People Speak About Their Faulty Roomie Experience
22. She Called The Cops On Me Because She Thought I Was A Witch
“About three years ago, I got interested in tarot, which I was learning from a friend. It helped with my anxiety, and sometimes, I would create a mood with candles and music while practicing it for myself.
One day, when I was practicing it, I heard the door shut loud, and then bolted from outside. I ran to it and realized that my flatmate had locked me inside the house we shared. She then called the cops because she thought I was a witch and was practicing black magic. She blamed everything going wrong in her life on me, and surprisingly, the cops didn’t believe me either.
One of them came from an area in Rajasthan where apparently witches are still hunted down. There was no official complaint against me, but the incident made me move back into my parents’ home for a bit.”
21. Moving In With This High School Friend Was A Huge Mistake
“HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND!! She and her partner moved in after my previous roommates moved out. I apologized that I couldn’t help them when I was at work, and we discussed furniture and other things that were already furnished in my apartment. When I came home from work, there were three more couches in my tiny living room.
One literally stacked on top of my couch. My friend said that her mom made her take everything, and she had nowhere to put most of her stuff.
The second bedroom was their clothing room, which after three weeks was so full of stuff that the door would no longer open. They never opened it for the next two months. They put my dining room table on its side to set up a Christmas tree, which was up for two months after Christmas.
I worked 60 hours a week and had no patience for it. If I asked them to clean, nothing happened. They smoked in their room every day, both lost their jobs at Walmart, and eventually shut themselves in their room.
I’m allergic to rabbits, and one day I came home and there was one just sitting in my living room, staring at me with this strangely cute but horribly misplaced rabbit face.
I told them I was allergic and they got rid of it after a week. And replaced it with a snake, which they did not have a cage for.
I started defending my “honor” after they were there for three weeks, and my mom helped me remove and throw out their old couches after lots of convincing. I work full time and was doing this as a favor to old high school friends, a very poor decision moving from a small town to a city and offering them a hand.
Eventually, I couldn’t walk in the house, there were dishes in the bathtub and I was staying at my partner’s house every night just to avoid their trashy lives. Then, one day (after four months), I came home, and their bedroom was empty. My living room was full of their extra boxes and months of garbage. I still couldn’t open the second bedroom.
Their bedroom had food and rotten garbage all over. The living room and my bedroom were sparkling clean (holla holla at my personal space) and the kitchen was truly the toilet of God and Lucifer.
They left without paying rent, and they literally disappeared. This was a CLOSE friend of mine from high school. They changed their numbers and completely screwed off. I have not had a roommate since.
I’m not the best person in the world, but dang if I’ll ever let myself go through that again.”
20. Anger Problems So Bad That The Police Had To Get Involved
“Walked into the room for the first time freshman year and saw him standing in the middle of the room screaming at his dad. He was yelling about not wanting to go and how he blamed his mom for writing his college essay and filling out the application. He kept calling my roommate (I shall name him Eduardo) an “ungrateful piece of trash” and threatening to beat the life out of him if he tried to leave.
It was right after he finished speaking that they realized I was in the room. They both pretended nothing had happened, shook my hand, and introduced themselves. Luckily, my parents had not walked in with me, so they didn’t have to see that and be worried. Eventually, my parents met his parents as they helped me set up the room and talked about how proud of us they were.
Eduardo’s dad kept saying things like, “It’s either college or the street cause I’m not paying to support a failure.” My parents of course thought he was joking.
Every day, this kid told me how much he hated school. He would never go to class, drink in the room all day with the door open (we were a dry campus), scream at everyone, party all night, and generally just be a jerk.
He used to watch VH1 every night until 4 AM with the volume cranked up so loud, you couldn’t hear. When I asked him to turn it down because I couldn’t hear, he said he would if I wrestled him. Turns out, he was serious. He wanted to WRESTLE me because I asked him to turn down that Bret Michaels Rock of Love show.
I declined and went to bed.
The next day, he called his mom to come to get him, and she agreed and said she was getting in the car.
She never came. He LOST HIS MIND. He broke everything he owned. Punched a hole through his tv, slammed his guitar hero controllers on the ground repeatedly, threw his Xbox out the window, cracked his cell phone in half, ripped his bedsheets.
He basically totaled his side of the room. I left the room during all this, assuming he was just blowing off steam and not knowing he was breaking his stuff.
I walked back into a freaking warzone with him standing in the middle of the room crying, drinking laundry detergent, and yelling about how he wanted to die and how he took a whole bottle of Advil after he broke his stuff.
I ran to get the RA. Cops were called. They fed him charcoal to prevent him from dying due to detergent/pills. He left that night.
Woke me up to say goodbye. Last thing he said to me?
“Goodbye OP, sorry about ruining your birthday.”
I swear to God this story is 100% true and so is the part where he tried to bring in a gun to kill me later, but that’s a different story.”
19. There Was So Much They DIDN'T Do
“As the year lease is almost but over, I have taken time to realize that living with your best friends may not be at all what you thought it out to be.
In the months leading up to getting the house with my 2 best friends, everything seemed to be going nicely. The 3 of us talked about how good it’d finally be to have a place of our own, how things will be much better now that we live together, and how we’re now away from the tyrannical rule of our parents.
It all played out so well in my head.
Fast forward to a month in the house, and I realize my 2 best friends are lazier than I thought. I’ll call them Dan and Aaron. Both Dan and Aaron seem to have something against flushing the toilet. (Disgusting, right?) Every morning, I’d walk into the bathroom to see a big number 2 floating in the toilet bowl.
At first, I didn’t let it get to me; I thought that maybe they were in a hurry, and they’d just forget to flush before they left. 2 months in, and it was still happening, but that wasn’t the only issue that was bothering me at this point.
In the 2 months that we had been here, neither of the two had even washed a dish, took out the trash, or bought any groceries.
It really started to irk me because, mind you, these were my best friends, and never would I have thought they would have been this way. Before we moved in, they spoke about wanting a clean and nice house, but I guess it was only a lie.
After 3 months, the same things were happening, so I eventually started to become upset and began hinting at how tired I’ve been having to work 10 hour days and come home and have to be the only one to do household work, to which I was met with the reply of, “Man, that sucks.” Man, that sucks?
I was enraged! I was trying to vent thinking maybe they’d think, “Oh man, he’s having to do everything. Maybe we should help,” but I guess I was gravely mistaken.
4 months in, and I was fed up. At this point, I was still doing everything I mentioned above and also mowing the yard, furnishing the house, buying all the laundry soap, and purchasing shower and bathroom products.
I tried asking them numerous times to help or to clean up after themselves, and it was the same reply over and over, “Bro, I’ll get to it eventually,” but they’d never “get to it.”
There was a point in time where I didn’t do anything in the house for 2 weeks, and boy, did everything turn to chaos. The toilet was nearly full with poop, the dishes were stacked on the counter because the sink was full, the pantry and the fridge were empty, the trash was overflowing to the point where everything was falling onto the floor, and the house was becoming increasingly more messy day by day.
I eventually caved and had to spend a whole day cleaning everything. These were supposed to be my best friends, but they obviously had no respect for me or the house itself.
5 months in, and I had gotten to the point where I became a complainer, but it was all for good reason. I had to constantly remind them to flush the toilet, take out the trash when it was their turn, mow the yard when it was their turn, and attempt to have them buy groceries when we had none.
Both of them would get home from work and go straight to their rooms onto their computers where they would sit up till 7 am playing games and constantly eating food and dirtying up dishes that they would never clean.
We’d make trips to Walmart where I’m spending up to 300 dollars on groceries to their measly 20 bucks each buying a TV dinner and claiming that was doing their part.
They’d eat up all the food I’d bought while I wasn’t home, and they’d never replace it. I honestly started to resent my best friends at this point.
They’d make me out to be the jerk because I wanted help. I’d do everything in the house but get called a jerk when I asked for help.
They would constantly throw how much more money they’d have than me in my face.
“Bro, my bank account is sitting at $5k right now. You only have $2k? Lol.” I’d tell them it was because I’m literally the only one who takes the house seriously and that I’m the one buying everything; therefore, I’m going broke because of it.
“Nah bro, you just don’t know how to save.”
7 months in, and it was so bad, they were literally using the excuse, “You know I’m lazy, so why even ask?” I kid you not, both of them would literally say that.
I’d ask them to wash their dishes once every 2 weeks, and they would literally say that. To keep things civil at the house, I couldn’t even mention anything about the house, or they would get angry and try to gang up on me saying I worried and complained too much. They were completely taking advantage of me, and I was fully aware of it.
Just so I didn’t live in filth, I’d have to hunker down and do everything.
I hate living with tension, so I just stopped asking them to do anything because it always ended up with one of them trying to fight me over it (NO LIE).
It may sound like I’m a pushover, but while all this was going on, I was dealing with extreme depression caused by 5 family member deaths within a 6-month span.
Normally I would not stand for such disrespect, but losing that many family members in such a short time really screwed me up to the point where I lost all care of anything other than my house itself. I already had enough stress from doing everything, and then my family dying made it worse. The last thing my mental health needed was fighting my roommates and living in a constant anxious state of if a fight was going to happen or not.
