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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ScarletHotFace on 2025-06-27 02:58:38+00:00.
Back when I was in high school, I lived with my extremely frugal aunt while my parents were abroad. She had this obsession with saving on the electricity bill. Fair enough but she took it to the extreme.
One day, she caught me walking out of the kitchen and scolded me for leaving the ceiling light on, even though I was going back in less than a minute. She said she didn't t care if I was gone for 30 seconds. When you leave a room, you turn off every single light. Got it.
I started turning off lights whenever I leave a room and soon I got used to it. Later that week, she was cooking in the kitchen, and I was helping her grab ingredients from the pantry which was technically a separate little room connected to the kitchen. I stepped into the pantry, grabbed the oil, walked out, and turned off every single kitchen light as I exited the room.
She shrieked mid stir like she'd gone blind.
What are you doing? I’m still here.
I said, Oh....I thought you weren’t. You said turn off every light when I leave a room and my muscle memory is already getting used to it.
It didn’t stop there. Anytime we were in the living room and I got up to use the bathroom, I’d leave her in pitch darkness. Once, she was even watching TV and I just clicked off the power bar on my way out.
It took about four days of bumping into furniture before she said, Okay, maybe use common sense.
I still turned the bathroom light off every time she used it though because I wasn’t in the room after all.
Took a while before my muscle memory returned to normal.