People Let Us In On Their Most Deplorable Roomie Experience
19. Passive Aggressive Is His Middle Name
“I (F26) have three roommates (M29, F31, M30). Person C (M30) has no relation to either of us prior to moving in, and I also interviewed for the room as a random as well.
Person A + B (M29, F31) are the best of friends, and their circle of people is their shared friends.
Person A was straight-up disrespectful to me when I initially moved in. I placed a box in front of my room that I planned on moving down to the basement because I couldn’t fit it in my room, and I was told that “it is okay to take my time as long as I move it down eventually.”
A week passes after the readjustment, and he is annoyed and offers to help me move it down himself, and I was thankful because I’m very weak, but while doing this, he eyeballs me so hard and does a loud groan. It baffles me.
I haven’t had much interaction with this person or the two others at this point (so we hadn’t even really talked about personal lives or politics), and I wasn’t really sure what I had done that could’ve possibly upset him because it has only been a week since I moved in.
And when I would talk about a topic while all of us were in the same room, he would noticeably cut me off abruptly and change the topic very quickly.
This happens a couple more times on other topics.
I try to be conscious of when I make people feel uncomfortable and avoid double down-ing (but am guilty time to time), so I’m weirded out because I’ve really tried to accommodate him each time, and I’m not sure what is making him uncomfortable or annoyed.
Even if the topic is slightly uncomfortable for me, I’m the type of person that lets a person finish what is on their mind before gently transitioning into a different topic.
I know we are two different people, but it’s just annoying coming from a man-baby. I also make an effort to be receptive to feedback when a person tells me something I’m doing or saying is making them feel eh.
I know that everyone is different, and you can’t really judge someone’s personality from an interview, so he obviously wouldn’t know any of this about me, but I also hadn’t expected him to blatantly eye roll me….
We also have an ant problem every summer in the kitchen, and the first summer, I tried to take care of it.
He saw I was using disinfectant and loudly, passive-aggressively said “CHEMICALS.” I immediately said, “Is this bothering you?” and he was just… surprised I called him out on it.
There were other minor interactions in between.
A couple of months later, person A’s partner comes by, and they are preparing food in the kitchen. He loudly complains to his partner about how his knife is being used while I am in the kitchen and said, “I already talked to the other two about it.” This was also really strange that he said it while another person was there and couldn’t directly address the situation prior.
I have no knowledge of this whatsoever, and I’m just utterly confused and unaware that the problem existed in the first place.
He proceeds to complain about the same issue for what seems like ~5 minutes, and I turn around and said, “Is something bothering you….? You can tell me about it…” He is surprised that I am directly addressing him and says, “No, nothing at all.” He doubles down and complains, again, and I ask him, again.
He is still surprised.
He starts complaining after the second ask, and I just lose it. I address him head-on and just tell him, “You need to say something to me and stop being a passive-aggressive jerk” and leave the house to go to work.
My room is on the second floor facing the set of stairs going up the third floor, and he would kick my shoes outside of my door while climbing up or down.
I figured it must be the number of shoes, so I limited it to one or two, but he kicked those too, no matter how neatly I arranged it and made sure it didn’t get in his way.
His room is directly on top of mine, and he would stomp and jump after I had made it clear many times that it bothered me.
I don’t even know what I’m doing because I’m trying really, really hard to stay out of his way because he’s just an unpleasant human being…… He also conveniently neglects to flush the toilet after doing #1 after I group chatted it before and I for sure know it’s him bc I’ve caught him leaving as I’m going in.
If you pee facing the toilet, it’s really hard to forget…..
I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to person B (who I’m on okay terms with) to try and mediate the situation, but she gaslights me and makes excuses for whatever weird things he does. Sigh. She also thinks I have ill intentions even though 1) I lose when I directly confront him, and 2) I lose when I try to non-confront with group chat because texting him is too “confrontational” too.
Approaching her was the last resort….
After every time my close friend would come over, whatever person A did before would be worse for a few days and calm down after. We talk about everything, primarily activism within the person of color community and whiteness.
We are both people of color, and my three roommates are white progressives who are “allies,” but they’re very uncomfortable about us talking about any of this, even though they talk about being white themselves.
Once again, I’m unaware, and I would’ve avoided this had I known they’re not cool with it.
I’m also confused about what point person A is uncomfortable with.
I get that people don’t like certain things you say or do and have different opinions, but most people just avoid interaction with that person instead of acting like this.
He recently cut my dishwashing glove a few months ago (no one uses those gloves except me, and it was after a slight disagreement we had on something so I know it’s him), and I’m just done at this point.
We disagree about what racism is and certain issues within politics, but to be honest, it’s just whatever to me. When that happens and it makes me uncomfortable, I don’t do anything to him or his belongings, and I just avoid the topic. But he will do this nonsense and loudly, passive-aggressively talk to his friends and family about it. I literally walk 10-15 mins away from my house to talk to a therapist about the issues I have with him (walls are thin; I want to be considerate and make sure I don’t provoke him).
Person B found out I was talking to my therapist about it and informed him. He repeats all of the above and loudly, passive-aggressively complains to his fam again.
It’s really annoying, and I’m not sure what to do. I have been dying inside for the past two years and I can’t move out bc $$$, so I try to be civil and diffuse potentially difficult situations.
I’ve cried about this x amt of times out of frustration. No matter what I do, he double retaliates, and it’s an eye for two eyes.
He is a total, straight-up bully that everyone thinks is a nice person, and I feel crazy. My friends and family know about it, and I’ve decided to stop talking about the situation to them and instead process it with my therapist, so I can move forward in life.
There are other things I am at fault for of course, so I’ve tried to sit him down once in the past to work out our differences, and he just… sneered at me.
He’s a belligerent man-child who interprets everything I do or say as an attack towards him, and he has a deep victim mentality.
I’m ready to hold myself accountable and hear him out about anything I’ve done that may have upset him, but he has closed that so I left him alone.
The passive-aggressive behavior has accumulated into hostility and can be classified as aggression now. I’m typing about this while he is jumping and stomping in his room.”
Another User Comments:
“I would start recording every interaction. This guy sounds like he will eventually resort to violence. Watch your back.” pashamom
18. His Lack Of Bathing Was So Bad That Even Other People Started To Notice
There’s no going nose blind when living with THIS horrible of a stench.
“Freshman year, I pack my suitcases and head to college. I am moving from India and headed to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I know absolutely no one at Michigan, so I get paired up with this random dude from Detroit. Now, this is a pretty exciting time for me. I am 17-years-old, 10,000 miles away from home, in a new country with a very different culture, and absolutely loving it!
Until my roommate moves in.
He is this 300 pound, short guy. I introduce myself. We make some small talk, and that’s pretty much the end of it all. My guess is this guy is pretty reserved and shy, and that’s fine with me.
As time passes, I realize that this guy never leaves the room, except to eat or poop. He would be up all night playing his Xbox, chatting to random people on the internet, and then sleep through all his classes.
But that’s his life, so not my problem.
A month passes by, and I start detecting a faint smell in the room. I get some air fresheners, start keeping the doors and windows open, and at least the smell is bearable. I also noticed that he was extremely unhygienic. He would have dirty dishes lying on his bed while he slept next to it, not washing the dishes for weeks at a time.
I bring it up with my roommate a couple of times, but he is oblivious to it.
As more time passes, even people in the hallway start noticing the smell. We all figure that this guy never ever showers or does laundry, and it’s just a toxic mix of Febreeze and BO. What’s even worse is that I notice that his bedsheets are stained with “stuff,” and he sleeps in that filth every day.
To top it off, it’s now November, and it starts snowing. So now, I can no longer keep the windows open.
At this point, I am frequently sleeping over at my friend’s place, crashing on the couch somewhere because the stench is unbearable. I am finally sick of it and get my RA involved. The RA, the roommate, and I sit down and have a discussion on this.
My case is pretty simple… Take a shower every. single. day. But this guy point-blank refuses, with a blunt, “Nah man, I don’t do that.” So now, I am negotiating with this guy on how often he should bathe himself. I suggest every alternate day, but we finally settle on 3 days a week.
He kept the bathing routine for about a couple of weeks and then went back to his old self.
I moved out soon after.
This was by far the worst roommate experience I have ever had. And this was also how I got introduced to America!”
17. When An Already Unstable Person Snaps...
“I’m actually kind of terrified he’ll read this. I’m on the other side of the ocean, and I still worry about my psychotic former roommate.
He was always a bit unstable. I mean, wore all black, long black hair, pale as a ghost white, and hated absolutely everyone, himself included (he told me so).
To get to sleep at night, he took some kind of prescription tranquilizers, that on occasion made him hear things that weren’t there. At first, living with the scary, crazy guy in the residence was kind of nice. Intoxicated people didn’t knock on our door as they swayed down the hall to the next party. It was… convenient.