You’d think they, being my best friends while all my family members were dying, would have stood up and helped me, but they did not. I guess some people just really don’t care, and that’s Dan and Aaron.
10 months in, and I couldn’t even look at them without getting mad. Everything they did or said set me off. I was still doing everything without help.
I’d work 6 to 7 days a week, 10 hours a day, going to the gym after work, and I’d still have to come home and deal with their nonsense and clean the house as well, as usual. My 2 “best friends” would work, come home, and jump on their computers and guzzle down fast food and scream at the game they were playing till 7 or 8 am every day.
A few weeks ago, I finally was fed up. I came home from work one night to find Aaron sitting in my chair playing my Playstation. The living room was my domain basically because they never left their rooms. My only happiness was coming home, sitting in my chair, and watching a movie until I was tired and then retreating to my room shortly after, and Aaron knew this.
I was extremely tired from a hard day at work and the gym, and I calmly asked him to get up, so I could enjoy my night before heading to bed like I do every night, but he said no around 4 times, despite me asking in a friendly manner. All that pent-up rage inside me just started to boil, and nothing at this point could stop it from exploding out.
I walked over to my chair and used all the power I had to flip him over. He jumped up and grappled me, knocking over a table in the process. I overpowered him and got him in a headlock and squeezed so hard my arms went numb until Dan came in and broke it up. Aaron stood up and started yelling and so did I.
I went off on a 20-minute rant that I guess hit home so hard for the both of them that they couldn’t even muster up a single rational reply because they knew they were in the wrong this whole time. After that, they went to their rooms and followed their usual nightly gaming routine, but they were quiet.
I informed them the next morning before work that this last month, I’m not doing anything for the house, don’t even look at me, or talk to me, and if they want the safety deposit back, they better get their butts in gear and start cleaning.
They didn’t say a word.
Ever since then, they have been cleaning and buying groceries and also trying to joke around and talk to me like normal. I play the part and act like nothing happened, and everything is normal, but in reality, I’m counting down that 15 days until the lease is up, and after that, my own place, here I come.
I guess what they say about not knowing someone until you actually live with them is true.
I do believe I lost my 2 so-called best friends after that whole ordeal, but it allowed me to step back and actually view the friendship I had with the 2 of them in a different light, and I don’t think I can force myself to be friends with them after this.
They say some friendships are ruined when you move in with your friends, and unfortunately, that’s what happened to me.
Hopefully to anyone who is reading this doesn’t have to go through the nightmare that I had to endure. Really stoked about getting my own place now, haha.”
Another User Comments:
“People wanna live in a clean house with food to eat, but nobody wants to clean or grocery shop. So yeah, it’s all talk unless you see them doing it (ie, living on their own).
So far, their parents have been doing it all for them, and they assumed you would do the same.
I remember seeing male friends move out and living in absolute squalor when we were 18-20. Women seem to do okay because we basically socialized from day 1 that women tidy watching our moms growing up. Not that there aren’t some nasty ladies out there too – this sub is definitely proof!
But from what I’ve seen on average, my girls all cared about being tidy, buying groceries, and cooking like adults as soon as they moved out. Most of the male friends needed like 5-10 years to get their stuff together. I’m not sure if you’re a guy, but the way you wrestled that guy, it sounds like it, so the fact that you care at this age makes you an anomaly and an absolute catch!
Advertise that on your social media, haha.” trainofthought700
18. Just Call Her The Psycho Narc
“Part 1:
Context: I’ve been living with this creature for 1 year and 10 months now and it started out great, but as time went on, her behavior got less and less acceptable (but slow enough that it took me this long to realize).
I have strong suspicions she has a narcissistic personality disorder, in any case, she fits all the criteria.
A few months ago, we had an argument about my sheet music on my piano in the shared living room.
She was in a “good mood” and had cleaned everything (when she is in such a mood, she gets down to ridiculous levels of perfection). But! There was a mess left behind, caused by me, and so it was my responsibility to clean it up!
A pile of sheet music defied her perfect harmony. I flat out refused as the pile was really just a normal pile of paper, and removing it would mean I’d have to search for my music sheets every time I wanted to play.
She did turn a bit sour towards me for a couple of weeks but then resolved the situation by buying carton folders (and charged me for it!) to put the sheet music in.
This is in itself a very small incident but comes into play next.
At the beginning of this month, the last straw finally broke the camel’s back. She had slipped back into a depressive state and would not do any of her tasks or even follow basic hygiene standards.
I got very angry at her after which she moved out for five days. During this period, I discovered that half her stuff in the fridge had gone moldy and that she had accumulated a huge pile of dirty dishes on the shelf next to her bedroom where mold was already starting to grow.
There were many other disgusting things that I will not divulge at this time.
Then she came back and a huge argument started.
I recorded it:
Roomie: (A disorderly pile of papers on the piano is) “… at the same level as mold in the fridge. Honestly. I think it’s very disgusting -”
Me: “So you think a pile of papers on the piano is equally dirty as mold in the fridge?”
Roomie: “I think it’s equally infuriating as mold in the fridge. I don’t find it nice. It will have to change, right, yes.”
Me: “So the mold on the di- (incredulous brain overload) – on the dishes you let go moldy in your bedroom and then put in the dishwasher…”
Roomie: “In my room?!”
Me: “…you think it’s equally… (stares in disbelief)”
Roomie: “But that’s not bad!
It’s getting cleaned up! It’s really not that bad! It just releases and then it’s clean, and yes, then it’s gone! Nothing will happen to it! What do you think will happen to it? There are no nutrients, like, I studied biochemistry! There are no nutrients on a clean plate for mold to grow on. It’s just clean! It’s another opinion we have!
It’s not that you or I are wrong, it’s just both are not very OK, I think both…For me, it’s more frustrating that there is a super disorganized pile of papers always, and if there’s mold in the fridge (minimizing tone), then there’s mold in the fridge, that’s true. But that was the only time! And that was because… (inaudible)”
(blames it on her poor mental health)
I think this conversation is very typical for a narcissist and that’s why I’m sharing it for awareness. This is a typical “word salad.” The tone of voice is very self-assured and convincing, and if you’re not paying attention, you might think she’s actually making a good point.
You can offer counter-points, but she will just talk over you and have a reply for everything.
The goal is to confuse you to make you agree.
After the recording ended, she was using her poor mental health as an excuse. First of all, this is not OK: mental health can never be used as an excuse for bad behavior! She would also continue to suggest I was at least partially to blame for her poor mental health.
Because of the mess I make, she had “given up” on following even the most rudimentary hygienic standards.
This is also very much unacceptable. You should not ever be held responsible for somebody else’s mental health (at least not in roommate situations). This is called blame-shifting. She made me feel guilty for making her feel bad.
Obviously, she thinks of herself as much more important in the house than me.
She refuses to accept even the slightest mess from me (like a pile of papers) but has no problem letting half the fridge go moldy.
Fortunately, the landlord does not share her views and “opinions” about mold in his kitchen equipment!
I have also smashed the stupid carton folder.
She will move out soon, but unfortunately, I have more stories, hence part 1.
Part 2:
This story is from the previous weekend.
Since the beginning of this month, I have realized my roommate is scoring high on all narcissistic personality disorder checklists.
Her abuse has gotten out of control, and she was turning the house into a depressed hoarder’s nest, as I was too tired and beaten down to continue fighting for my place. We paid an equal amount of rent. I got my bedroom, the shared bathroom, and the shared kitchen.
For the same price, she got her bedroom, the shared bathroom, the shared kitchen, a personal office space/gym (formerly living room), garden/smoking lounge/open-air ashtray, and somebody who cleaned up most of her mess in the shared areas.
Of course, this situation wasn’t really holdable, even for a pushover like me. We had a huge fallout with several heated arguments. She took no responsibility for all the moldy dishes all over the house, the moldy stuff in the fridge, smoke butts all over the garden, spilled paint everywhere, piles of junk everywhere, etc., etc.
Instead, she blamed it all on me, as of course, it was all my fault she felt so depressed and her mess was a natural reaction to my behavior!
For the first time, I was able to clearly recognize the typical narcissistic patterns she used in her communication (in this case, blame-shifting).
I worked up my courage and asked her to move out, which she initially refused until she informed me that she had decided to move out “due to my difficult personality.” I temporarily moved back in with my parents to get out of the situation and to give her time to move.
Last weekend, she wasn’t there, so I wanted to clean the house in order to be able to invite new potential roommates over.
I spent the whole weekend deep-cleaning the house. However, I made the mistake of informing the narc that I was doing thusly, and she suddenly arrived Sunday evening being all mad at me for daring to clean up. I had lost most of my patience for her, so I ignored her unpleasantness.
She retreated to her room, but every now and then, she came downstairs to shout at me that I had to be quiet.
I was mopping all the floors downstairs and had some esports finale on Twitch playing. It wasn’t excessively loud but audible throughout the house. It was 8:30 pm at that time, way before the cutoff time for night noise (which is 10 pm here).
