My Girlfriend Ghosted Me After Finding 18 Bags of Corn Dogs I Stored Just to Chew on the Sticks

We all have our little quirks and peculiar habits, especially when it comes to food. But there’s a general understanding, a piece of unspoken etiquette, that one should not be wasteful. It’s a principle many of us were raised on: you finish what’s on your plate and you certainly don’t purchase food with the sole intention of throwing it away.

However, one man recently took to the internet to share a story about his very particular snacking ritual, a habit so wasteful it caused a major rift with his new girlfriend and left readers completely stunned.

The Incident

A 38-year-old man has been dating a 23-year-old woman, whom he calls “Brenda,” for about three months. All seemed to be going well until she made a bizarre discovery while poking around in his garage. There, in a standing freezer, she found an astonishing 18 bags filled with naked, stickless corndogs.

After she repeatedly asked him about the strange stockpile, he finally confessed to a ritual he’s been practicing for 16 years. Every two weeks, he buys two large boxes of corndogs from Costco. He then meticulously removes all the wooden sticks, bagging them separately from the actual corndogs.

When he fancies a snack, he doesn’t eat the corndog itself. Instead, he explained, he heats it up, chews the small bit of crunchy breading that remains on the stick, and then gnaws on the stick itself “like a fidget toy” while he works.

And what becomes of the hundreds of de-sticked corndogs? He admitted that he either throws them out, tosses them to stray cats, or uses them for fishing bait. His girlfriend, who volunteers at a food bank, was horrified by what she called the “food waste.” The argument escalated, and she stopped speaking to him for four days. Her friend simply told him that his habit had given her “the ick” and that he should give her space.

The Internet Reacts

The online community was just as baffled as the girlfriend, and opinions quickly flooded the comment section. Readers were divided into a few distinct camps, though most sided with the bewildered young woman.

The first and largest group was the “Absolutely Not” Crowd, who were floored by the man’s strange and wasteful behavior. One commenter summed up the general shock by asking, “What on earth did I just read?”

Another person did the math and was appalled by the scale of the waste: “You are spending in the ballpark of $50-$60 on 112 corndogs a month and are literally only chewing the sticks… Like 1,344 corndogs a year, wasted because you wanna pretend you’re part beaver.” For this group, the habit wasn’t a harmless quirk but a display of incredible irresponsibility.

Then there was the “Devil’s Advocate” camp, though they weren’t really defending him. These readers were far more concerned with another detail in the story: the 15-year age gap between the man and his girlfriend. Their comments suggested the corndog issue was just a symptom of a much larger problem. “You were getting a driver’s license as she was exiting the birth canal,” one person sharply noted.

Another pointed out, “Your girlfriend was 7 when you started this habit.” For these commenters, the bizarre food ritual was secondary to a relationship dynamic they found deeply unsettling.

Finally, the “Practical Solutions” Crowd tried to offer some common-sense alternatives to his expensive habit. Frustrated by the inefficiency, they chimed in with suggestions. “Why not make/eat cornbread and chew on chopsticks?” one person asked.

Another had a more creative idea: “Just boil a hot dog or two and get some Popsicle sticks. Boil them in the hotdog water.” These comments served to highlight just how illogical and needlessly wasteful his long-standing routine truly was.

The Etiquette Verdict

From an etiquette standpoint, my sympathies are entirely with the girlfriend. While it’s true that a grown adult can spend their money however they see fit, there are certain actions that go against the grain of good sense and social grace. Willful, large-scale food waste is one of them. It shows a disregard for resources that is, frankly, quite unbecoming.

His habit isn’t just “weird”; it’s inconsiderate. To discover your new partner casually throws away thousands of meals a year is a legitimate reason to feel repulsed. The story’s final, sad update—that she returned after admitting she didn’t want to lose “the financial security”—only casts a further shadow on the entire affair, suggesting a relationship built on something other than mutual respect.