But then, sadly, his insanity decided I was the target.
First, he started flirting with a girl I was trying to start something with – in front of his own girl, I might add (incidentally, she and I stayed friends; she’s awesome and way better looking than the other girl). This led to me getting angry with him, him getting angry back. And then something must have just snapped.
One night, I had other friends over, drinking and having a good time, when from somewhere inside his bedroom, we started hearing the sound of him repeatedly beating his own head on the wall.
Nervous giggles from the girls, worried looks between the guys, we decided to take the party to another guy’s res-suite instead.
When I came back later, all was quiet. I went to use the bathroom before calling it a night – and discovered that he had written “SCREW YOU” on the mirror… wait for it… in his own b***d. Yes, somewhere deep inside his head, the precariously balancing stability had fallen off the cliff.
Enter Res security, the other 2 guys living with us, the ‘resident life coordinator,’ and various other characters. Most of it’s a blur after that, but I do recall the security guy saying, “And you’re sure it was b***d?” to which I replied, “Well, I wasn’t about to do a lick test to see if it was ketchup.”
In the end, I moved into another room in another building (with some really fun, wild-party kind of guys), the other two roommates stayed terrified of the psycho, and he was put on some kind of probation where he had to speak to a counselor regularly or be kicked out.
Oh, of course, we were in all the same classes, and without me to carry his dumb butt, he flunked out pretty soon afterward.
I saw him once, a couple of years later, just before I graduated. He was at the graduation of the girl he had started flirting with that began the whole fiasco.”
16. She Has A Toxic Way Of Dealing With Conflict
“My first college roommate had very specific rules: No guys anywhere near our room without a 24-hour warning, no guys in my bed ever, I was not to use my (desktop) computer after she went to sleep or have any lights on, I was to use my phone’s vibrate function to wake up to, and I was not supposed to wake her up when I got ready, except for days she had early class, in which I was supposed to.
One of the first serious signs of trouble was when I had been in the room with my music on, fairly quietly. She decided she wanted her music on but was too passive-aggressive to ask, so she just turned her music on also (we were only a couple of feet away from each other). I didn’t feel like dealing with her nonsense, so I just turned my music up a liiiitle bit louder than hers.
She thought she could win, even though she had a laptop, and I had actual speakers, so she turned her volume up to max. I turned mine up just sliiiightly louder, still not anywhere near max, which sounds like a kind of funny argument — until you find out that at that point, she started crying hysterically and threw her glasses at the wall a couple of feet away from her hard enough to mess them up and began yelling at me.
A month or two later, one Saturday, I woke up at 5 AM to go to a competition. I got home at 1 AM. She wasn’t there. I went to sleep. It turned out she had gotten trashed and forgot her keys. She was trashed, so she didn’t think to call me to let her in, and she didn’t want to call campus security or the Head Resident, so she got in very early in the morning.
She came in, threw her stuff down, left the door open, and went to her desk (a couple of feet from my bed). She then started working on some sort of group project, and her computer made the annoying jump, drive-in, jump, drive-out noise a handful of times. I was kind of annoyed, as I hadn’t had much sleep in the past few days, but I really drew the line when she decided to have a conversation with someone out in the hall while sitting a couple of feet away from me, trying to sleep (the person in the hall couldn’t see I was there.) At that point, I (mostly) nicely asked her to turn off the sound on her laptop and close the door to the hall.
We then had a screaming argument in which, among other things, she told me that I thought the entire world was out to get me, that no one liked me, that I only called my parents when asking them for financial aid (which I hadn’t ever done…), and all sorts of other things. I stormed downstairs, slept for another couple hours in a common room, waited until she’d left for the group meeting, got dressed, and stuff… And then I basically didn’t see her for the next 2-3 weeks it took for me to find another room to move into.
She slept elsewhere and snuck in the room after I went to work to get changed and stuff. At that point, I enjoyed messing with her– I would switch work shifts with people and leave 10 minutes later and see her scurry away from me as I walked out of the bathroom and stuff.”
15. He Tried To Keep A Very Dangerous "Souvenir"
“My flatmate was a nice guy, but he was the arch-typical bloke who marched to the beat of a different drum.
From the rest of humanity.
One weekend, he came back from a diving trip really excited. “Look what I found,” he said proudly. And he held out a small, blue bomb.
Apparently, the guy he went diving with was just as nuts as he was and had taken him diving in an area that was a designated Air Force practice range. They dived in this restricted area because no one else was stupid enough to, so the crayfish were bigger there.
While looking for crayfish, my flatmate had found the bomb and decided to take it home as a souvenir.
We wouldn’t let him bring the thing into the house, so he just left it on the doorstep. After a couple of days of nervously stepping over it to get in and out of the house, I decided we needed to get rid of it. My flatmate, however, was having none of it.
It was his pride and joy.
My step-dad was in the Air Force, and I knew how things worked, so the next day, I called the armament warrant officer at the local base for advice. I was sure it was just a practice bomb, but I wanted to know if it would have contained any charge. Yep, apparently, they contain phosphorus. The armament WO’s advice?
Ring the cops.
At this point, I called my other flatmate, who also owned the house, to discuss things. She decided to call the police. Later, when I got home from work, I was surprised to find a large army truck pulling away from our drive. The flatmate-owner was looking very serious when I walked in.
Turned out, two policemen had come round earlier to investigate her report.
“Where’s this bomb, then?” one of them had asked her. “You’re standing next to it,” she replied. At which point. the cop had jumped backward off the porch in alarm. They had then cordoned off the street (with the flatmate-owner still in the house) and called the army bomb squad.
The bomb squad had turned up complete with all their kits and determined the bomb was inert.
However, they were livid with my flatmate and wanted to charge him with something serious and nasty, except that the flatmate-owner wouldn’t give them my flatmate’s name. They were just leaving with the bomb when I arrived from work.
About an hour later, my flatmate turned up. He was really angry when he saw his prized possession was gone. “Why didn’t you tell me before you rang the cops?
I would have hidden it if I’d known they were going to take it away,” he said. Yeah, that was exactly the point, though.”
14. He Thought He Was All That And A Bag Of Chips
Hate it break it to you, buddy, but you aren’t.
“I was pretty excited about college my freshman year, but oh man, did the nonsense pile quickly with one of my roommates.
First off, the university was experimenting with overfilling the rooms. I had three roommates in a three-person room.
It was cramped, to say the least. Two of my roommates were decent guys that were easy to get along with, but the third, whom I’ll call Eric, was by far the worst person I’ve met in my college career.
To begin, during orientation week, I made it a staple to eat as many meals with my new roomies as possible. I figured if I’m going to live with these guys, we should at least get to know each other pretty quickly.
This went well with the others, but with Eric, it was more of a struggle. The first time we had lunch together, we get talking about random things, normal stuff, conversations going well. It then for whatever reason gets turned onto the topic of ancient Rome, and then, logically, to the fall of Rome.
Eric gets a smug ‘I know a hidden truth’ grin on his face and says, “Yeah, and you know why Rome fell, right?” Since my best friend is a history nerd and never shuts up about it, I plan to reply with a simple ‘yeah,’ but before I can get a word out, Eric answers his own question with, “Homosexuality!”
Obviously, a tad put off, I politely correct him saying that Rome’s economic addiction to cheap slave labor and the division of classes were the killing factors (in a nutshell, of course).
Eric gets a shocked look on his face and realizes I’m not going to follow whatever he suggests. He then tries to play it off. The conversation quickly dies, and we finish up soon afterward.
Other highlights, Eric was the kind of guy who’s done everything you’ve ever done better than you and then decided it’s boring. If you have an expensive gizmo, he has a more expensive one, but always at home. If you had a conversation with him, it was like clockwork.
He would also try to intimidate me and my roommates in a way that can only be described as a chihuahua trying to dominate a Great Dane.
The kid was 6’8″ but the dumbest looking fool you could imagine.
The kid was some crazy Christian and would always tsk under his breath when something ‘sinful’ was on topic and not being bashed. He wore TWO crosses. TWO. It boggles my mind how he thinks this benefits him. When he asked me what kind of Christian I am, not what my religion was but what type of Christian I was, I explained I was an atheist. He seemed alright with this but added, “As long as you’re not one of those atheists that think atheists should rule the world.” I was a little dumbfounded at that, but I assured him I wasn’t.
He then, in the most untactful manner I have ever witnessed, added, “Because they won’t.” He also got into religious arguments about country music with my other roommate who was a great guy.”
13. I Got Arrested And Am Out $10,000+ Because Of My Roommate
“Let’s see. I had this really close friend whom I met in the 8th grade. Fast forward 8 years, and we were roommates renting a house. We were really close, but I suppose in retrospect we were drifting apart as time went on.
He liked to hang out with bad characters while I just kept to myself most of the time in the home office working and such.