Normally, I would have gotten my headphones, but I really didn’t feel like indulging somebody who shouts orders and expects them to be followed. Somebody who turns her laptop volume all the way up when I try to play the piano (and can’t be bothered with headphones when I propose this as a solution). Somebody who does not feel anything but contempt for me.
Somebody who can’t even be bothered to help out. Somebody who doesn’t feel any shame whatsoever in the way she lives and made me live. So screw her, the sound stays on.
I finish at about 10 pm and watch the rest of the finale in my bedroom.
She again shouts at me to be quiet. I shout back that she has no right to come into my house for no other reason than to be angry and shout at me and if she doesn’t like it she can leave.
She has no shame.
Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rings. Three police officers were standing in the doorway, informing me they were investigating a noise complaint! I was incredulous, but honestly, not very surprised.
I even felt a slight sense of amusement that she had dared to take this step. The officers asked me some questions. The poor guys were probably looking for a juicy party bust, but instead, they had to deal with her nastiness.
I invited the officers inside, at which point, she came running downstairs in tears. Two officers listened to her story outside, and a third officer took my story in the living room.
I have no clue what she told the other two officers, but she took them upstairs to her bedroom (Twitch was still playing in my bedroom). Super weird that she did not feel ashamed to show people the state of her bedroom.
The officer who took my story reassured me that there was obviously no noise disturbance and thus their visit would not have any consequences. The conflict between me and the narc was not their business.
I gave him my recently-gained insights into our situation and he seemed understanding. I hope the two other officers saw straight through her. They made sure the conflict could not escalate, but as I planned on leaving for my parents again the next day, there was little risk.
As they were leaving, I took my coat and went for a walk. I saw the narc leaving with her dog and went in the opposite direction.
When I came back, she was nowhere to be found.
It shows that she has realized that shouting and being rude no longer have any effect on me, so she resorted to domestic terrorism. It shows how petty these people are and how they’re completely unable to see any flaw in their own behavior.
Screw her, she’s out. And I don’t owe her any more favors.”
Another User Comments:
“Is your roommate a clone of mine? Dear God. I hope she gets the heck out ASAP. I’m trying to leave personally. The dictation of space, the entitlement to use anger and reactivity towards your personal choices and lifestyle IN YOUR OWN HOME, the disgusting/dirty pigsty they choose to live in, and gaslight you about cleaning, or I don’t know, not wanting to live in?
The blame-shifting… It’s such a mindscrew.” Garlicbreath86
17. She Thought Caging Her Dog Would Help His "PTSD"
Yeah… Maybe don’t diagnose your dog.
“When I found this girl from Delhi on a website that helps you find a flatmate and flats, she told me that she will be moving in with her “adopted” dog. I love dogs and have grown up around pets, so I was excited.
Little did I know that it was a dog she had literally picked up from the streets on a whim and had forced him to live with her.
Every day, Bunny the dog would run all over the house, looking for an escape. He would claw at our glass windows and bark all day. He would also leave a trail of hair all over. When I told her to get Bunny treated for shedding, she told me he had PTSD after living on the streets for so long. And then, Bunny started chewing up the furniture, which belonged to the landlord.
He also attacked me a few times and ripped a dress.
I voiced my concerns again. But the next thing I know, she buys a cage to “fix Bunny’s PTSD” and places it in the living room—the hottest room in the house and one which didn’t have an air-conditioner. For two weeks, she would leave Bunny in that cage, where he clawed and barked and peed and pooped and slept in all day.
Sometimes, she would be gone for close to 16 hours. I even took photos and was going to report her for animal cruelty, but she left the house before I could.”
16. They're The Reason Our Phone Bill Was As Much As Our Rent
“Sophomore year of college, I lived in an apartment with one of my buddies from the Rugby team. We got along great, worked out together, ate together, you name it!
Six months into the year, I got a partner at another school and started spending weekends visiting her. After a month of weekends away, I slowly started to see my roommate less and less. It seemed suspicious, but his parents lived in town, so it wasn’t that concerning. I figured he just wanted free food.
Then the phone bill arrived. (This is back in the day of land-lines.) It turns out that my buddy spent every weekend I was away, for the entire month, calling adult lines—running up a bill equal to a full month’s rent.
(The entire month’s rent, mind you; not just his half). Looking at the bill, you’d think he’d spent 24 hours a day on the phone with these people.
He decided to “move out” because he knew the bill was coming soon. And when I confronted him, he refused to admit to it. I was up his butt about it for a long time, and he eventually quit the team and dropped out of school.
I’m still mad about that ‘mysterious’ phone bill. I lived on rice and ramen noodles for two months thanks to him.”
15. Even The Landlord Was Sick Of Her
“Kate. Kate was a freaking jerk. She had a room in a house I shared with a few other kids our freshmen year in Santa Barbara. She was 28 years old, unemployed, flunked out of school, matted hair from not showering, teeth screwed up, mooching off her mother, freaking scumbag.
To set the record straight: I hate this jerk.
Kate’s favorite food in the whole world was beets. She stole them from the local farmers’ market or went dumpster diving. She would often start a pot of beets boiling on the stove, and then do substances, pass out, and forget about them. She would go about her day until one of us got home and realized the smoke alarm was going off, and the house smelled like boiled beets.
She had two cats, but no litter box. They would poop and pee all over everything. We had to replace the toaster twice because her cats would pee on it.
She never paid bills but torrented things prolifically and without care. The Internet at the time was under my name, and I was receiving countless emails about torrent usage. I recommended a VPN, and she told me to screw off.
“I don’t care, it’s under your name, you’ll get in trouble.” I blacklisted her on the router after that.
One time our other roommate offered to help pay the bills. She spent it on substances. Literally. We got home from class and the unpaid bill was still on the counter
Eventually, she got pregnant. She found out the same week our landlord decided he was sick of her nonsense and gave her 30 days’ notice.
Somehow that was my fault, or at least that’s what I was led to believe when she screamed at me after class.
Anyways, that’s Kate. Screw that jerk.”
14. She Got With Her Man's Dad
“Roomie got with her man’s dad as revenge for him being unfaithful to her. Dad and Partner got into a fistfight over her at our apartment, which damaged a ton of stuff. She later “saw” the Dad again while the partner and mom were at church.
She had a mystery clam chowder that we could never figure out how she was replacing it. She would heat it up, eat a little, leave it, heat it up again… repeat for days. The other roomie and I searched for clam chowder cans just to see where it might be coming from. Nothing.
Crazy Pants claimed I was “ruining” our third roomie’s last year because I couldn’t handle Crazy Pant’s crazy and moved out.
I kept paying for my room as a courtesy to our third roomie, but Crazy Pants moved her dad in and failed to mention the room I was paying for was being used. She screeched at me over the phone “but it’s MY DAD!!” when I told her she could pay for the room if she was using it.
I gave my share of the rent to the third roomie and told her to never let Crazy Pants have it.
Only one tenant was allowed to turn in a check, but the third roomie handed over our rent to Crazy Pants. She bounced the check four times before I threw my hands up and told the landlord I’d pay my share for the rest of the lease.
Never having roommates again. Crazy Pants makes the toilet paper bandit sound tame, and the toilet paper bandit would use a whole roll in a day.
She’d never flush it, but throw it in the trash until it was overflowing”
13. They Didn't Know Where To Draw The Line With Partying
“I’ll start it off by saying that I lived with one of my high school friends my freshman year of college. That was both a mistake and a blessing. Things started off fairly well, with both of us being social and making some friends.
Quick back story: my roommate and I used to smoke and experiment with a few substances while we were in high school.
I still smoked my freshman year but mostly on the down-low. There was no down low about my roommate smoking. Within the first two weeks of being there, he wanted to buy a quarter-pound of substances to sell and smoke. We always had people calling and stopping over to pick some up. Granted, I’m not against people smoking, but I am against people jeopardizing my college career by having the stuff all over the place.
We also lived right next door to the RA who was not a bad guy, but I was unsure if he was “cool.” My roommate would smoke in our room. At this point, it still was not that bad. I still talked to him, and he still went to some of his classes.
After a few months, he made friends with some shady characters within our dorm.
These are the kind of dudes you do not want hanging out in your room for fear of your possessions being ruined. I was trying to be a somewhat responsible college student, balancing my drinking/social life and my academics. I had 8 am classes all year my freshman year, and these dudes would be up until about 6 am “partying” in a substance-addicted, introverted sort of way…In our God d****d room.
I would frequently wake up to booze splashed all over my laptop. I would get the, “Aw man, we’re sorry we woke you up.” They would drink, smoke, and play Madden until the sun came up about 5 times a week. There would also be the occasional puking incident in the room. By occasional, I mean about once a week someone would be blowing chunks on something.
People would be peeing off of our balcony (little trashy balcony we had in our freshmen dorms) onto whatever was below. I stored my soccer equipment on the balcony… cleats and stuff like that. Generally, pretty nice stuff. I just didn’t want to make the room smell like sports shoes. These all got ralphed on. They promised to replace… never happened. All of this nonsense went on the rest of the year.
