An Anecdote
Our roommate used to buy bulk fruit, and leave it on the table. Then she wouldn’t eat it, so we would get fruit flies.
…Which is disgusting.
We tried to ask her politely about 50 times, to please either buy less fruit, or eat her fruit before it got old, or even put it in the fridge. She always said ‘ok’ but never followed through. We tried to be passive and bought RAID bug spray and smoke bombed the house to kill all the bugs. She still didn’t get it.
Now, Ali and I are not mean people, and we really tried to reason with her, but when that didn’t work we had to scheme.
Slowly we started throwing away her fruit when it got old. When she started noticing, she asked if we threw it way and we weren’t going to lie about it, so we told her yes. She was mad and said we were wasting her money.
I remember distinctly the next moment.
“Well I can’t eat my own breakfast table because of the fruit flies…so…”
Stephanie walked away. We never had another problem.
Lesson: Sometimes you just have to be aggressive when people don’t listen to you.
College and Life After 