Now I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, but one morning, I was asleep, and all of a sudden, a swat team busted through my bedroom door, jumped on me, handcuffed me, and took me outside half-dressed. They wouldn’t even let me put shoes on.
Evidently, this “friend” had a “friend” of his come over that night with some loser. This friend of his also decided to hide substances inside of the speaker in the living room and apparently had a handgun laying out in the kitchen. A bunch of other horrible things led to the cops being called. I was asleep at the time and was none the wiser.
I was still arrested because after the police flipped my place upside down, they found the substances hidden in the speaker. So I got charged with possession and intent to distribute because it was in a “common area” of the property that I was living in. I spent a weekend in prison (without shoes) on two felony counts until I got bailed out.
It took a year of going back and forth to court dealing with legal nonsense until both charges were finally dropped because I clearly had nothing to do with any of it.
The whole ordeal ended up costing me roughly 10 grand. Adding insult to injury, the police left my place turned over upside down with the doors unlocked, so by the time I got out, I had a bunch of expensive computer equipment stolen (simply because the newspapers decided to print the address of the residence the next day).
My “friend” and the other piece of trash ended up being convicted for many things, and as far as I know, were sentenced to prison for some years.
I mean, he wasn’t the brightest of people, but I had no reason to suspect or even fathom something like this could ever occur since I was really close with this guy and had known him for several years. We were pretty much like brothers who always looked out for each other.
Have not spoken to him since and have no clue if he’s out or what has happened to him since.
So, yeah, I would consider that my worst roommate experience.”
12. They Threatened Me, But I Got Evicted
Makes sense for the victim to lose their apartment, right…?
“This is long but freaking crazy.
Last year, I lived with 3 girls and one guy. The guy moved out and then all broke loose.
Two of the girls (R1 And R2) were best friends, and I was pretty cool with the third (R3). R1 and R2 both got puppies at the same time from the same litter.
I moved in later than the other girls, and by that time, the dogs had already chewed through some of the moldings on the ground. They had not paid their pet deposit, so the dogs weren’t allowed to stay there, but I didn’t mind because I included the damage on the inventory report when I moved in.
R1 went to school during the day and worked at night, so she would be gone sometimes all day and all night.
She would not take her dog but instead leave it, rarely in a kennel, in our living room all day long. This dog would pee and poop on a regular basis in our living room not to mention have nobody to play with or food to eat. She would leave for days at a time, and this little dog would bark all day and night and destroy stuff in the apartment as dogs who are neglected often do.
And when she was gone for days, that meant that the pee and poop were sitting there for days, along with any trash the dog might have gotten into.
I could not watch her do this anymore, so I would take him out, and I would feed him and play with him. Obviously, this got very tiresome considering this wasn’t a responsibility I asked for.
I talked to other roommates, and they both agreed that something needed to be done about the dog. R3 decided to tell the apartment complex’s management about the dog.
So one day, I’m hanging out in my room of the apartment, and I pretty much decided that day to not leave my room. I have wood floors, and while I was trying to take a nap, I hear R1 and R2 talking right outside my room about how R1’s man was a dealer and that he was violent.
Anybody who has wood floors will tell you that sound carries, and I decided to not say anything about it to them but pass the information along to R3, who was my friend.
Eventually, R2 comes to R3 to tell her about the story with R1 and tells her the exact same story that I had heard. R2 tells R3 to not tell me, and she tells her that I already know.
R2 is already mad at me because I left my dishes in the sink for one day (even though there’s pee and poop that sat on our floor on a regular basis), so she tells R1, and they decide to join together in their hatred of me. At this point, R1 approaches me in the apartment alone, tells me to keep her name out of my mouth, to never touch her dog again, threatens to hurt me, and holds a knife pretty close to me.
At this point, R3 was in the office of the apartment complex telling the management that she had a dog in the apartment that she doesn’t take care of and hasn’t paid the pet deposit. I just go to the office to tell them this witch is threatening my life, and I want her out of the apartment. While telling them about how horrible they both were, I accidentally said the word puppies instead of puppy, so they knew there was more than one dog.
They call R1 and R2 and tell them their dogs have to be elsewhere in 24 hours or else they will be removed for them.
R3 told R1 this was going to happen, but when they find out their dogs are going to be taken away, they proceed to bang down my door, threatening to hurt me (which was promptly recorded on my phone), and when I walked out, one tried to fight me, but I’m stronger than her and got her away from me.
Police report filed again, and the next day, R1 and I receive letters regarding our evictions. That’s right, OUR evictions. Both on the grounds of lease violation except mine was for “being boisterous” or something stupid like that. Had I known at the time how lease violations and evictions worked, I wouldn’t have moved, but I still might sue for emotional damages or something because they are liable for not doing anything about R1 threatening me after the first police report was filed.”
11. A Snoopy Control Freak
“I moved in with this insane woman who, after a week of being there, asked me if I was okay with moving all of my stuff to her bedroom for one month while she goes to Spain and then rent my room to someone else for that month. Oh, and if I wouldn’t mind spending $300 more that month.
Then she said she wasn’t really going to go to Spain.
Then she proceeded to have people from Craigslist look at my bedroom while I was at work. I know this because I came home early during one of her showings, and when I had asked how many people had seen my room that day, she said, “Ummm… Oh, just the one.” Like she had to count.
She started going through my things. I knew she was going into my room but not taking anything.
So I set up cameras. She was just doing bizarre things in my room, like looking in my closet, trash can, underwear drawer. I started leaving out expired credit cards, just to see what she would do. The most bizarre was when she was inspecting my towels, which I had hanging on a door. Looking at them, checking for things, looking at the tags. So the next day, I took my towels and hid them.
It was especially funny in that video because you actually see her walk up to the door then realize the towels are gone, and she short circuits like, “What? Where are the towels?”
I broke my lease, and instead of letting me leave the day I stated I would leave (which would have been proper notice), she called that day and demanded I pack my things during my lunch break.
She rampaged through my room and went through my computer, iPad, messed with my email and Apple account, and even found the cameras. She tried to delete the videos on the app that recorded her, but she failed. I ended up actually showing those vids in court months later (because I actually sued her), and what she didn’t know is that when she went through my computer, another camera in the room filmed her doing it.
Speaking of suing her, she consistently called my office hoping to “settle” in the days leading up to our case. Then when asked to elaborate, she would tell me all the reasons why I am such a terrible person. I hung up on her. She did the same to my father, who told her to screw off and never call him again. She tried to counter sue by saying I broke my lease illegally and that I owe her both for rent and “anguish” caused, but then I played the voicemail in court where she kicked me out.
It was fun watching her get reamed by a judge.
Then there was the a/c issue. This is south Florida in the summertime. 90 degrees and above. Hot, humid, awful, merciless heat. And she went on some campaign to save as much energy as possible, demanding that there be no a/c used during work hours or after 10 pm. She would then turn the dial to 90, and during the day, we could “turn it down to 80.
78 if it’s really hot out.” It was absolute torture.
Her reasoning? “Because you’re asleep. You don’t need the a/c on when you’re asleep.” Sometimes when I thought she was asleep, I would go to the living room, turn on the a/c, and then I would hear her sneak out of her room and turn it off.
Then she complained to our property manager about how she thinks the a/c is out of freon.
Like she would know? She never used it.
She also didn’t believe in “eating chemicals.” She was one of those. I told this story on Reddit before, but one time I was cooking spinach on an iron skillet, and she goes, “No! That spinach had chemicals, and the iron skillet will cause Alzheimer’s!” This was the same woman who smoked a pack a day, sat in a nail salon 2-3 times a week and didn’t mind breathing acrylic fumes, dyed her hair every month, and fumigated the place with Febreeze and plugins (pair that with no a/c – it was like oxygen was not allowed in the house, not if she had anything to say about it).
But spinach on a skillet? No, because chemicals.
One day, I was rushing to work and forgot to take out the trash. I ran home during my break to take it out since the apartment was 3 minutes from my office. She sends me an email titled “Florida law” and copy and pasted the statute that I had brazenly violated by not taking out the trash, citing that “I have no time to be a mom!
I can barely handle myself.” Of course, this is the woman who did not have a job, but somehow, I’m the only one who can take out the trash.
Edit: In court, she actually tried to argue that her “anguish” was caused in part by having to do things for me. When asked for evidence, she happily obliged. Want to know what the evidence was?
A text message from me, when I said something like, “Hey, I forgot to take the ground turkey out of the freezer. Can you do me a favor and put it into the fridge for me?” She actually wanted compensation in damages for having to move a package of turkey. I wish I were making this up. She had to be reminded once again that she is in a courtroom and not at happy hour with the girls.”
10. A Mentally Unstable Roommate And A Socially Awkward One
They’re unlucky when it comes to new roommates.
“When I first applied for college, I filled out my form for roommate matching. I went through the questions and answered everything truthfully. Atheist. Punk Rock. Folk music. Night owl. I get matched up with “Robert” P. Quick. I call the guy up before we move in together. He goes, “I’m Mr. P. Quick. No jokes about my name Mr. Swampgiant.