The awful thing was that I was pretty decent friends with the kid’s parents. He would go off mid-week sometimes with his 2 friends to some other place in the city and completely lose touch with the world. They would come home with some ridiculously stupid citations from the police.
I seriously had to check the kid for a pulse sometimes when he would pass out.
He ended up having to do some police program to try to clear his record. That worked out so well that I ended up peeing in a water bottle for him to try to con his way through a substance test. I also drove him into the testing center for this test.
Well, there was a lady standing at the door while he was probably dumping my urine in the test cup.
She must have heard the plastic bottle crackle or whatever because he got caught lying on that one. That was pretty awkward as my pee was in the bottle, and I knew he was being busted for misleading the substance test. I felt bad for the kid and still do to some extent. He was a pretty smart and athletic kid who I had known for probably 10 years before then.
The whole partying real late routine went on until the year was over, but we parted ways after that. Best decision of my life. He ended up not making it through school, still lives at home with his parents, and had a kid with a psychotic girl. I have a solid job and haven’t lived at home since my little post-graduation victory tour.”
12. Refuse To Pay For Your Portion Of Rent? Enjoy A Wrecked Bike
“When I was in my last semester of undergrad, I had possibly the worst roommate ever. Not only was he cheap, (he convinced me and the 3rd roommate to pay the apartment deposit citing he’ll give it to us later as some of his stuff was stuck in his previous house: we never got it back) he was a huge online poker addict eating up all our bandwidth so much so that I couldn’t stream YouTube videos.
He would get and drive his bike really fast and would think it was cool (I sat behind him once by mistake and vowed never to sit pillion behind this guy again.) Let’s call him A.
By the end of the semester, we all kept to ourselves and had minimum interactions. One day I was drinking at my friend’s birthday party when I get a call at around 11:30 pm that A has been in an accident and that I should get back home asap.
Just that morning A had made me mad over something inconsequential and I really didn’t want to leave the party since I knew the other roommate would take care of him. But for some inexplicable reason I felt I wasn’t doing the right thing so decided to head home early. As it turned out, big mistake.
I knew something was wrong when I went to unlock the door as I could see bloodstains on the handle.
On entering, I saw something I’ll probably never forget.
A was standing a few feet away from me. He had at least half a dozen cuts on each hand. I couldn’t tell the exact number. His jeans were completely ripped and they had turned red as well. He wasn’t wearing his shirt anymore but I could see some parts of it stuck to his wounds.
All in all, it was the stuff of nightmares.
I and the other roommate cleaned up his wounds for over an hour and made sure they didn’t get septic. He point-blank refused to go to the hospital saying that the cops might confiscate his bike and put him in jail for driving (the reason he got into an accident was cause he was driving really fast and hit a crossing stray dog, which probably died on the spot.
I actually still feel bad for the dog.) I found that really stupid but he was wasted, hurt, and adamant so we dropped it. He promised that he’d go in the morning when he was sober.
Anyway, so we put him to bed and reassured him to ask us for anything. The next morning he wasn’t home so we figured he had gone to the hospital on his own.
Later in the day when I saw him he was bandaged up and told me that his parents were coming to pick him up. (Not once did he thank either of us for taking care of him and he didn’t even have the decency to apologize for being a jerk for the past few months.)
Well, so his parents came, spoke to us briefly, and took him back home.
Before leaving I told him that we still had to pay rent which he said he’d send us once he was home. Not only did he not pay the rent, but he would also lie that he’d do it the next day or that the bank was closed or some nonsense excuse. Oh and neither did his parents tell us thanks for saving their kid, instead, they told us we shouldn’t have let him drive when he was wasted. Yep.
They were that delusional.
Anyway, at the end of all this, I had had enough. The bike which was wrecked in the accident was still lying in the garage and I decided that I wouldn’t let this guy get away with it so easily. So every day for about 3 weeks I’d go to his bike and remove some part of it and chuck it away.
I even googled what parts are the most important of that particular model and I made sure I wrecked it so bad that it was impossible to fix it without spending a bomb. I even invited a couple of my friends to mess it up and boy was it fun.
The best part? Since it was involved in an accident there was no proof of what I did to his bike and he never found out.
Was it petty of me? Most certainly.
Did I enjoy it? Oh yes.
Did he deserve it? 100%.
Passive-aggressive? Yep.
Oh, and did I mention I also broke the remaining tail lights that weren’t already broken in the accident. With parts of his own bike.”
11. He Wanted To Rule The Place
“Juan was my first-year roommate, and we shared an apartment-style dormitory with four people. There was a kitchen, a shared fridge, two washrooms, and the place was brand new. We were four strangers brought together from different countries and different backgrounds. But through our experience with Juan, we would become much more. The suffering we endured would bond us forever.
Juan in every sense was socially stupid, and he continually redefined that term.
Let me begin.
Juan took the term freeloading to a whole new level. He had the concept that our apartment was a communist apartment because he would eat, wear, and spend our dollars as he pleased. To Juan, what’s yours was his. In the beginning, we would put all of our food in the shared fridge.
That was until Juan started eating all of our food. And the thing was, he was bold about it.
He would literally eat your food in front of your face. And when you confronted him about it, he would just laugh at you and smack you on the back like it was okay. One time I walked in on him cooking my steak that was marinating in the fridge.
I yelled at him and said, “What the heck are you doing,” to which he replied, “Oh, you want some too?”
He just wouldn’t get it.
No matter how mad you got at Juan, he would just smile and laugh at you. It was so infuriating. No matter what you did, it wouldn’t register to him that he was doing something wrong. We eventually got all of our own personal fridges in our rooms. When that happened, Juan started raiding other fridges like a Tusken Raider.
He would literally open people’s doors and go into their fridges and steal food.
When confronted, he would run away faster than you could say, “Zoidberg!” Then everyone started locking their doors. Only then did Juan start buying food, and let me tell you, I was astonished. I have never seen anyone survive on a strict diet of hotdogs, bread, milk, and cereal.
Juan would also try on my clothes.
He would go into my room and go through my wardrobe. He would try on my dress shirts and anything else that he thought suited him. The best part was confronting him about it. He would look me dead in the eye and say, “Does this look good?” “GET THE HECK OUTTA MY ROOM” was my usual response.
Cleanliness was also another issue. Juan never washed his hands.
We had to train him (literally) to wash his hands after using the toilet. We would shout words of encouragement like, “Wash your hands,” “Don’t forget the soap!” He also had a habit of throwing poop toilet paper on the ground. I would later learn that in his county, one would not flush with paper due to pipe clogging. But why throw it on the ground!?
Why not the garbage can that was two feet from the toilet!? The best part was watching him pick it up with his bare hands.
Juan at parties was “that guy.” He was the guy that would go up to a girl and say, “I like your chest” and squeeze her butt simultaneously. I was convinced that Juan had no interaction with women. Everything he said to a female was derogatory, vile, stupid, and dumbfounding.
I remember Juan was trying to impress a girl at a party, and you know what he did? He lifted her in mid-air with a skirt on and dropped her on her head. I’m pretty sure the girl received minor brain damage.
When that didn’t work, Juan would stalk the girls off-campus. One time, a girl screamed at him, “Why were you watching me sleep!!????” Yeah, he was “that guy.”
To make matters worse, Juan would follow me around. Having Juan around you was like spraying a dead skunk as cologne. I tried everything to shake him, but he would be there lurking in the corner, embarrassing me at every chance he got or doing something equally stupid.”
10. It's The Quiet Ones You Really Have To Worry About
“I never thought I’d be one of the unlucky ones to get a terrible roommate freshman year.
I had high hopes that summer and those hopes were subsequently dashed after a week of living with the worst person I’d ever encountered in my life.
I should’ve seen the warning signs when she didn’t email me and the other roommate (we were in a triple) when we started corresponding before the big move-in.
I assumed, her being Russian and all, maybe she was shy, or she just wasn’t big on the whole technology thing.
Anyway, we knew next to nothing about her, even her social media page was sparse save for a few absolutely obnoxious profile pictures. (She was into taking mirror shots with this weird duckface, stiff lip thing going on.)
She seemed perfectly nice when I met her for the first time, if not a bit quiet, but little did I know the evil that lurked behind her glasses.
When I got back to my room, I decided to play some music while I got my side (which was pathetically small) sorted out and cleaned.
I was blasting Queen when our other roomie came in. With a sour expression, she asked in a thick Russian accent, “Is this that gay Freddie guy? I hate gay people. Please don’t play their music.”
I stood there, flabbergasted, that someone who I knew so little, would say something so terrible when I had barely spoken to her.
I don’t really remember what I said after that, but it was along the lines of, “Are you homophobic? I’m not going to stop playing Queen or any of the gay artists that I love.” She outright admitted to being somewhat homophobic, although she wasn’t particularly scared of them seeing as she didn’t believe there was such a thing as being gay anyway.
Things went down that semester, so much nonsense that it’s impossible not to have to write 2 pages worth of a story to get it all down.
So here is a bulleted list:
- She gave me and my roommate terrible colds practically the first day she arrived by getting snot everywhere. She then wondered aloud, “Where are tissues?” and refused to get any; my roommate had to get them.
