectful to add your own condiment even if the meal isn’t tasty. 

Well, as the OP said herself, she never did anything like it. Her emergency sauce was for take-out food and her spice-intolerant close friends’ cooking. 

She also doesn’t drown her food in the condiment – she likes to mix it with regular bites. This habit makes her hog the sauce bottle at a restaurant, so she asks for an additional one so other people at the table aren’t inconvenienced. This habit will become a catalyst for the events described in the story. 

Once, she, her husband, and her friends had planned a dinner. One friend brought her new boyfriend Jim to the outing. No one else had met the man before, and right from the start, he seemed off to them. 

For instance, when one of the friends updated everyone about her daughter’s Down syndrome well-being, this man decided to make a “joke” about it. It was about how people with Down syndrome are a drain on society. Not so funny, is it? 

Then, when the food arrived, the OP habitually asked for a second bottle of hot sauce. When she started using it as she always does, it caught Jim’s eye. He gave a dirty look and asked her why she “was using hot sauce like an idiot.” She explained her habit, but this didn’t please him. He turned to his girlfriend and called the author the R-word. 

Image credits: wayhomestudio (not the actual photo)

This slur is considered offensive because it is typically used as an insult to people with intellectual disabilities or to insult others by comparing them to people with intellectual disabilities. Basically, using it is no better than using any other slur against a minority group. 

So, no wonder the OP saw red after getting called this. Then, she decided to retribute. But instead of using slurs, she called him disgusting and disrespectful. She also listed everything he did wrong during the dinner and added that she’d never come to another outing if he was going to be there. 

After this explosion, she asked the waiter for a to-go box with her meal, paid for her and her husband’s tab, and left the establishment. But the story doesn’t end here. 

Later, the hot sauce enthusiast got a text from her friend saying she’d humiliated her by scolding her boyfriend. What’s even worse is that after the original poster left, all the other friends followed. Apparently, they couldn’t stand the dude either. She felt that this incident made everyone hate her, thus alienating her from the friend group. 

This made the OP feel bad – she didn’t mean to hurt her friend, she just couldn’t stand her awful boyfriend. Yet, giving him a second chance, just as the friend pleaded, didn’t seem to be a good idea. This dude didn’t deserve it. 

People on Reddit agreed with this sentiment. They talked about how awful the friend’s boyfriend was. They also noted that the friend seemed to be stuck in a toxic relationship.

Maybe at first, the man seemed like a good person, and when his true colors appeared she was too sucked in. Or maybe he treated her way better than he treated her friends, which made her see him through rose-tinted glasses and then lash out at friends when they called out his behavior. 

Knowing that the post was written a while ago, let’s just hope that she was able to get out of the relationship with this man and either found someone better or found joy in being single. And, of course, that the friends made up and didn’t let this vile dude ruin their friendship for good.

People online assured the woman she did the right thing by not tolerating such awful behavior and walking out, but at the same time worried that the friend might be in a toxic relationship

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