A Classic Comeuppance

This isn’t my story, but rather one my high school economics teacher told me.

When my teacher was in college, he didn’t have a lot of money to his name. He had to work part-time just to cover his tuition and the bare essentials. However, there was one luxury he afforded himself: shampoo. When possible, he’d buy himself a bottle of super-fancy salon-grade shampoo.

Unfortunately, as anyone who’s ever lived in a dorm will tell you, when you live with a bunch of college dudes, people will invariably manhandle your stuff. When my teacher was going to take his regular showers, he’d pick up his fancy shampoo bottle and notice it was distinctly lighter than the last time he held it. Obviously, he was rationing it out for himself, which meant someone else was using it.

He went to his dormmates in the common room to make a case.

Teacher: “Hey, guys, has anyone been using my shampoo?”

Guy #1: “Nope.”

Guy #2: “Not me.”

Guy #3: “No.”

Teacher: “Okay, well, I think someone might have been using it, so if you are, please stop.”

Days went by, and the shampoo bottle continued to drain away. He asked his dormmates several more times, reminding them that that shampoo was literally the one nice thing he can afford, but none of them admitted it. 

Finally, my teacher decided to take the kid gloves off; if they wouldn’t tell him, he had another way of sussing out the thief. There was still a bit of shampoo left in the bottle, so he popped the top and poured in a teensy bit of laundry bleach. He left the bottle in its usual spot and went to hang out in the common room.

Later in the day, he was doing nothing in particular with two of his dormmates when a scream sounded from the bathroom, followed by loud, angry footsteps down the stairs. It was [Guy #3], and he had a gigantic blonde streak in his hair.

Guy #3: “I’M GONNA KICK YOUR A**, [TEACHER]!”

And then my teacher, with a mask of absolute calm, turned to [Guy #3] and asked:

Teacher: “Why are you blaming me for that?”

[Guy #3] opens his mouth to speak and then stuttered. It is at this moment that he realized my teacher had checkmated him; if he said he’d gotten the bleach streak from the shampoo, he’d out himself as a thief in front of the whole dorm. After a bit of angry stuttering and posturing, [Guy #3] stomped off wordlessly.

Nobody ever touched my teacher’s shampoo again after that.