- She woke up EVERY MORNING at 5 or 6 in the morning. EVERY MORNING.
- She went to bed at 9:30, and even if she went to bed at 4, she’d get up at the same time.
- She scoffed at me for sleeping in and thought it was bad for us to get so much sleep. (Oh, and she wanted to go to med school. Really?)
- She told me once that she could see the devil in people and that our roommate surely had the devil in her.
- She stood in front of her vanity mirror for 10 minutes every morning and stared at herself making the duckface stiff lip thing for 10 solid minutes. EVERY MORNING.
- She demanded that we be quiet and have the lights off at 9:30, or she’d be loud in the morning. She was loud anyway, even when we weren’t.
- She criticized our living areas; she was offended at any sort of undergarment being left out.
- SHE NEVER LEFT THE ROOM. She also had no friends, whatsoever.
- She was extremely rich. This isn’t really a problem, but it was strange.
- She once let me borrow a towel, and she didn’t want it back. (Probably because I was evil and dirty.) I kept it, and at the end of the year, I looked at the tag and saw that it was a Ralph Lauren towel.
What the heck.
- She made lots of annoying little noises constantly and would make ludicrous statements and complaints.
At the end of the first semester, my roommate and I had bonded over our shared hatred for our little Gorbachev and wanted her out.
Our building of freshmen was de-tripling, so we were hoping we’d have to separate soon. (It wasn’t mandatory to separate, however.) Of course, our little Gorbachev was the first to see the notice that we had the option to separate, and SURPRISE SURPRISE, she says in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’m not leaving.” I wanted to cry at that point.
I was really worried my roommate would leave me with her, and I’d be stuck.
I basically went off on the jerk, asking her WHY IN THE HECK she’d want to continue living with us if she seemed to hate it so dang much. She liked how cheap living with two roommates was (what the heck), and she honestly didn’t care if we didn’t like her.
My roommate and I eventually convinced her to move out by telling her that the dorm she’d be living in was right next to the library, and it was really quiet. She finally agreed, and my roommate and I had a great time the night she left by playing gay freaking music after 9:30.”
9. He's Convinced He's Fit For The Military
“After divorcing I decided to take on a roommate to help me rebuild my finances. I had a three-bedroom house. The mortgage payment was low because it was a messed-up house in the middle of an economically depressed town.
I could afford it, but I wanted more breathing room.
Enter a guy we’ll call Chris.
Chris seemed fairly normal when we first met. He was a few years younger than me, I was in my mid-twenties at the time, but he was clean-cut and squared away. He was wearing a National Guard T-shirt, I asked him if he served, and mentioned that I was in the Navy and got out about two years prior.
Chris told me he wasn’t in the National Guard but was thinking of joining because he really wanted to be in the military. Cool.
The deal was $500, all-inclusive. He had a bedroom with a bathroom reserved for his exclusive use and a small balcony above a downstairs porch. Cable TV, internet, phone (remember landlines?), heat, AC, hot water all of it included. His $500 would cover my mortgage and taxes and insurance and leave me to only foot the bill for utilities, essentially leaving me with an extra $500 per month to chip away at the lawyer debt I put on my credit card.
Sweet.
Chris moves in and I notice the first few days he’s around the house a lot. So I ask him what his work schedule is like. He tells me that he is starting a new job next week so he’ll let me know. He gave me the first and last month so, cool.
Next week rolls around, I get a call on my work cell.
It’s Chris, he needs me to pick him up from McDonald’s in the middle of the day. Can’t do it, dude. I’m working. It sounds like an emergency so I call a buddy of mine to ferry him home. Chris started a job at a Mcdonald’s on the opposite end of town, passing three other McDonalds to get to it, and was quitting on his first day because it was too fast-paced for him.
I am immediately regretting my decision to rent to this guy.
Now solidly unemployed, Chris is spending from an unknown source on militaria. Every time I see him he has something else. By the end of the second week, he’s wearing a full-on military-ish uniform of his own design (camo fatigues with non-military pins all over it). He’s not quite at the stolen valor level but he’s definitely in a space where the untrained eye might think he was… something.
Around this time I tell Chris that he needs to make sure he pays the rent for the next month otherwise next month will be his last month. He agrees. A few days later he shows up and gives me $500. OK, I’m skeptical but whatever.
I suggest to Chris that now might be a good time to try out that national guard thing. He’ll earn a little and, best of all, be out of the house for a while as he completes basic and AIT.
So I drive Chris to the recruiter’s office and he takes the bus home.
About a week later, I’m woken up from a late sleep-in on my day off by someone pounding on the front door very angrily. It’s the NG recruiter looking for Chris, who is oddly absent from the house, saying that Chris has not shown up to three scheduled meetings with him to finalize his enlistment.
This is it. Chris either goes back to his office by end of the day or he’s done, no enlisting.
Chris shows up at the house that evening, I tell him what went down and he tells me that he essentially ghosted the recruiter because the recruiter wasn’t ‘being fair’ with his ‘offers’ to him. Chris wanted to be some sort of special forces whatever and they simply couldn’t offer him that.
Plus, Chris didn’t exactly rock the ASVAB so his options were fairly limited. He felt that if he couldn’t get special forces the least they could do was make him an officer given that he was 21/22 and had no experience, skills, or other qualifications that would justify this, I’m not sure what he was thinking.
Shortly after this, Chris begins telling me that he’s seriously considering joining the French Foreign Legion.
I point out that he couldn’t manage to join the National Guard and I doubted he would pull it together to get to France and enlist in the FFL. Chris got mad and locked himself in his room through the end of the month, ignoring my pleas for rent for the third month.
Three days in, I told him he had 24 hours to pay or I was starting the eviction process.
No response. I went down to the courthouse and got the forms and started the first step which was to serve him a notice that I was beginning the eviction process. As I’m doing this, I decided to call the number he originally called me from. His former house number.
It’s his parents’ place. I have a nice and civil discussion with his mom who is dismayed to hear that it isn’t working out.
She tells me that she was helping him out financially while he ‘got on his feet.’ I tell her about the same day quitting at McDs and the failed National Guard thing etc. She begins telling me the myriad medical reasons why Chris is never going to serve in the military and that he knows this and has already been rejected by every recruiter of every branch.
Not the least of his problems being that he is an occasional bedwetter, apparently.
Three or four days later, a rented van pulls up with his mother following behind in her car. Mom and dad came to take Chris and his stuff home. I haven’t spoken to him since he talked to his mother. She hasn’t talked to him, either. He refuses to open his door.
He opens it when he hears his mother and he begins crying like a little kid about how he doesn’t want to go and it isn’t fair that he has to leave.
I’m dumbfounded by this whole thing.
Chris’s dad gives me $500 for my trouble, told me to keep the last month’s rent I had from Chris originally, and agreed to haul what turned out to be a rather urine-soaked twin-size mattress away with Chris’s stuff.
We shook hands, dad apologized to me on his son’s behalf and this little momma’s boy went off sobbing with his parents having failed at his first attempt at adulting.”
8. If She Didn't Hoard, She Might Be A Semi-Alright Roommate
And that’s a maybe (but probably still a no).
“And I say this as someone who grew up in a house with hoarder parents. At least my psycho-hoarder parents would rinse a dish.
I never should’ve given her the landlord’s info after showing her the room, but I was rushing to find someone because last time we let the landlord choose someone, we got bike thief addicts, and a friend spoke well of her as a person.
The first problem was her smoking. I’ve lived with smokers before who are considerate about it, and they’re fine. I kept coming home or waking up coughing to the house filled with smoke. I would step outside to find her sitting facing doors or windows and smoking with a pack next to her. I told her it was all coming into the house, and she seemed shocked.
I told her, “Hey, it’s not your fault the house is a drafty piece of trash, but it is. You need to smoke further away.”
She said okay.
A couple of hours later, I stepped out to find her lighting up while plopped down in the exact same spot.
I stared at her and said, “Didn’t we literally just talk about this?”
She made another shocked face and told me, “Oh, did you mean I should stop like right now?
Oh my God, can you actually smell it? I’m so embarrassed.”
Multiple times throughout the day and night the house would get filled with smoke, and I’d step outside to find her doing the same thing. She’d grab her phone and waddle away. Or if I said something before she could, she’d look at me with one lit in her hand and say, “I’m not even smoking out here!”
Then her solution changed to trying to hide it. She’d burn so many scented candles and incense sticks, you couldn’t breathe. I told her it didn’t cover that she was smoking right next to the house anyway, and it was making me horribly sick.
Eventually, I gave up and contacted the landlord. He never responds to messages, but he actually got back to me and was so annoyed, he said he’d be calling her immediately and telling her to stay at least 20 feet from the property when smoking.
Dishes. Oh my God, the dishes. When she was moving in, she said she had a lot of kitchen gadgets and such. I told her, “Hey, you do you. I do some baking but nothing crazy, so there’s lots of room in the kitchen, so feel free to find a space for your stuff.” The walls, tables, and drawers are filled with stuff. She owns multiples, and I seriously think it’s because of her refusing to clean.
