On today’s episode of “Am I the Asshole?” (AITA), a 25-year-old woman took to Reddit to ask whether she was in the wrong for bringing non-alcoholic punch to her work party.

I think we already know the answer here, but the context is even more wild than the question itself.

“I (25F) recently attended a potluck-style work party, and brought punch, which has since caused a problem between myself and another coworker (42F), who we’ll call Sandy,” the user explained in her recent post. 

“This was a casual party with alcohol present, but since I have some coworkers who don’t drink, I didn’t add any alcohol to this punch and figured that if people really wanted some they’d just add it themselves,” she continued.

However, within a few hours, Sandy apparently began acting a fool, appearing quite drunk—so much so that she fell off her chair. At this point, she began to question OP (original poster) about her punch, seemingly trying to blame her for how “drunk” she was.

“I told her that I didn’t put any alcohol in it, and asked if maybe someone else had spiked the punch bowl,” OP explained. “Nobody said they added anything, and one of my coworkers who doesn’t drink even said that they’d also been drinking the punch all evening, and was still completely sober.”

The Redditor also clarified that Sandy was the only person at the party who acted drunk, so it wasn’t like she was simply feeding off other people’s intoxicated energies.

But perhaps the strangest part of this story is that Sandy doubled down on OP and accused her of embarrassing her in front of their bosses and coworkers. Some other colleagues even said she should’ve just gone along with it and pretended she did, in fact, use alcohol in the punch—just to save Sandy’s face.

“She’s been hostile to me at work ever since, and is basically refusing to talk to me,” OP said, questioning whether or not she was, in fact, the asshole.

Of course, I think everyone in the comments of this Reddit post—and likely anyone reading this story—can agree that OP is not, in fact, the asshole.

One user responded: “You didn’t embarrass her. She embarrassed herself. What was the alternative—you lie and pretend to have spiked your punch? NTA [not the asshole].”

However, the story does raise questions about the power and validity of the placebo effect. Can someone truly feel the impact of alcohol simply by believing they consumed it—without ever actually doing so?

Or was Sandy just looking for some attention?