People Share Stories Of The Worst Roommate They Ever Had

Living alone can be pretty boring; however, having a roommate can be even worse. If you grew up with siblings, you might have had to share your room with your brother or sister. Your parents probably forced you so you didn’t really have much of a choice. Chances are good that your sibling was annoying. From being sloppy all day to snoring all night, sharing a room with a younger version of yourself can be rough.

You probably think moving out of your parents’ house is a dream come true. Whether you are attending college or just venturing out in the real world, you might still need a roommate. Sure, you may get lucky enough to skip the bunk bed dorms, but you will be sharing your space with a stranger. Not only will that person help split the rent and utility costs, but they will be around all of the time. If you get along, this person could become your best friend. This is rarely the case. After all, that is why you are here: to read horror stories about roommates from H-E double hockey sticks.

Keep in mind your roommate probably doesn’t realize how stubborn, messy, and selfish they were until they crawled out of the nestled wings of mom and dad. It’s okay, everyone has flaws. However, the following roommate experiences go from bad to worse to just plain ugly. Keep reading to learn about some of the worst roommate stories ever.

31. He Did Want To Pay The Water Bill

“I was moving in with a friend of mine. In the time it took us to find an apartment, I found out his girlfriend was pregnant. She was moving in with us. But it was a two bedroom apartment, so we would just split the rent between the two rooms.

Immediately after we signed the lease, I told him I would finish setting up the apartment so he could get to work. No need, he had quit his job last week. We agreed he would pay water and I would pay electrical, because, well, I was dumb. I started seeing a girl and she stayed the night for about a week, and then I had the water bill pinned to my door with a note: ‘If she is going to live here too, then you can pay the water bill.’ The water bill was $200. I called the water company to pay, and asked ‘Is my bill going to be $200 every time?’ Nope, it was $200 because it had not been paid since we moved in…I moved out and never looked back.” David Christensen

30. Her Name Was Probably Ariel

“Freshman year, I was assigned to a random roommate who thought she was a mermaid/witch. I came home one day and there was a wet six-foot mermaid tail hanging over my door. She also got permission from the school to swim in the campus pool with her mermaid tail on. I’d also wake up from naps sometimes and it would be pitch black, and I’d hear her and her friends chanting and talking about spells they had made. She was an interesting gal.” Reddit User

29. I Wasn’t Even Home When It All Happened

“Me and some friends are at a buddy’s place, drinking, and playing poker.

My roommate is home alone.

I stay the night at my friend’s house since I drank too much to drive. I get to work the next day and am immediately summoned by the XO. It turns out that my place got raided by the cops. My roommate was drunk and had a bunch of equally drunk 16-year-old girls in the place. I was grilled by investigative services for a good month before they finally believed I had nothing to do with it, despite bank statements and 7 very strong alibis.” Coastie071

28. She Didn’t Think Bed Bugs Were Transferrable

My roommate freshman year of college was the worst kind of roommate. She had people over all the time. I was raised without shoes in the house and she had her friends sit on my bed WITH shoes so that was strike one. She was not considerate of my sleeping schedule. Was loud and turned on lights.

Then two months in, we had a bug problem. I kept waking up to more and more bug bites that I eventually went to the hospital. It was either spiders or bed bugs. Woof. Well, we had an exterminator come and do an inspection. YUP bed bugs. We had them spray the place, and they kept coming back. After the 3rd time, they had us keep all our stuff in the room and spray with a more expensive company.

After that failed, she asked me if it was because she has bed bugs at her house. SHE HAD BED BUGS ATHER HOUSE AND BROUGHT THEM TO OUR DORM AND DIDN’T THINK TO SEE A CONNECTION. FOR A MONTH I LIVED WITH BED BUGS.