She uses little tin sauce cups like you’d get in a restaurant, and multiple times, there’d be a pile of them building in the sink. I decided to just wash them myself once, and when I went to grab them, my finger sunk into old, moldy sauce. She had never even rinsed them a little, so they were all just flipped over in the sink but filled with rotten food.
Around Thanksgiving, she made something with a big slow cooker thing. I went away for a couple of weeks and came back to it still on our little counter. I had decided I wasn’t cleaning any more of her stuff, so I left it. It sat there for nearly a month. It started to smell, and when I looked inside, it was full of juices and grease and bones with grayish fuzzy chunks of mold growing on the inside.
I texted her and asked, “Can you please clean your slow cooker ASAP?” and told her about the mold. She came out of her room and huffed and puffed and slammed things around while cleaning it in a tantrum.
Booze. I have a drink at home once in a while too. But she gets stupid sloppy wine wasted. A friend of hers moved into a vacant room, and they’ll down a bottle of cheap wine each and be disasters all night.
Have yelling conversations on speakerphone, dropping and breaking things, stumbling and falling all over the place until like 3 am.
She thinks she’s helpful. A few times after she first moved in, I would get text messages from her telling me she had swept. And saying it like it was a huge favor. I would say thanks or not respond cause sweeping is just kind of what you’re supposed to do?
But she was lazy on a level I haven’t seen before. She would sweep up little piles and leave them on the floor. Or one giant pile, and it would be underneath a towel or hidden in a corner. And she seemed to just drop the broom on the floor when she was ‘done.’ Like she got raptured mid-chore. I asked her once to put the broom back where it goes when she’s done (in a nook connected to the kitchen where we put cleaning supplies).
She stared at me incredulously with her mouth hanging open and sighed heavily then said, “You mean like EVERY TIME?!”
I replied “Um..Yes? Like when you’re done using something, put it back where it goes?”
She looked from the broom to the nook, and to me before sighing dramatically again and saying, “Well I mean.. I guess I can TRY.” She did not try.
Literal poop. I constantly have to clean the toilet before I can use it. I think she doesn’t know how to uhhh align herself on the toilet? She leaves poop scrapes on the toilet, and drops of liquid poo and period b***d on the floor..And no one’s poop doesn’t stink, but that bathroom is a health hazard when she gets done with it.
If I liked her, I’d genuinely be concerned about her health for how bad it is. Her habit is to drink a bunch of wine, drink a bunch of coffee, smoke a bunch, then explode in the bathroom, and it lingers for like an hour. I’ve bought odor eater sprays and left them on the bathroom counter as a hint, but I don’t think she’s ever used it.
After the landlord told her the smoking near the house had to stop, her attitude cranked up to 11. She was already a stupid slob, but now she’s an angry stupid slob. She started telling lies about me to her friend who had moved in, who would then come to me and ask me about it.
I tell her, “No, not true” and told her about my email to the landlord and how she interestingly started spreading stuff right when that happened.
The friend shrugged and said, “Yeah, I know what she’s like” and seems like a play both sides type. We had one of those conversations last night, and I woke up to my makeup bottles emptied onto my shower towels and my hair products all tossed on the floor.
I wish moving was an easier option right now. Right now, my job future is unclear, and I live close to my work, so it has been a blessing that I don’t have to use public transportation to get there.
Even with my usual hours, I couldn’t really afford anything else in the area. I got stupid lucky to find this place when I did. And I just spent thousands of dollars on surgery less than a month ago. I wish I could believe she’d move out, but if she’s too lazy to put away a broom, I don’t have much faith she’s going to find a new place to make a sty.
I wish I knew how her previous victims had gotten her to leave.”
7. He's Too Stubborn To Do A Lick Of Dishes
Did he think his mom was going to do them for him?
“Moved in with my best friend from high school less than a year after graduating from high school. The first few days were fine, we decided to split the cost of sodas and keep them stocked in the house. I don’t remember the exact span of days passing but I believe it was 3 or 4, I go to get a soda and they’re gone.
I ask the roommate if he moved them, he says we’re out.
At this time I drank 2 of the 24 sodas, so next time we go to the grocery store I inform him that I’m not interested in splitting sodas anymore, he gets huffy, no big deal.
Fast forward a few days, the dishes are piled up and I washed them the previous time (no dishwasher).
He had lived in this apartment for a while so he had a ton of dishes. I owned 4 cups, 2 plates, 2 bowls, and a few utensils as I was broke and being my first time on my own.
I let him know that it’s his turn to do these dishes and he comes back saying that since I didn’t want to split costs on sodas that he wasn’t interested in taking turns doing the dishes.
We agree to wash our own dishes, which ended up working much better for me since I had little to wash. We will come back to the dishes later.
So far these things aren’t too bad and I feel like I’m fairly easy-going so I brush this stuff off. Until it happened… well multiple its but you’ll see.
The first incident didn’t impact me as much but it was still a jerk move.
We had another best friend that was active military so he was on base but his significant other lived in the same town as us. The roommate would often talk about how if we would have parties that she would be mine and just a bunch of weird things. I would never do that to this friend and I brushed it off as being young and not knowing how to handle the situation.
One day the military guy’s partner and my roommate are texting me asking when I’ll be home from work and I start to get suspicious. I tell them the time I plan to be home but I ended up leaving earlier than expected. When I get home her car is in the parking lot and the door is locked. At this point, the door was never locked because he knew I had a hard time getting it open (it was an awful door/lock).
He eventually lets me in like 5 minutes later and she’s in his room brushing her hair, which I thought was weird.
I ask him why he locked the door and why he’s acting so weird. She abruptly leaves and he comes into my room to talk. I see a text from her to the roommate that says ‘don’t tell him anything’. I get a call shortly after from my friend in the military and apparently, his significant other told him everything.
I still don’t think it’s everything but who cares anymore it was 10 years ago.
I walk him through what happened when I got home and inform him of my suspicions. The roommate then has the guts to blame our military bud because ‘they hadn’t talked in a while and didn’t think they were even friends’. The roommate, military partner, and military bud end up all making up.
I would have been done with all of them but I left them to their business.
I want to say it was roughly a month after I moved in, he started going out with this girl with 2 kids, I believe she was 20 at the time and we were 19. She was nice enough but little did I know I would be seeing her more than I expected. He immediately moves this girl and her kids into our tiny apartment.
These kids were terrible, I believe they were between 1 and 3 at the time. Crying all night and day, trashed the apartment. Thankfully I worked and went to school so I spent a lot of my time away from the apartment but it never felt like mine. They complained when I had people over or made any noises. She never paid rent or utilities and didn’t work.
I don’t have anything against kids but I didn’t sign up to live with kids as a 19-year-old.
I ended up paying more in utilities due to the 3 person increase, I was always polite but they were often standoffish towards me.
Moving forward to about mid-November. HE STILL HASN’T DONE THE DISHES! The initial dishes incident occurred in July. At this point, I had been washing my dishes as needed and keeping them separate from the sink of despair.
Imagine how bad your dishes smell if you slack a few days, now imagine how bad it is after a few months.
There were roaches all over the house on top of that. I basically stayed in my room and never had roaches in there but the rest of the house was disgusting. The girl never bothered doing them either even though she was home basically every day, I’m sure he told her not to and expected me to wash the dishes because I didn’t want to split mountain dew but I was having none of that.
She eventually ended up throwing away most of those dishes because they were unsalvageable but this didn’t happen until shortly before I moved out.
This is getting really long so I’ll just list a few other things he did: guilt women into sleeping with him, sleeping with women and ghosting them (ones I know that really liked him), threatened to kill my family because I spent the day watching movies with the neighbors, claimed I was uptight because I didn’t view women like he did and I ‘just needed to hook up with someone,’ used his parents for financial help even though he didn’t like them.
I moved out in December, thankfully the lease was only 6 months. I didn’t realize you could mess up so much in 6 months but he did it. Needless to say, we aren’t friends anymore. Not all the times were bad but most were.”
6. Perhaps The Biggest Warning Sign Was That She Had No Friends
“My housemate and I replaced our first psycho housemate with another psycho housemate, who for the sake of this story I’ll call Mel.
My other housemate, Emma, and I had placed an ad on a website specifically to find housemates, and Mel messaged that she was interested in the room. Because she was interstate, the first time we interviewed was over Skype. We made it very clear after our experience with our old roommate and that while we wanted a happy home and didn’t mind sharing a meal sometimes, we lead busy lives and respect each other’s privacy.
Essentially, we didn’t want our new housemate to expect that we would spend every minute of every day together and be best friends. She then visited the city we lived in a few weeks later, and we agreed to let her move into the room. Her dad was there helping her move in and would ask Emma and me very strange questions. We thought he was an overprotective dad and didn’t think much more of it.
Anyway, Mel was a bit clingy at first, but I thought once she’d started back at uni she’d be too busy and leave us alone. I was wrong. I got really busy with full-time uni, my part-time job as well as trying to juggle stuff in my personal life. She didn’t have a life outside of uni. She didn’t have a job, no friends, no hobbies.