I’ve heard them all!” We start talking about interests. He only listens to Broadway musicals. He specifically mentions a dislike for punk and folk music. He gets to bed early and prays every night before hitting the sack. He also talks to God directly and out loud. He asked if I did the same and if I would be interested to participate in conversations with him.
I immediately called housing and had them reassign me. I ended up with a guy who at first seemed pretty ok. We got along at first but ended up in a few arguments. It was at this point that when I would come home, I would find his dirty underwear all around the room. On my bed. On my desk. On my fridge. And I mean DIRTY.
Another time, I came home, and he had built a wall of duct tape dividing the room in half.
Once again, I asked for a reassignment. Ended up moving in with my best friend.
A few years later, I am living in an on-campus apartment. All of us were friends already. We were a mellow household. Playing video games, listening to music. Nobody partied hard.
But we had an empty room. Housing ends up assigning a guy. We get a knock on the door. It’s a guy that dresses like he’s from Watts (later we found out he came from a nice, upper-class, educated family). The first thing he does when he walks in is expresses his excitement that he is going to throw so many parties in our apartment.
Over the months he lived with us, we find food missing. Personal items stolen. But the topper was the collective of people that came and went out of our apartment because the guy was selling substances out of his room.
We end up having a house meeting to confront him. Not only does he deny it but says he’s allowed to do whatever he wants in his room.
He continues to sell substances, at which point we report it to housing. As housing is going through their process, he begins getting aggressive with me. Banging on my door late at night, getting in my face during the day. At one point, his roommate (he lived in a double) says, “Swampgiant, you gotta see this.” He takes me into their room where on the guy’s desk is a handwritten “rap” about how he plans to shoot me.
The rap said something along the lines of, “I feel like a rat trapped in my own house, like a mouse. Snitches be cryin’. With my gun, I’ll have fun and go pop, pop, pop.” It was hysterical and frightening at the same time.
We contact housing again. Fortunately, our troublesome housemate was gone for the weekend. The housing rep comes over and proceeds to tell us, that it is against the school’s policy, but because of the unique circumstances, he will tell us what is going on.
Turns out, our housemate is on serious medication for violent tendencies. The guy was recently switching medication and was having a bad reaction. He wasn’t “visiting” home that weekend but had been arrested for attacking a teacher. Thanks, housing, for a mentally unstable dangerous housemate!
His things were moved out of the apartment by a friend of his. The following semester, the guy was back in school (but moved into the dorms).
He blamed us (especially me) for his troubles. As a result, I endured several months of him banging on our door and throwing things at my window. Housing continued to state they were handling it. In hindsight, I should have called the police, but I was told it was being addressed, so I didn’t think to escalate it.
The best is for last. Our replacement was a full-on anime/furry/ddr fan.
An only child, his parents would send him boxes of “Japanese” food. As a result, he (unknowingly) took on the name of Pocky. So Pocky was a very, very nice guy. Very, very odd but very nice. He had the bluest of blue eyes, and the guy never seemed to blink. You don’t realize how often people break eye contact in normal conversation until you meet someone who never does.
It’s incredibly unnerving. What made him difficult was his inability to get social cues. He would insist on wanting to show you his anime collection (none of us were interested). We would say, maybe later. Well, later would come, and so would Pocky, knocking on the door. If you said later at midnight, 2 am you got a knock, how about now? Our entire apartment had to rework how we spoke.
Pocky at one point had been very overweight. But fortunately for DDR, he had lost over 150 pounds. As a result, this was his workout routine. This meant every night the living room became his workout station. I kid you not, he would put workout clothes on. Sweatbands. And bam! TECHNO MUSIC for an hour and a half. The living room smelled like sweat.
I went to school in a strange place.”
9. She Seemed Normal At First But Ended Up Being A Complete Nutcase
“Freshman year, moved to a huge university, randomly assigned roommate. Talk to her a few times on AIM before meeting her, came off as relatively normal. FREAKING CRAZY…
Let’s see the highlights:
Well, the biggest one, I would have to say was the drinking. Now, this was a party school, I knew going in that this would happen, I thought no big deal even though I wasn’t really a drinker.
Not only would she get wasted at least 5 nights a week, but she had FREAKING EPILEPSY! It says on all of her prescriptions do NOT take with booze, and the two did not mix well. I’d say for most girls, when they get completely sloshed, take on a different version of intoxicated girl: there’s sobbing crying girl, there’s raging smashing things girl, there’s hysterical laughing girl, and there’s girl who just suddenly face-plants into the floor without warning.
She manages to hit every single one of them almost every night. One time, she comes in screaming at 2 am with her clothes barely on with torn shirt/pants and starts smashing everything she can reach in the dorm (thankfully, mostly her stuff). Another night ended with me pleading with her to please pee in the trashcan instead of the floor, trying to bargain that she could have the rest of my pizza if she didn’t get any of her period b***d on my jacket (she’s unclothed fumbling around trying to put my coat on).
Instead falls without warning, just barely missing falling through the screen on our 17th-floor dorm, peeing herself as soon as she hits the ground. Which brings me to…
The pee… Yes, pee was not an isolated thing. She had this thing where if she laughed too hard, she would pee her pants. Well, she didn’t want to pee on HER things, so she would run over to my side of the room and sit on my futon or laundry bag.
This was actually when she was sober.
She would randomly break my stuff, for no reason. (I should preface this with the fact that her parents are loaded; they gave her hundreds every month to buy new clothes, and she would ‘never be caught dead’ wearing the same thing more than once). Once I came back to find her cutting up my shoes, pj’s, tearing pages out of my magazines and books, and cutting the straps off my backpack.
I just stood there stunned, and she completely nonchalantly tells me that she was soooooo bored, she wanted to cut something up, and her stuff was nicer than mine.
The inappropriate phone conversations. 10 feet away from me, all hours of the night.
Tried going out with her twice. Our campus was not in a great part of downtown, and one time we took the bus to the mall, she starts talking super loudly and obnoxious on the bus.
I can’t remember what she said, but it was offensive enough that several women walked off in disgust, and a bunch of guys in the back were yelling at her that she needed to shut up. She laughs it off like it’s the funniest thing ever as I sit there completely mortified and scared. Another time, we took a girl on our floor out for her birthday, and of course, my roommate’s smashed before we even leave.
We stop at a convenience store to grab something to drink, and out of nowhere, she runs up to this Cadillac and JUMPS ON THE HOOD (again, this is NOT a nice neighborhood) and starts laughing hysterically and jumping up and down. Two huge guys get out and flip their lid, and I have no idea how some other guys in the group manage to calm them down.
Overall, though, just the chilling sadistic side of her that would come out, like how creepily happy she would get bringing you to the verge of tears. I had a terrible breakup before Thanksgiving; it was taking everything for me to keep it together, and knowing this, one night, she goes through my phone and sends out all these awful texts to my friends (including my ex), deletes half my numbers, and changes the names on the rest. Smiles like rainbows and sunshine when she saw I found out.
Decides to pour a bucket of water on me in my sleep, looking up at me gleaming, like, whatcha gonna do about it? One time, she even hosed down my futon with dish soap because she didn’t like my “tone” when I told her that I thought $300 to get her hair dyed the same color seemed like she was getting ripped off, acted like I obviously had it coming.
Unfortunately, I let that witch walk all over me all semester. Being the 18-year-old doormat I was at the time, I was terrified of making things even worse than they were and took it. Spent the last few weeks crashing on couches and futons any chance I got and transferred out after one semester to a better school closer to home, lived with awesome roommates after that.
I did get some small justice though. She could sleep through anything, even an alarm on full volume inches from her head. I knew she was basically failing all her classes, but whether or not she passed her last final determined if she would flunk out or not. I listened to that alarm go off for about a minute, got up and turned it off, and let her sleep her way to academic suspension.”
8. My Slobby, Stinky Roommate Who Disappeared Like Houdini
“My freshman year roommate was a piece of work. Despite going to the same school as some close friends from high school, we all took the plunge and decided to get random roommates. My roommate, E, lived in oversized shirts and thongs. She never wore pants, ever, which is fine (I mean who doesn’t want a bit of a pants break after class?), but E was easily 100 pounds overweight and refused to put on pants for guests.
No pants for our RA, RHD, my partner, other residents… my parents… It was something I learned early on I had to live with. Okay, fine.
Not long into our first semester together, I discovered one of E’s disgusting, dirty habits. She would regularly get fast food take out from one of the restaurants on campus, eat half of it, and then throw it away.
I don’t know if it was a weird eating habit, disorder, or maybe a diet, but she never ate a whole meal – just half. She’d also never take out her trash (there were two small ones in the room and we agreed that we would deal with our own garbage, and I volunteered to do the recycling), so the old food would pile up inside the can and then eventually on the floor around the trashcan.
