Friend helped herself to Calpol while house-sitting

[Usernamqwerty]

Got a message from my friend (call her L) who had been house-sitting and dog-sitting (for no pay) for her friend ('D') who has a lovely massive house while D was away. L told me that she felt unwell and helped herself to some Calpol in the house. However, she forgot to replace it and now D is going bananas at her saying it wasn't there when her son needed it. L doesn't know what to do... was she BU in using it in the first place? 🤔

I feel like the jam is the bigger issue here! Jam is the only thing that would survive nuclear warfare, if it gets a bit mouldy (because a heathen has used the buttery toast knife in the jam jar -DH!) , you just spoon the mould off into the bin and carry on, norovirus does not come from jam.
You ask sound like precious nightmares, I hope L is doing it on purpose to wind you both up. On a separate note, was the jam strawberry? Calpol is also strawberry, L might have a strawberry dependency, and neither of you is supporting her, just criticising.

@whyBirdStop

strawberry dependency- love it!

I love a good swig of Calpol - infant one takes the edge of tiredness (probably the amazing sweetness) and the over 6 works like paracetamol but with the bonus of ....sweetness.

I think she was unreasonable to moan about it but maybe she was sleep deprived the next day. Sleep is precious and if you don't get enough it can make you (well me anyway) irrational.

My husband always laughs at me packing piriton, calpol and calprofen every time we go away as we never use them. Usually anyway. The one time we were away and our youngest came down with a bad cold, which annoyingly started in the middle of the night (on a sunday when the nearby 24hr supermarket was closed) he understood why I always pack the medicine! 🙄

You can get norovirus from oysters.

I do wish our food wouldnt be labelled with such conservative use by dates. What a waste on some foods.
Maybe more need sell by eg crisps.
We used milk after a week long holiday and it was fine.
Ketchup says refrigerate and use in 8w... How many people do that?

We never refrigerate ketchup. Though to be fair a bottle doesn't last longer than 3 weeks in our house!!

We do refrigerate jam though as it goes mouldy if you don't. It lasts for months in the fridge once opened though.

She's being a bit over the top

Jam / marmalade doesn’t tend to go mouldy by 6 weeks if you use a clean knife to get it out. A ‘dirty’ knife, eg one with a bit of butter on or some bread crumbs will transfer a breeding ground for spores and mould to grow.

Clean knife all the time

Proper tickled me this. My friend opened my jam. This is not ok. I was saving it for something else and it will go off in 6 weeks

Just wow.

Does your friend need to sleep standing up so not to crease the bedsheets?

I've already been out to my 24hr Tesco and cleared the shelves of Calpol and Jams of all types. Phew palpable relief

opening an unopened thing (like the jam)

What happens if the OP had opened the new jar, had a sniff and put the lid back on again. Does that still count?

Jeez the pettiness. If someone is in my home they are there with my blessing and quite frankly if they wanted to tuck into a slice of toast and a dollop of jam, I'd have been more relieved they opened a decent jar rather than an out of date nasty that's lurking in the cupboard.

My cranberry sauce always does two Christmases. I'm the only one who eats it, and only at Christmas. I do draw the line at a third Christmas though and chuck the last quarter of the jar out.
#JamWastrel.

@Helix1244
You can get norovirus from oysters.

NOT FROM THE OYSTERS THEMSELVES BUT IT CAN BE PASSED ON VIA ANY FOOD PREPARED BY SOMEONE WHO ALREADY HAS NOROVIRUS

She should have taken some paracetamol instead of calpol or waited until she got home to take some

Did you miss that she was house-sitting, @Sceptre86? She may not have got home for a few days. Presumably if there was paracetamol available she would have gone for that instead.

@Countrylifeornot special needs adults who cannot tolerate pills

Tbh I would be raging if one of my DC was ill and I went for the calpol only to discover it wasn't there. It's all good and well saying you can buy it in the supermarket but when your child gets ill and no one is there to go for you or it's night or it's an hour away that's not much use is it?

I would have no problem with anyone using stuff in my house, but when it's medication specifically for children I would expect it to be replaced, or at the very least to be informed so o could replace it.

Poor L

L doesn't know what to do - if I were L I'd never do D anymore bloody favours from now on. And OP, you have still not said how old this child is, was it a screaming tiny baby or a 4 year old with a bit of a headache. Is D a single parent who had no-one else to go to the chemist for her?

Unless this person polished off an entire bottle of Calpol, there was probably only one dose left anyway, so shouldnt this Friend have kept enough Calpol in the house so they didn't run out, if it was that life-and-death?

A child’s dose is a lot smaller than an adult dose. Depending on the age if the child, there may have been four child-sized doses gone in one L-sized dose.

Unless this person polished off an entire bottle of Calpol, there was probably only one dose left anyway,

I assumed there was no calpol. If there was indeed calpol left that changed things entirely from my POV

Fuck me this has descended into anarchy.

Both D and OP are unreasonable. D about the medicine and OP about the jam. If someone is staying in my house then they’re welcome to anything unless I specifically say don’t use it, and you were ridiculous binning jam after 6 weeks.

Although L should have told D she used the Calpol if indeed she finished it which isn’t clear.

I wouldn’t be annoyed they used it, but I would be annoyed if they finished it and then did not say anything. When you have a child in pain during the night, and you have no calpol, it’s horrible for the child, and stressful for the parent.

How do you replace a spoonful of Calpol? Do chemists do tiny little sachets, like the ketchup sachets you get in upmarket cafes?

I'm currently eating jam that I made in 2015.

@raspberryk many adults take Calpol: it may be aimed at kids but it's still paracetamol.

A friend of mine has a phobia and cannot swallow pills and finds the dispersable paracetamol totally unpalatable even mixed with squash so she takes Calpol 6+ for headaches.

OP: it's a non issue. She wasn't wrong to use it but she should have replaced. As someone else said, it's hardly the crime of the century.

L needs to simply apologise and run a bottle over to D. Problem solved.

Is D hitting the roof because it's brand Calpol and she's too embarrassed to admit she can't afford to replace it and doesn't like the unbranded version?

Calpol, Jam, wtf, the lovely, and kind L, obviously needs as much medication as she can get her mitts on, plus the comfort of a (jam), sugar rush, to enable her to handle her ghastly, ungrateful, and quite frankly totally bonkers , child doping , jam stashing friends.