Laughing at this because it reminds me of how we all just accept stuff without questioning it until someone points it out. Like I used to think you had to push the button at crosswalks or that gas station coffee was cheaper if you paid inside. We build these little routines around things we never actually learned, just sort of picked up from watching someone else do it wrong. Three years of bitter cold brew is rough though, especially in a Chicago winter when you probably wanted something warm anyway. The real lesson here is that roommates are low key free life coaches who catch the dumb stuff you stopped noticing.

My dad used to keep a jar of parking meter change on his dresser and swore it was his "emergency fund" even though it mostly went to scratch tickets and vending machines at work. He never wrote any of it down and acted shocked every time the jar was empty by Friday. Your notebook would have saved him twenty years of lying to himself about where the quarters went.