Soon there were half-empty bags of old, moldy food under and on top of her desk, under her bed, in her dresser… literally every flat surface. It not only smelled in our room, but it even tasted bad. You would walk in, and a sour taste would fill your mouth and nose and go up into your sinuses, and, of course, it began permeating into the hallway.
Hall 1-East was widely avoided because of my roommate’s disgusting habits. People started closing our door if it was open, and if I ever wanted to hang out with anyone, I had to leave my room. My own clothes started smelling of her gross odor. I did everything I could to get her to clean up (short of cleaning up after her – I was not about to do that), but she was just a lazy, pimply, fat, hairy slob.
E would randomly disappear without telling anyone, too. I’d never know if she was going to come crashing into the room at 3 am very intoxicated and turn on Van Helsing like I wasn’t asleep there (happened more than once) or if she was honestly going to come back at all. She missed all three meetings we had set up for the “roommate agreement;” they make you sign at the beginning of the year.
Once she was gone for so long that I mentioned it to my RA, and a missing person’s report was filed (not my intention). Upon her return to school, after a talk with the police about freaking letting people know when you’re going to disappear, she was livid. Like, really livid. I tried to explain that I was just worried since no one had heard from her for weeks, I thought I would see what I could do to make sure she was safe.
This even caused a definite rift in our relationship that leads to more garbage on the floor, fewer pants, and less hygiene overall.
On top of it all, E was very secretive about her home life. Her hometown was closer to school than mine, but she never had people visit. Ever. Even a mysterious fiance she talked so much about, but we never met. She had a huge number of picture frames on the top shelf above her desk, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that all the pictures in the frames were the stock photos that come with the frame when you buy it.
They were big ornate frames, too, that said things like “sisters are forever” and stuff. She insisted they were of her friends and family (this is when I started to soften up on her and try to understand that maybe her home life was super bad, and college wasn’t easy for her).
One day, when I found cockroaches in the room around the little garbage dump in E’s corner, I called Residence Life and informed them I’d be getting the Health Department involved if action wasn’t taken immediately.
A few hours later, a janitorial team had cleaned up our room and sprayed, but no action was taken against E – not even a write-up. I had tried so hard for so long to be a nice, understanding roommate, but that day was too much. My good nature had been taken advantage of by my roommate AND the school, so as soon as E walked into the room that day, I stood up and told her she was moving out; I had already arranged a roommate switch with res life and some girls down the hall.
She blinked, took a breath, and said, “Huh. Okay.” I was ready for more of a fight (“Why do I have to move out; why can’t you?”), so I kept going, saying “The problem really is you. You’re disgusting, have no social graces, you’re impossible to get along with, and you don’t understand the basic functions of everyday human life. I did my best to live with you and get along, but I can’t do it.
So you’re moving out.”
Winter break was three weeks later, and E never returned. Not even for her stuff. All her belongings (what was salvageable) were donated, and the girl she moved in with lived alone for the rest of the semester. If I had only hung in there a few more weeks, I could have had my own room! But my new roommate has ended up being one of my best friends, and we continued to live together off-campus the following year.
I’m still friends with E on social media, and she is still doing her magical disappearing tricks. She was apparently set to marry her mysterious fiance, but the day before the wedding, she ran away to Michigan (from Arizona) to be with some other guy. All the comments on her page from the past few years are, “Where are you? call home,” and “We’re worried about you, haven’t heard from you in over a year.” But guys, don’t call the police.
She’ll get mad.”
Another User Comments:
“I won’t bother posting my bad roommate story because it will most likely be buried at this point, but my bad roommate was basically like this. Dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, which bugs nested in. She also had pictures all over the wall, except with her, it was pictures of herself. A few had her and a friend or family member, but there wasn’t a single picture that did not have herself in it.
Her at the beach, her making a duckface at a restaurant, her wearing sunglasses at sunset, her wearing a flower in her hair and making a peace sign… She’d come back intoxicated at 3 am and scream at us if we dared turn off her desk light, so we could sleep, then throw up everywhere and demand we clean it up.
She moved out on her own suddenly one day but forgot a few bags of her things and some empty pregnancy test boxes under her bed.” parolemodel
7. Refusing To Do Laundry For Two Months
“My worst roommate was a random from freshman year. He was terrible in a lot of ways: obnoxious, loud, inconsiderate, he watched Scarface on high volume on his TV from 5-7 a.m. for two weeks to stay up all night and not miss his morning classes. The worst thing about him was that he didn’t do laundry. Before college, he was completely dependent on his parents, and once he got there, he just kept putting off his first load.
So he recycled and wore progressively worse smelling clothes from September until just before Thanksgiving break.
His parents were coming to pick him up and drive him back home for Thanksgiving. This was the breaking point for him. He didn’t want his parents to see the squalor he was living in or how filthy of a person he was. So he decides he’s going to have to do laundry; there’s no putting it off.
Ironically, when his parents dropped him off for college, they left him with this enormous five-gallon container of detergent; the thing was so big, it didn’t have a cap — just a spigot to dispense detergent as needed. So my roommate goes to get his detergent and stupidly picks the five-gallon container up by the spigot. He makes it about halfway across our triple when the spigot rips off the detergent which hits the ground and spills all five gallons of detergent on the floor.
So I’m scrambling to get surge protectors and books and really everything I own off of the floor and onto my bed. My roommate tries to stop the detergent by throwing his filthy clothes around the room. This does not stop the flood of detergent at all but will very shortly make things worse. Pretty soon, our room has a layer of detergent about half an inch deep covering the tile floors from wall to wall.
He assures me he’s going to clean it all up, but first, he’s got to start his laundry.
So he picks up his clothes, which are soaked with detergent, and brings them down a few floors to the laundry room. Now I’m sure you can see where this is going and what you’d expect to happen happened. He starts three machines simultaneously and leaves to come back and clean our room.
Those machines spent the next 45 minutes spewing soap foam out of them and flooding the laundry room. But that happened outside of the room, so really, that part doesn’t bother me so much.
The part that did bother me was his cleanup. Laundry wasn’t his only deficient life skill and the cleanup, like his attempts to do laundry, just made things worse. To start cleaning up, he went to the bathroom for our section of the floor and just started pulling individual paper towels out of the dispenser.
He’d bring back an armload and spread them around the room. Then he would go back and get more. Pretty soon, he had used all of the paper towels from our bathroom, so he worked his way around the other bathrooms on the floor and used up all of their paper towels. Still, he didn’t have enough paper products to fully cover the floor and soak up the detergent.
So he starts working his way around the bathrooms again, this time coming back with armloads of toilet paper.
This is the part of the story where I leave. All of my stuff was off the ground, and I really see no need to stick around and watch him wipe up this mess at this point. So I leave, and when I come back a few hours later, I’m surprised to see that all of the paper towels and toilet paper, and detergent are still on the floor.
So I ask my roommate what’s up, and he fills me in on the laundry room fiasco. How he went down to the laundry room to find it flooded, how he waded through the flooded room to retrieve his clothes and get them into driers without being seen and blamed for the flood. I hadn’t mentioned this earlier, but it was November, and our dorm had an old heating system, which had two modes: freezer and sauna.
We kept our heat at sauna most of the time. So, after all of the time it took him to paper the floor and flood the laundry room and avoid detection, the paper towels, toilet paper, and detergent mixture that coated our floor had baked in our dorm room becoming our new carpet.
Now I moved out of that room a few weeks later, so I don’t know if or how that carpet was fixed or if he was charged for it, but it was still there when I moved out at the end of the semester.
I moved in with my best friend, his former roommate was an off-med schizophrenic who had a fascination with feces and urine. His bad roommate made mine look like a saint.”
6. Always Negative And Condescending
“My roommate (Roomz) and I are currently in a graduate program together in a small South-Midwestern city, and we decided to get a place together since we didn’t know another soul around here. We met online right before the semester started and before signing the lease.
What a mistake.
Maintaining any kind of civility with this person is EXHAUSTING.
Roomz is from a very liberal and environmentally-friendly urban area and has vehemently adopted all of that area’s ideologies. Total SJW. Puts trigger warnings on social media posts. Everything is the fault of the patriarchy. Hates any and all of my opposing views and kind of just “tsks” at me like an adult to an unruly child.
More often, Roomz just looks at me like I’m an idiot if any political or social issue creeps into the conversation.
Even apart from the politics, this person is unbelievable. Roomz is the most ungrateful, condescending, and meanest person I have ever met and weirdly doesn’t even realize it. I offer half the dinner I cook; Roomz eats it but tells me how it wasn’t really that good and I used way too much pepper.
Roomz gets a ride from me to our school every day but has never said thank you; in fact, Roomz tells me to “HURRY UP!” from the hallway when we are leaving in the mornings. Just today, Roomz told me to stop being so high and mighty. This person does not say “thank you” ever or “bless you” if I sneeze and lets doors swing shut in my face (especially if my hands are full).