She would wait till I came home from work at about 10 pm to have a chat, probably the only social interaction she had all day. We felt kind of bad for her and made a bit more of an effort to socialize with her in the evenings we didn’t work. This was a mistake.
She became even more clingy and dependent and invited herself to come with me places.
Didn’t matter if it was the gym, grocery shopping, etc. I found it very overwhelming and it got to the point where I found myself sneaking in and out of the house to avoid her. She obviously went a bit stir crazy doing nothing all day and started to move things around the house to try and get our attention. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but then I realized what she was doing.
Any attention was good attention for her. Instead of asking her to stop, I would just put my stuff back where it belonged.
After a few weeks, one day I came home from uni and she’d moved my clothes around which made me really uncomfortable. I was on the phone at the time and I said to the person on the other end of the phone very loudly that I would have to go because someone had made a mess of my clothes and that I was annoyed.
I had hoped my psycho housemate would take a hint and leave my stuff alone, but she stormed upstairs and asked me what my problem was. I said that I didn’t appreciate her going through my clothes and there was no reason for her to touch them. She started to get really aggressive and couldn’t be reasoned with, and by that point, I needed to catch a bus to uni for a lab.
This angered her even more, and she said that she expected me to come straight home from uni so that we could have a talk. I said I wouldn’t be dealing with this issue that night because I had a test the next morning. She stormed back downstairs and I quickly grabbed my things so I could leave. She was waiting for me at the end of the stairs and told me that she was coming to uni with me.
I told her to leave me alone but she followed me all the way to the bus stop, yelling and threatening to hurt me if I didn’t stop moving MY things around the house, and she expected me to hang out and have dinner together every night. When we got to the bus stop, she stormed off again. She’d made a bit of a scene and I was very shaken.
My significant other and I agreed that I couldn’t go home to someone like that and that I should stay at his house that night so I could just focus on studying for my test the next day. This all happened around the end of the lease, and I prayed that she didn’t want to renew it. I hardly went home in the last month of the lease, only to collect clean clothes.
She was an absolute psycho, so when she moved out I blocked her on social media so that she couldn’t harass me. Well, it turns out she thought that I owed her because she’d overpaid her bills when she’d actually underpaid me. And considering the other girl and I were hardly home the last couple of weeks, we could’ve asked her to pay more.
Anyway, I didn’t find out about this until my new housemate that replaced her started getting threatening messages from Mel saying I owed her $60+.
Both the new housemate and I sent her copies of all the bills, proving she’d actually underpaid us. I hadn’t given it much thought and just paid her share because I didn’t want to contact her again.
After trying to reason with her, I suggested both of my new housemates should block her. My new housemate and I laugh about it now, but for a while, I was worried she’d come back and key our cars. She’s definitely not a very stable person and I hope she got the help she needed.
Luckily my current housemates are fine.”
5. Won't Accept The New Rent Increase? Good Luck, Buddy, Because I'm Gone
“I’m going to go right ahead and say that this wasn’t the coolest thing I have ever done.
I was living in a room in an apartment above a restaurant in Cambridge, MA.
One of the rooms in the apartment opened up, so I had my little brother, an undergraduate in electrical engineering, come move in with me.
We had a third roommate, we were all ‘tenants at will,’ there was no lease, and this guy was just a professional victim. He was always contacting the landlord about this or that problem, but our rent was so low, so I always preferred to just fix the problems myself by replacing things that broke with identical units, because I didn’t want the landlord to raise the rent.
This difficult roommate’s family lived a little west in the beautiful town of Newton, and I could tell that what this person wanted was freedom from living with his family, but he had nothing on the line – if he is evicted, he goes and stays back at home in Newton, just down the street. If I get evicted, my little brother and I head over to the Salvation Army in Central Square until we can find a new place.
In any case – this guy was difficult to live with. I was usually out at work in the Longwood Medical Area, but my little brother (a college student with a loose schedule) let me know that the third roommate was usually home and cooking in the kitchen, or playing music very loudly. Personally, none of that mattered to me. I just needed to microwave a little bowl of Campbell’s soup for dinner every night at ~8:00 pm, otherwise, I got my food at the hospital cafeteria.
What mattered to me was, at this time, I was doing a lot of early-morning Guinea Pig b***d draws to support ongoing studies. This procedure is a bit difficult, as you need to draw a relatively large volume of b***d via the vena cava- which is a large vein that rests right next to the heart. The point is, I had a lot of stress regarding this, but this guy would play Call of Duty (the video game) all night long.
I spoke to him about it, he stopped for a night, and then he just continued again.
As this continued, my patience ran thin. Passive aggressively, since he wouldn’t be respectful, I would switch off the circuit breaker to his room, shutting off all of his electronics. I would stand by the breaker for him to come out and then just say ‘whoops, I think something happened with the breaker.’ He was a bit odd and didn’t want any trouble, so he would just go back into his room, wait for me to go back to bed, and then turn the breaker back on.
Cue Call of Duty explosions and noise all over again.
Then, finally, we get a letter. Indeed, it’s a rent increase. The issue was that it was still, from my perspective, below-market.
I indicated to the third roommate that I was interested in accepting the new rent, and I would cover my little brother as well. The third roommate, though, told me it was his intention to NOT accept the rent increase and to call his attorney instead.
I spoke with him a few times to reconsider, but he didn’t care – what’s the worst that could happen for him? He goes back to Newton?
So I had to start making moves. We had one month. I found a new place – a 1 bedroom apartment, my brother and I could partition the apartment appropriately so we would both have a room, and our own kitchen.
I had some money saved, so I put a deposit on the apartment ASAP, and my brother and I slowly began to move our belongings there.
August 21st, and my brother and I had moved everything to our new place without telling the third roommate at all. We went into our old apartment for the last time, collected all the extension cords that powered everything in the kitchen, all the while we heard music and Call of Duty blasting from this guy’s room.
With all the extension cords in a plastic bag, essentially rendering most of the equipment in the kitchen useless, my brother left the apartment. I went over to the circuit breaker outside my old room, flipped the breaker to the guy’s room. I heard the music and Call of Duty noise stop abruptly.
I turned, left the apartment, locked the door behind me, took the train to my new apartment with my little brother, and slept like a baby that night.”
4. I Had To Show Her What It Was Like To Have A Bad Roommate
“My first college roommate was strange, but for now, let’s call her J. I can’t decide if she’s too stupid or too stubborn or just doesn’t give a darn.
She never went to the floor meetings or anything either, not because she had a class or a club, but because she didn’t feel like it. I could already feel something was off on move-in day when my parents left and she still wasn’t there.
She did come later with all her stuff in garbage bags and her friends helping her, but no dad or mom.
When I went into college, I thought I was gonna be that one kid who always left her door open and talked to people, but I guess because I grew up in the inner city, I got annoyed at how chipper things were and closed myself off as a loner.
At first, she was nice, but over time, I hated her presence. I go to a catholic school, so you can’t have guys in your room after a certain hour.
For several straight weeks, she let her partner (who I’ll call K) sleep over. And by sleep over, I mean they stayed up until 4 AM most days, going on Xbox and goofing off. She’d listen to YouTube loud and without headphones or call her dad on speakerphone.
Now I had 8:30 AM classes from Tuesday to Friday, and she oftentimes had an alarm. The problem was she never heard it, but I did.
Every morning at 7:30 without fail. I failed one of my midterms because of her and only got a D because I participated a lot in class.
Now her partner, I guess you could call him a good guy, was patronizing. He’d talk to me like I was a 4-year-old who always needed help, and it always made me wanna slap him. But I figured if he saw how much I was suffering, he’d relent or at least say something to her.
He never did, and some nights, he’d come into her room very unsober. One night he opened a lighter close to my things.
I couldn’t sleep and there’d be nights she’d invite her friends over, who were all guys.
It got so bad I took sleeping pills without telling my parents. They were worried I’d get robbed in my sleep, especially since I left all my stuff in there, like my laptop, my bus money, the money I was saving up for a tattoo (must’ve had at least 100 dollars).
Not to mention, she would go through my things. I went away for a weekend and came back. All her dirty clothes were on my bed, she’d gone through my fridge and stole all my water, went through my desk, and stole all my highlighters. I’d lend her things and she never gave them back.
Because she was either too stupid or didn’t care, she put a flag on the wall.
Because our school is in NJ and we had the seton hall fires, you can’t have any fabric on the walls or posters or more than 20% covered. And because I was mad at her, when the RA came for monthly inspection, I acted like I didn’t know she did it. She did text me to ask if I could take it down for her, but I ignored it.
She got fined, but a week later put another tapestry up and got even rowdier.
I figured if she’s gonna be a terrible roommate, I would be one too.
I didn’t like to go grocery shopping and only got $50 a week from my parents, so I would steal food from the dining hall, put it on my desk, go to the bathroom, and leave.
She complained to the RA that it was giving her headaches, but I just kept continuing. I never cleaned out my fridge, either. Not to mention, sometimes the laundry machines would make my clothes wet or smell like mildew, so I would leave them out for a few days before I went back to do them.