I moved the **** outta there the next day.” Reddit User

27. He Threw A Knife Right At Me 

“Said roommate broke the lock off a chest I had in our bedroom while I was downstairs in the living room. He rifled through it and found a bowie knife in there that my Dad had given me. He came bounding down the stairs really excited about his find and asked me why I hadn’t share it with him sooner. I told him it was because it was a special gift from my Dad and I was keeping it safe. He then unsheathed it and threw it at my head. It didn’t stick in the wall but rather bounced off and landed on the couch next to me. He walked away like it was nothing.” Flannel_Condom

26. She Never Bought Toilet Paper 

“I had a roommate who absolutely refused to buy toilet paper. After weeks of her stealing ours, the other three of us started hiding it so she would be forced to buy her own. Instead, she started taking heaps of napkins from restaurants and stealing rolls of our paper towels. One night we all went out to dinner, came home, and the entire basement was flooded because she backed up the toilet with god only knows how much **** that shouldn’t ever be flushed. That and she would keep piles of old food laying around her room…never did laundry…most disgusting human being I’ve ever met.” Demonfizz

25. She Was Too Shy To Throw Things In The Garbage…

“My sister’s freshman year of college, she roomed with a really shy girl who kept to herself and was just sort of odd. After a couple of months, my sister noticed that their room started to have the weirdest smell. She tried to drop hints at her roommate, but she didn’t seem to notice, so my sister and her friends decided to investigate while her roommate was in class. They looked through the whole room and then finally looked through the roommate’s desk. They opened the bottom drawer to find that it was completely full of used, old, ****** tampons and pads… My sister moved out shortly after that.” Reddit User

24. She Tried Sleeping With My Fiance

“I’m female, and my female roommate tried to sleep with my fiance while I was at work (graveyard shift).

I checked my phone on break that night and had a few missed calls. She had knocked on my bedroom door late that night, which woke him up, and said she needed to borrow something from my master bathroom. He climbed back in bed exhausted, while she searched for the item.

She then tried to climb into bed with him and touch him all over, kiss him, etc. He freaks out and demanded she gtfo. He then locked the bedroom door, called me several times, and left a message about it when I didn’t answer.

The next morning…

She admitted my fiance was telling the truth and didn’t reciprocate her advances. She cried and said she had nowhere to go if I kicked her out. She also had her 6-year-old living with us.

It was my house, and I had done a lot for her during her divorce, charged her very little, babysat her child to give her a break, etc.

I gave her one week to move out.

I haven’t spoken to her since. She has tried for years to apologize.” MissMyndantin

23. She Peed All Over Her Laptop And Denied It

“This is actually about my friend’s roommate, but that’s hardly important. My friend’s roommate comes stumbling into their dorm room (freshman year). It’s blatantly obvious that she is drunk beyond reason. She starts shouting ‘I NEED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM,’ which wakes up my friend. She sees her roommate just staggering back and forth through the doorway. She stayed in bed because she really didn’t know how to react. Her roommate returns through the door once more and reiterates that she needs to go to the bathroom.

Before her roommate had left to go to a party, she had placed her white Mac laptop on her chair by her desk. The rationale here is that we believe the white from the laptop on the seat made the chair look like a porcelain load-throne in the mind of her drunken roommate. So she approaches the chair, pulls down her pants, and sits on her laptop. My friend braces herself because this situation can only go one way. As she braced for impact, her roommate releases a sigh of relief that unfortunately is synchronized with the release of her bladder and bowels. Despite her laptop being **************cov*ered *in p**ss an*d ***, her roommate denies that this ever happened.” storefront

22. He Brought A Homeless In To Stay

“I had a pothead friend who was chill but never went to class. One time he befriended a homeless vagrant who had an arrest warrant and let him stay in our dorm for a few days while I was gone. He slept in my bed. I ended up throwing my sheets away. I met him once when I got back.

He smelled of feces and piss and his clothes were filthy; I’m also pretty sure he was walking around with *** in his pants. Later that night he was arrested for trespassing and possession of a stolen firearm. The serial number was scratched out. The police also ended up in our room because they got a complaint about the smell of *********. They found pot in my roommate’s desk. needless to say, he was charged and kicked out of the college. I didn’t get in any trouble, but it was an ordeal.” SaigoBattosai

21. She Thought I Was Trying To Hotbox Her Dogs…

“I found my roommate on Craigslist and she seemed like an angel when I met her. My mom was staying with us on New Year’s Eve while my roommate decided to go out with friends. My mom has a form of sickle cell anemia, so I let my roommate know beforehand that it’s important we have the heat a little higher than normal because my mom’s illness flares up in the cold. That night, my roommate left her dog and her friend’s dog in her bedroom while she went out. My mom and I were minding our own business in the living room, making collages and watching rom-coms on Netflix, typical homebody stuff.