Roomz also acts like my parent. These are just a sampling of things I’ve heard in the past few weeks:
“You have leftovers in the fridge; why are you cooking more food?”
“You really need to return your library books. Don’t you know you’ll get a fine?”
“Why are you watching Netflix? Shouldn’t you be working on your class project?”
“You said you were headed back early today to do laundry.
But you didn’t. Why didn’t you do laundry?”
“Our test was moved back. Don’t you reMEMber?”
I rant about how the questions on a hard project are dumb. “NO,” Roomz emphasizes patronizingly, “they are not dumb; they are just HARD. Don’t call them dumb.”
I think about going for a run, then I change my mind and opt to do homework instead. Roomz tries to SHAME me into working out.
“But it’s only for a half-hour. You’ll feel so much better. You really need to get out of the house.”
Starts long, drawn-out conversations with me right as I am walking into the bathroom and shutting the door.
I will have a little rant about a project or paper or client (we are in a high-stress program), and Roomz will GENTLY remind me that “this is grad school; what did you expect?
You really need to think hard about whether you are going to be able to contribute to this field, especially with that attitude. Maybe this just isn’t for you.” It is so patronizing and insulting. Roomz is also younger than me, which adds to the insult.
Roomz misses the point of any and every conversation and just waits for me to say something wrong. “So, after the library closed around 8 or whatever, I went to–” Cue eye roll and interruption.
“WRONG,” says Roomz, “the library closes at 8:30 on Tuesdays. I can’t believe it’s been three months, and you still don’t remember the schedule.” Literally waits for every chance to tell me I’m wrong.
Also interrupts me all the time.
Me: “So, this weekend I was thinking I might go out of town because there’s this concert back–”
Roomz: “I bought bagels at the store today.”
Me: “…ok…so anyway, I’m not going to be around this weeken–”
Roomz: walks out of the room and shuts the bedroom door.
And I get left with my mouth hanging open. It really is unbelievable, and sometimes, I laugh.
Roomz’s tone of voice is the worst. It’s a shrill, nasty, chastising tone. “DON’T you reMEMber?”, always accompanied with an exasperated look and an eye roll.
I am constantly being scolded, whether it is about an opinion, a comment, or any basic unit of conversation. I am never right. And everything I say is a challenge. Last week, a popular artist’s song came on the radio, and I offhandedly mentioned that it was a bit racier than what she normally sings about. Roomz snaps and all but shouts, “She’s 24 and a grown woman, not a little girl anymore!
She can do what she wants, and she can sing about whatever she wants. GAWD!” This happens in some form or another, every day. It’s so BIZARRE.
Sometimes I pretend like I am Jim on The Office or Ben from Parks and Rec, and I glance into the corner of the room as my tired, confused eyes silently ask the viewers, “Is this for real?” It helps me get through the moments of rage.”
5. He Tried To Accuse Me Of Identity Theft
“I had a roommate who seemed like an OK guy, if more extroverted than I am, who went completely off the rails after he moved in.
He had a remote analyst job with some financial company—not Goldman Sachs but along those lines. Apparently, they kept sending him too much work with too tight of deadlines, and he started using stimulants to stay awake and complete the reports.
He went from being good-natured and possibly one of those guys who makes up stories to sound better than he is to being a raging paranoid who thought I was trying to steal client data for identity theft.
The window to his room faced the prevailing winds and it was still winter in Northern California. He would leave stacks of papers on his desk, bed, and floor…and the windows wide open.
When he returned, the wind would have blown papers off the desk and bed into a jumbled mess. He accused me of entering his room to steal information, then make a mess to hide that I’d taken papers away. He wouldn’t believe that the wind had done it and maybe he should shut the window during winter storms.
He thought maybe I’d stop stealing his stuff if he stopped letting me know he was leaving the area for client visits.
So he disappeared one day and left his car parked blocking another neighbor’s spot. I thought he was just at the coffeehouse around the corner and called his cellphone. Instead, he was in a meeting and blew up at me for interrupting him. He said never to call him again. I sent him an email, hoping he had left a spare car key so we could move his car, and he said never to harass him via email again.
(Meanwhile, our neighbor still can’t move their car.)
A while after that, I had been at the lab so much that I didn’t know if he was around or not, but a horrible rotting smell was coming out of his apartment. He had looked very unwell the last time I’d seen him, so I was worried. He’d already told me not to contact him, so I called the police for a welfare check.
They searched his room thoroughly, including the closets, in case he’d hidden in there or someone had hidden him there. I stayed out because I didn’t want any accusations of tampering with his papers again. It turned out that he’d left for another trip and hadn’t bothered to finish the steak he was eating at his desk, or throw it out in the kitchen garbage.
What I had smelled was the rotting rare beef.
A few days later, he returned and exploded when he entered the room. In searching the closets, the police had seen a bundle in his closet they took for a person wrapped in a duvet. It was a 5-gallon carboy of booze he had brewed in our kitchen, bundled up to protect it from freezing. The officers had left it exposed to the light, which oxidized it and the batch was ruined. He was sure I had done it to get revenge and tried to attack me.
I had to flee the apartment with the clothes on my back and the bag I left by the door.
He started threatening me any time he saw me, and I managed to get a restraining order. Unfortunately, his schedule was too erratic for the police to manage to serve him. Even though I had lived there for five years and he’d been there three months, the landlord believed his stories that I was stealing his company’s data and told me I needed to move out.
(I suspect he also bribed them, as his job was well-paying and I was a starving student.)
I managed to complete and defend my thesis anyhow, but this was terrifying and I don’t want roommates anymore unless I know them already.”
4. He Severely Neglected His Pets To Death
“Firstly, I’d like to preface this post by saying that if your living situation is genuinely making you a miserable person, moving out will make a substantial improvement in your life.
I was in this living situation for roughly three years after one of my “friends” from the college dorms offered up a house that his dad owned. He seemed normal enough, and he had also extended this offer to two other people in our friend group. It developed into an awful situation for a plethora of reasons that I could write at length about, but this post is about one specific aspect of it.
So, the landlord’s son, “Jay” was one of those “ghost” roommates that were hardly around.
Typically, he would be spending time with one of those Christian student groups that are pretty common on college campuses. However, when we first moved into our house, Jay made a big deal about driving home to his parents to pick up his sugar glider that his brother had been taking care of because our dorm had a very staunchly enforced “no pets” policy.
I was pretty indifferent to the concept of exotic pets, and I literally had no idea what a sugar glider was, so I didn’t really feel that much about it initially.
Jay put the cage (a repurposed birdcage with a bunch of baby toys) for his glider in the room that shared a wall with my bedroom. For a while, it was actually a little bit cool.
When we would have guests over, the sugar glider would always be a major topic of conversation and entertainment when let out and, of course, college girls would absolutely fawn over the little, gliding marsupial.
This all came with some transgressions, though. Jay would let the glider out for some free-roaming time at night. (They’re nocturnal.) This quickly became problematic because Jay would neglect to watch it closely or at all, and it would literally get into anything and everything.
More than once, I would walk into the kitchen to see it running around on our countertops or trapped in our trashcan. (It had an affinity for discarded pieces of raw chicken.) To Jay, this was always pretty hilarious, but no one else was pleased with its ratatouille-esque, late-night culinary escapades, especially me because it would climb all over my utensil holder, which is like the decorum of uncleanliness in a house where I was already doing all of the cleaning.
Additionally, the glider was small enough to crawl under a bedroom door, so isolating yourself was not an option against the little menace. This culminated into a situation when it crawled into one of my roommate’s bedrooms while he was elsewhere and ate through packaging to eat his Baconator burger. Once again, the roommate was sorely vexed, and Jay thought it was the pinnacle of comedy to see a palm-sized possum ferociously trying to eat a burger.
During these free roam sessions, we were unable to even direct or wrangle the animal because it was aggressive to anyone other than Jay.
Picking it up would result in it biting the life out of you (not hard enough to draw b***d most of the time; it feels like someone pinching you with a nail clipper as hard as they can), peeing on you, or climbing onto the back of your head and literally ripping your hair out.
This got old pretty fast for us, and the aforementioned guests and Jay finally picked up on this and restricted free roam time to just his bedroom.
During this period, he acquired a second glider from his brother because he intended on breeding them and selling their offspring as a side hustle.
Early after we were all introduced to the first sugar glider, Jay had mentioned to us that he would feed them one grape a day because “it’s basically a watermelon to them” but also mentioned that their diet had to be supplemented with other food and vitamins (which he showed us in the same room as their cage).
Occasionally, Jay would go out of town for the weekend and just ask us to distribute only the grapes to his glider gang, and one particular long weekend, he knew he was going to be traveling with his Christian group, so he asked my other two roomies to look after them.