She wanted a clean room, so I stayed as messy as possible, not doing laundry for an extended period of time.
If her friends knocked on the door while she was gone, I just ignored them. And I acted rude if they were there. If her alarm went off, I started to sing about Eminem.
I remember one night, I couldn’t sleep so I put on The Way I Am and Kim by Eminem to get them to shut up.
It embarrassed them, alright, but they thought I was bumping.
Not to mention how the outside heard us.
Nothing changed.
Thankfully, I went to the RA, then the GRA, then the Director to ask for a room change.
All she got was community service and still acted up. On one Thursday I was taking a nap, and her friends came in and screamed with her while they cleaned. I woke up after they left and figured I should get ready for class.
I started putting on my clothes and a guy (not her partner) showed up while I had nothing on top, because she gave him her key and told him to get her purse.
I went back to the GRA and she said to be patient. I talked to my mom and she was so angry she wanted me to transfer or become a commuter. She even said if one more thing happened, she’d make me go home and just Uber me back and forth.
So I emailed the VP of student life and got lucky it was a nun. All I had to say was there was a guy in my room and the problem got resolved in 15 minutes.
Now I have my own room, an air conditioner, and a working heater, and she’s probably sharing a bed with K.”
3. Getting Payback On An Absolutely Unbearable Roommate
“My sophomore year roommate in college was a moron for no reason.
Day one, he lies in bed and cranks his TV to full volume for absolutely no reason. His level of nonsense would eventually lead to him immediately jumping up and locking the door the moment I’d leave the room, even for something like brushing my teeth. When the RA would let me back in, he’d sneer ‘didn’t you remember your key?’ with a sly grin on his face.
My first act was completely unintentional but I was so happy it happened. My buddy next door came over PLASTERED one night after drinking and at one point he poured milk on my roomie’s side of the room. (Sidenote, roommate went home every weekend so he wasn’t around). Anyway, said milk had gotten into his book bag slightly so I decided to be a decent guy and wash it so he wouldn’t have a fit.
I emptied everything out and put it through the washer and dryer. Turns out I had missed a small pocket and left a floppy disk in his bag, which contained his English comp assignments. All that ‘trauma’ in the washer and dryer wiped the disk. Fast forward to the following week as he’s proceeding to finish his assignment, he can’t find his work and had no other backups.
The second time wasn’t me but a buddy. Everyone I knew, knew of my jerk roommate and how much of a lazy loser he was. Well during another weekend later in the year, I had some friends visiting who were prospective students. After hearing all the horror stories of this guy, my buddy took the roommate’s laundry detergent into the bathroom and relieved himself into it, shook it up, and put it back on the shelf, ensuring the roommate would not have clean clothes.
The last time was at the end of the year. After enduring the lockouts, the blaring tv, him using my computer behind my back without asking because he was a piece of trash, etc I got him kicked out of the dorm. The roommate was so lazy he quit going to class midway through the first semester. He failed his classes but was just close enough that the school offered him a one-semester reprieve to get his grades up.
He went to class for 2 weeks then quit going. He would stay up all night, play poker and then come back and watch tv at an ungodly volume till all hours of the morning, then proceed to sleep well into the day. Then it got to the point where he would wake up at 5 am and leave to go turkey hunting.
After taking this to the RD, she deemed him to be ‘detrimental to my studies,’ especially since he was basically just renting the bed at this point and nothing else.
So, for the last 3 weeks of school, he was ordered out of the dorm and not allowed to return, forcing him to go back and live with his parents and brother whom he HATED living with, hence why he was freeloading at the university.”
2. They Spied On Me At The Wrong Moment
How creepy is this?
“I was in college, living on the third floor of a dorm with a couple of guys. One night, a girl I’d been interested in came back with me.
Things started to get hot and heavy, and it was then that I notice a glint of light reflecting on my wall. It was coming from outside. Outside from the third-floor window, mind you. I turned my head towards the window and there, suspended outside my window, was a rear-view mirror that my roommates had attached to a broom handle and lowered from the fourth-floor room directly above mine so they could watch.
I jumped up as I saw all the eyeballs in the mirror open wide, as in ‘OH SHOOT’ and — poof — the mirror shot up out of view. Needless to say, that was the last time I kept the curtains open.”
1. She's Downright Delusional
“I just saw a post from my old roommate in a social media group looking for new victim roommates in a new apartment.
Out of curiosity, I searched her name in the group and realized she has been moving from one apartment building to another every year (renting contracts are often 4+ years, so she’s breaking them all and paying a ton of fees) and is always searching for new roommates.
I can’t say I’m surprised.
When you look at her (let’s call her Isadora), she’s absolutely GORGEOUS: nose job, chest job, top-model kind of body, worked out like crazy, traveled the whole world just for fun, went to the best parties and restaurants in town, you get the picture.
Unfortunately, dumb as a box of rocks and, as I was soon to found out, completely bonkers.
She would often misplace her stuff and go berserk on the other two of us for stealing her “expensive stuff” – then she would find them in random places around her room and say we were trying to cover it up.
She was also constantly paranoid that people were trying to get into the house to steal her expensive stuff because she had jewelry and designer clothes, and everyone knew she was filthy rich… Except she wasn’t.
Her man had money though, and he was a complete b******e, which to her was OK. I remember her saying how she decided he was partner material (and I swear those were her exact words): he paid for an expensive trip for both of them and a friend of hers, let Isadora buy absolutely everything and anything she wanted, and also paid for all other expenses like expensive restaurants and parties.
Just out of clothing and random stuff, Isadora alone spent over $10k because she was testing her limits, and “he didn’t even try to make love with her after paying that much on stuff she didn’t even need.”
He was also over 2m high, had blue eyes (and to her those were a must), and a kid and ex-wife he was legally not allowed to see, which was not a red flag at all.
(She thought it was cool because she didn’t need to share his attention and even made horrible jokes about how she wished they both died in some accident, so she didn’t need to share the guy’s funds once they got married.)
During the year I lived with her, I found out he was the one to pay for many of her plastic surgeries.
As for the “jewelry and designer’s clothes” she had, they were all fake (don’t know if she knew that), and her other clothes were all fast-fashion from the same stores we all shopped at.
She would also have horrible fights with her man all the time, even inside our no-men-allowed apartment, and once again would go berserk on us for no reason at all.
Sadly, she was complete garbage of a human being, treated us horribly, never cleaned or paid for anything around the house (her father rented the apartment, so we could not kick her out), so with time, the other roommate and I just gave up trying to help her.
The cherry on top was when she asked to borrow my laptop to “fill an application for a new job.” I asked what happened to her own notebook, and we proceeded to have the following conversation:
Isadora: “Mine is too expensive. My man bought it for me in the US, so it’s in English, and I don’t know any English. And it’s also from that very expensive brand, so it’s very difficult to use.”
Me: “Oh, so it’s a Mac? I can try to help you with it if you’d like.”
I: “No, not a Mac but that other really expensive brand. I’d rather use yours; it seems to be a lot simpler.”
Spoiler alert: Her laptop was the most basic Asus one could find – but everything was, indeed, in English, so I can kind of understand the challenge.
I lend her my laptop, and she locks herself in her room from where she didn’t leave for HOURS. When she gave it back to me, the trash was empty, and the history was all cleaned out.
I just ignored it and went on with my life.
WEEKS later, though, I was going through my downloads folder and found a Word file called “Isadora.” You know the feeling when you send an e-mail with an attachment, then download your own attachment to see if it was sent out ok?
That was the case, and she forgot to delete the downloaded version.
I did consider just deleting it instead of reading it… For like 3 minutes.
Then I opened what I found out to be the longest, craziest, and most worrying letter I’ve ever read.
It was, of course, to her partner, almost 10 pages long. In the letter, she mentioned things like him getting tons of inappropriate photos on his cellphone from dozens of girls he promised to get into the luxury parties he worked on for free.
He going psycho on her for having “too much fun” at her own birthday party and getting hugs from her friends and actually flipping the restaurant table during a tantrum. Also “grabbing her too hard and leaving her all bruised because she was speaking to male friends at a party” and “paying for the surgery without her knowing and convincing her to do it against her will, and now she would probably never be able to have kids again.”
The thing is, abortion is still illegal in my country. You can either pay a ton to have one in a more-or-less safe environment or pay less to probably die during surgery at a shady place.
Even though she never used the word “abortion” in the letter, both I and the other roommate (who knew her for longer and had the information I didn’t at the time) were convinced that that was the case.
To top all suspicions, we found a ton of prescription packages and empty bottles of cheap booze under her bed (remember how she never cleaned after herself?) – some of the meds were for very specific symptoms/diseases she surely didn’t have.
It broke our hearts, and we started planning on how we could try and help her.
But she still treated us like trash, and every time we tried to talk about her man, she accused us of being jealous and trying to steal him from her.
Sometime later after the letter episode, he proposed, and after being told that she could choose the honeymoon location and all details for the party, no matter how expensive, she said yes (and started planning for a wedding in some castle in France).
They went to a safari in Africa to celebrate, and he dumped her after the engagement trip.”
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