One day after he left, all broke loose. One of the gliders was dead, face-down, in their cage.
Jay never asked me to look after them. So I hadn’t been in their room in a long time, but when we walked in to check on them, Jesus freaking Christ, the stench.
Jay hadn’t been changing the tray for their “leavings” under the cage, and you could see the piles of glider poop and discarded grape skins. I’ll never forget that freaking smell. Even when I moved out more than a year later, that room still freaking reeked of musky animal feces.
Obviously, we removed the dead one and set it aside. The one that was still alive looked very sickly and extremely lethargic (literally barely moving). My roommates take it to the vet to find out that the survivor is extremely malnourished to the point where it was impossible to even draw b***d for a b***d test.
The entire time, the vet tech is just glaring daggers at them because of the sorry state of the animal, and they keep stating that it wasn’t in their care until just now.
The vet gives them a $500 dollar bill, medicine, and a whole packet of info on sugar glider care. They come back, and we find that the vitamins and supplements had never even been opened, meaning Jay had just been feeding them grapes the entire time he had the gliders.
A bare minimum amount of research shows that these animals need a pretty diverse diet that includes insect-based protein and a lot of fruits and veggies, so we were all flabbergasted.
We worked together the best we’re able to try and save the glider’s life with the medicine and a proper diet. Unfortunately, three grueling days later, it died in the same fashion as its companion. I’ve never seen an animal suffer the way that one did, and after reading through the vet’s stack of papers, we were all, needless to say, shocked that Jay would neglect so many basic tenets of a pet that is apparently well known as extremely high-maintenance.
All of the experiences with them running around the house suddenly made sense; they were starving and trying to find any morsel of food possible. They attacked anyone unfamiliar because they were absolutely terrified and probably sickly from the lack of care and proper nutrition.
We put the poor animal in its cloth carrying pouch with its friend’s corpse. Jay had been in contact with my other roommates throughout this, but they didn’t mention the undernourishment outright because “Jay already seemed pretty upset about it.” When Jay returned from his trip, he didn’t talk about it; he didn’t even bury them for months.
(It literally took us digging a hole in our backyard for him to even do it.) That’s when it cemented in my mind that he never actually cared about these animals. He didn’t mistreat them out of a lack of knowledge because he clearly knew enough about their diet and general care; he did it because he only cared about appearing as “the cool guy with the flying squirrels.”
I hope those little sugar glider ghosts haunt him forevermore.
Screw you, Jay.”
Another User Comments:
“Oh man, I had a Jay roommate that had a ball python and a cat. The python never left its “enclosure” (a plastic tub in a drawer) because of the cat and would go on feeding strikes and eventually got rehomed. The cat would pee EVERYWHERE. He peed on the pantry countless times until the pantry just had a stale urine smell.
Eventually, the cat was left in his room. Whenever I went in there to get him something he forgot to bring to work (we also worked at the same place), I would catch glimpses of the litter box in his bathroom completely overflowing and cat pee in his bathtub.” Zombiekitler
3. They Clearly Don't Want Me Living With Them
“I originally signed a year lease with my landlord in August, but both my roommates’ belittling has caused me to move out this weekend.
One roommate lives in the basement, and the other directly across the hall from me.
I (22 F) have never gotten along with my roommates (23 F and 28 F). Ever since day one, my feelings toward them have never changed. I moved in thinking I would have privacy and free roam around the house, like using common areas, etc.
It started off with them accusing me of stealing/drinking their booze and other misc items around the house that would disappear and then reappear again.
There are many people coming in and out of the house (since my roommate’s brother also lives with us).
I have proposed the idea that someone outside of the house was taking their stuff, and they still blamed me for it.
When I first moved in, both complained about minor messes I had left in the kitchen, such as crumbs and water spills. They would take pictures of the mess and harass me over text messages.
They would tell me (multiple times) that I need to “be responsible for my actions.” Ever since then, I have always taken a second look at the kitchen before I go up to my bedroom.
No conflict since.. about this topic, anyways.
I would use common areas frequently, like the kitchen and the living room, since the living room contains my couches and my TV.
When I had my partner over every other weekend, that is when I generally used the living room. The roommate across the hall stated that “I use the living room too much,” and she feels like she can’t have her friends over.
I told her that she can have whoever she wants over and to let me know, so I make sure not to use the common area during that time.
There is no point in utilizing a living room if you can’t relax, right?
The issue with the roommate across the hall progressed as she brought my partner into the argument, stating that “he is over too much” and that she doesn’t like him, isn’t respectful, etc. She brought up the lease and told me that the lease states that “all tenants’ guests must be respectful.” She threatened to kick me off of the lease if I did not follow the lease.
For context, her parents are my landlords, so for whatever reason, she feels entitled to say that. I brought that up with my landlords immediately, and they stated that she has no right or power to say that.
Anyways, she told my landlords, aka, her parents, that I had my partner over too much, which the lease states 6 days and nights/month when my roommate in the basement has her partner over at least 5 days a week and stays over every weekend.
She stated that she had signed a “different lease” than me and stated that the other roommate’s partner is “respectful,” which I’m calling major nonsense on.
Her parents are really good friends with her partner’s family, so there is a bit of favoritism I feel that is going on there.
I told the roommate across the hall not to talk to me because I am fed up and want personal space.
She called her parents and threw a fit, banging on tables, and yelling at the top of her lungs.
After a few months, it was Christmas, and I was on vacation in Oregon with my partner. I wasn’t at the house for at least 2 weeks, and when I come home, the floor is covered in debris.
I was really exhausted from my trip but summed up the energy to sweep and mop.
A few days pass, and I was blamed for the house being a mess the previous week. This was my boiling point.
I am very a shy person who absolutely hates confrontation and conflict, but both of the women have tipped me off.
Around April 15th, I got into a huge argument with the roommate across the hall. I was on FaceTime/Duo with my partner.
The time was around 10-11 p.m., and I was being very considerate as I knew they were asleep.
My roommate’s brother was eavesdropping on my conversation and woke his sister up. She told me I needed to be quiet and get off of the phone. I then told her no because they were stalking and listening in on my call.
I escalated, which it wasn’t right to, by calling her all of the names in the book.
She stated that she was scared of me, to which at this point, I didn’t really care; anything for her to leave me alone.
I told her we need to get along/tolerate each other for the next month because that is when my lease is set to end. I felt very bad the next morning and apologized as I said some very mean things…but it did feel good to get 6 months of suffering off of my chest.
A month goes by, and I haven’t talked to either of my roommates. I’ve kept to myself and haven’t really been using the common areas, to avoid them at all costs.
This week, I have started to move all of my stuff out of my bedroom since I am moving on Saturday. My roommate hasn’t used the garage to park her car in about a month, so I thought it was alright to use part of the space to place my furniture.
Well, she freaked out on me and told me I need to move my stuff. I told her no because there is no other space to put my stuff for the time being, and it’s only 2 days away before everything is out of the house.
She asked me why I couldn’t keep my stuff in my room until Saturday. I responded that “I don’t want to be here any longer and see you ever again, and I want to leave and get everything out ASAP.” She said that she needed the space to park her car in case it hails.
Upon checking the forecast, there is no rain or hail on the radar for the next week. She then stated that she was going to throw my stuff out in the yard if I didn’t move it.
I ended up moving it to another location in the garage and then contacted my landlord about it. He said that he couldn’t believe how uncivil the living situation has gotten and that he will be in contact with both roommates to be accomodating.
I’m just seriously done with all of the drama here.
I feel like I’m in high school all over again. I always hated coming home knowing I have to deal with these jerks every day. I’m not comfortable living here and have been confined to my room for the past few months. I’ve recently been laid off, so it makes the situation even worse.”
2. He Talked About Killing Everyone
“I live and work at an apartment complex in a section of Philly named Roxborough. It’s a smaller place, just a little over 200 units, and only 4 people work here. One of the guys wanted to get together to have a few drinks and I said cool, but not here because my roommate is acting like a total jerk.
So Chris, who also lives here, picked me up and we went to his partner’s apartment.
She lives here too but on the opposite end of the complex.
We start drinking and laughing and lose track of time. By now everyone has gotten the munchies but Claire, the queen of carry-out, has no food. Chris only had frozen stuff so I tried to think if I had anything quick and easy. I don’t eat much or like going to grocery stores but I remembered I did have some cheese sauce, Rotel, and corn chips so I told them we could go make nachos.
On the way back to my place Claire said she wanted to say hi to my roommate. I told her not to bother him because he’s in a bad mood. His normal mood is usually pretty bad on an average day but he’s been EXTRA moody lately. She keeps insisting so I told her if he’s up she can say hi. We come in and I go straight to microwaving the cheese and Rotel and talking to Chris when I hear someone screaming.
Claire runs into the living room, Dane right behind her, wild-eyed and holding a huge knife. He’s screaming about the ‘stupid freaking jerk ignorant witch freaking sleazebag’ who woke him up. Claire is pretty shaken up and Chris looks completely scared. Dane is a pretty big guy, about 6’3” and around 250 pounds. A former bodybuilder who still has a huge chest and big arms. He keeps yelling ignorant nonsense and I was honestly confused and more than a little buzzed, so I had to yell over him to try to figure out what freaking happened.
Dane goes back to his room and storms back in, cursing up a storm and grabbing his shotgun. It’s not your granddaddy’s shotgun. This is a 15 round street sweeper called an ‘Utas 15.’ Not something made for target practice or hunting, its only purpose is killing and killing lots of people really fast.
Claire runs and hides behind me as he points it wildly around the room.
Chris is frozen in his tracks. So Dane and I get in a yelling match again. Talking about killing everybody and now I am realizing he’s mad at me too. And the irrational kind of mad when nothing sinks into your brain. The kind you get from living off anger and smoking so much, sun up to sundown, that you never dream and there’s no normal outlet for the conflict in your head.
Dane finally decides he’s going to bed and stomps back to his room. That was quite the buzzkill so Chris and Claire left while the coast was clear. I realized it was after 11:00 so I went on to bed too.
The next morning I’m doing my usual routine, drinking coffee out back and feeding the squirrels, when I hear the glass door slide open.
I figure it was Dane coming to apologize… but no… he wants to continue his nonsense. The yelling match starts again but I’m tired of it now (I don’t like to argue with irrational people and I hate raising my voice) so I tell him to screw off and go get ready for work. We haven’t seen or spoken to each other since, amazing because the apartment isn’t very big.”
1. It's No Surprise That Nobody Can Handle Living With This Dude For More Than A Few Weeks
“Many, many years ago, I lived with a few people who well… Let me get into my story that is going to be rather long.
Back in 2003, the place I was living at asked me to move out. Long story short, my friend who owned the place needed a place for his brother and gave me my 30 days. I was upset, but I understood why.
So with the help of my dad who was getting remarried, I started looking for a new place.
Now my pop found a place that was looking for someone to move in and take a room. And picked me up to take a look at the place.
Now the owner of the place, I’ll call him “The Captain,” was an older guy in his late 50’s.
I called him the Captain as the whole place had one of those nautical themes to it. He had a bar that had all kinds of nautical stuff on it, pictures of old sailing ships, and whatnot.
The odd thing was, he let us in via the sliding door on the side. Part of this was the front door, and the hallway had another door to the rest of the house, so he felt it was another “room” and was renting that out.
So the guy had his bedroom, 4 other bedrooms, and lastly, that hallway, so he wanted to get six people in the place. I was replacing a couple who moved out overnight, and I’d find out why later on.
My pop wasn’t too hot on me moving into this place; however, I felt I really had no other place to go. So we cut this guy a check, and I’d move in on my birthday.
I’ll admit I wasn’t hot about moving in myself; however, I felt it was that or being homeless.
Only fun note, the day I hand this guy the check for a deposit and first month’s rent? A buddy of mine calls me up.
He and his lady are breaking up, and he needs a roommate more – so a friend to move in with him.
I’d have to spend a month at this place before moving in with him. Still, I tell him to give me a day or two at this place to get a feel, and I’d let him know.
So, I end up moving in, my best friend helps me out with the move, and he already hates the place and is telling me to take the offer.
I tell him I’m thinking about it. After my first day and a half there and dealing with my other roommates? I took it.
So, let me get into my other roommates as some of them were okay. But the rest? Good Lord…
I’ll start with the Captain. See, his plan was to fill all of those rooms, so he’d be able to live rent-free for the most part.
I have no idea what this guy did for a job but I’ll leave that for later.
He had this ugly little dog that he carried around with him all the time. It was healthy; it’s just he tried grooming and cutting its hair, so you had this dog with bald patches on him/her/it. Add in, he loved telling me he’d do things that he never did.
Before I moved in, he told me he’d put a lock on my door, so I could lock it when I go out. Never happened. He said in the room I’d have a phone line, so I could get online, no high-speed internet in this place, so I was using a Juno account. That never happened, so I was using a super long cord to the living room.
Oh, and he drank.
We then had a guy my age who was moving out in a week. Nice guy and who told me upfront the day I moved in. “Dude, get out of here ASAP.” Also told me the couple I replaced had been dealing substances out of the place, and the cops may have caught on as they started seeing cars parked outside.
And note I’d end up talking to two of those cops! There was also a hippie guy who was wanting to get out of there too. And another guy who moved in the week I moved out who was just in a bad place; his lady kicked him out, and he needed a place to move into ASAP.
Then we get to the people who are the worst…
The first was a couple: the guy looked like an older, more weathered David Lee Roth, and he had his girl living with him.
Both had been odd, came in and out at weird hours. A few days before I was going to move out of there, he just was gone.
Then we have Dawn…
Now let me start with this: Dawn is a case of how substances can ruin someone’s life.
The day I met him, he invited me into his room, he was kinda intoxicated, and he had framed blueprints and the like on his wall. Dawn, before he got into smoking illegal stuff, had been working at JPL.
Long story short, he got fired, lost his woman, lost everything really, and his parents didn’t want him in their place, so they put him in here.
Oh boy, this man is why I ended up lying my butt off and moving out early.
First off, we both shared a birthday and my mother, to make me feel a bit better about life, baked a really nice cake and sent some food home with me. Note that she decided to label everything with my name, that way my roommates would know it was my food.
The next day, I go to have some of it for lunch, and Dawn had ignored the labels and decided to eat everything. I’m livid; however, I’m new to the place and don’t want to make any issues.
That day also, Dawn decided he was hot and turned the AC on and turned it so it was just super low in the house.
The Captain is screaming at him about it, with Dawn yelling back that he’s hot.
At this point? I decide my buddy’s offer to move in with him is good and let him know.
Oh, but it gets worse with Dawn. I start noticing things are missing from my room. I was a smoker at the time and packs of smokes start to get stolen.
I had some cash, and that gets stolen. Dawn would decide at 3 am when people are trying to sleep to start blasting music in his room.
And note this is in the first week…
Also, remember I said I ended up talking to the cops? One day, I head out to get some smokes and soda, and a car pulls up, and I get badges flashed at me.
They ask if I just moved in, I tell them yep, and I’m planning on moving out. Talked to them again after old David Lee Roth ran out of town and told them the truth that he had asked me about Hawaii.
Even got a card and gave them my cell number.
Ended up moving out of there two weeks before the end of the month.
My soon-to-be roommate came over one night to pick me up for a LAN party we both went to. He notices I’m taking just about everything with me and ends up talking to The Captain and after that tells me if I want to move in sooner, it’s cool.
Only one little thing… See, the Captain starts to bring up some nonsense when I tell him I’m thinking about moving out.
Thus, I decided to do some nonsense off my own back. I was out of work at the time, and one day, tell the Captain I got an email about a job offer and had a phone interview. Later on that day, I do a wonderful job of talking in case the Captain or Dawn overheard me, making it sound like I’m doing said interview.
Two days later after a buddy of mine calls me up, I go to the Captain and tell him that I’ve got a job! But…I’m going to have to move out as it’s up in Colorado. And fed him some lies that I have a friend who I emailed and emailed me back saying he’s got a place I can move into.
I just have to move out right away.
So, to start to end this… My best friend comes over, and we start loading everything onto his truck. We get all of my boxes in the first load, come back to get my bed, and right as we go into my now former room? There’s Dawn looking into my desk.
At this point, I tell him to just get out of here as I’m getting the rest of my stuff and getting out.
The Captain stops me to tell me he doesn’t have my deposit. I’m angry, but I tell him I’ll call him up about it. He also gives me the line of, “Oh, hey, if things don’t work out for you, I’ll let ya move back in!” Note: I did get some of my deposit back; I told him over the phone to send the check to my mother.
After a month, I told him I was coming down for a few days, and I’d swing by and get it, and he gave me the same line about how he didn’t have all of it; I told him to just give me half, and I’ll call it even.
Now to really end this story on a fun note? So a couple of months go by, and I’m at a coffee shop I enjoy going to with a friend.
And I end up running into the hippie guy who lived there. And note “lived,” he ends up telling me about two weeks after I showed up to get my deposit, he had already made plans to move out. He comes home from work one day to find squad cars and both Dawn and The Captain in handcuffs. Ends up that Dawn had started breaking into places and cars a few blocks away, and someone got a picture of him.
The cops told him they got a warrant and found some of the stolen items in Dawn’s room and a lot of them in The Captain’s room. Ends up, Dawn was stealing stuff, then giving it to the Captain to sell off, so he could make rent. And that the Captain did know; he just didn’t give a smack.
Really the worst roommates I ever had.
Sure, it was only for two weeks, but that was something I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with ever again.”