We heard the dogs barking and playing in her room and didn’t think much of it because we assumed they left the animals with enough food and water while they were out. It was cold in the apartment, so I turned the heat up so that my mom was comfortable. The heat was on for about 30 minutes when my roommate returns and she yells, ‘It’s like Madagascar in here! The dogs, they’re out of water!’ She starts screaming at me and my mother while looking at the thermostat and claimed that I tried to hotbox the dogs. She started saying things like ‘I bet you did this on purpose, I know you hate animals.’ Um, I’m vegan?! My mom then told me to go to my room and she talked to my roommate. I was peeking out from the door and next thing you know, my roommate was calm.#MomPower. But she didn’t apologize for any of it until the night my mom left to go back home, and I was shook for the next two months and wanted to move out.” Deleted User

20. He Was Taking Our Rent Money But Wasn’t Paying Rent

“I lived with a couple of other guys for about 3 months. I gave my part of the rent money to the guy on the lease. The power goes out one day. We assume it’s because of a winter storm.

So the next day the guy who’s lease it is isn’t there when I get back from work. So me and the other roommate call him and ask what’s up. He says that he is staying with his mom tonight. Whatever. The next morning we are woken up to a couple of big redneck dudes yelling and asking us who we are and why we are there. It turns out, the guy I was giving rent money to was spending it all on weed and alcohol and was given an eviction notice but didn’t want to p*ss us off so he just didn’t tell us.” kellypg

19. She Wanted To Live Homeless And Got Lice

“My roommate in college had a friend who decided to live homeless for the summer in San Francisco and also had dreads (this is important). Well, the school year starts and they are ALWAYS AT MY APARTMENT. I would come home from class there would be the friend wrapped up in my favorite blanket drinking all my Dr. Pepper. Anyway, I come home one day and my roommate goes ‘guess what we have?!?’ She was really happy so I figured maybe they replaced my soda. She goes ‘LICE!’

Turns out the friend got lice while living homeless in SanFran and didn’t think to cut out his dreads to comb the lice out so they never really went away.

I threw all of my *** in plastic bags and went to the Laundromat and washed everything on high heat with ammonia in the water.

I didn’t go back for 3 weeks…she moved out shortly after.” NoodleDoodleGirl

18. He Had Half-Consumed Slurpees In His Room…They Caused A Fruit Fly infestation

“When three people cram into a roughly 100-square-foot room, the results aren’t always great. The fruit fly infestation began within a week. Their small, zigzagging swarms would erupt into the hallway whenever we opened the door, and sleeping became impossible. So one of my roommates and I embarked on a deep clean. Surely, the flies couldn’t survive without sufficient food sources.

We scrubbed and tossed away open food containers, but to no avail-the fruit flies remained. So we took a more investigative approach, and after searching through our other roommate’s private affairs, found the creatures’ food source. I opened our roommate’s sock drawer and a dense black cloud of fruit flies erupted. Inside the drawer: a row of half-consumed 7/11 Slurpees.

This turned out to be the beginning of a series of beverage-related problems. At first, we were excited when this same roommate learned to home-brew drip coffee. Things turned sour when he started to buy whole coffee beans and hand-grind them in the room. My life became a constant cacophony of churning gears and ground coffee beans. I’d up awake at 6 a.m. to the crunching turns. I’d be kept up near midnight to the same sound. I’d wonder if he’d simply gone on grinding coffee all night. Wouldn’t his arm get tired? The heavy breathing and squirmish grunts that accompanied the grinding sign answered: yes.

It was a Catch-22: Say something, and the flow of delicious free coffee could end. Say nothing, and I might never sleep easily again. (Luckily the caffeine helped with the lack of sleep.)

Eventually, though, I moved out.” Karim Doumar

17. He Watched My Boyfriend Beat Me

“I had broken up with my bf at the time and when I returned home one night, he was waiting for me inside (still had a key.)

He attacked me and was punching me over and over in the head in the kitchen. My roommate (20 something male) heard a commotion and came out of his room, saw the scene, and wordlessly retreated; he went back into his room and shut the door. My ex kept me captive in my room all night and continued to assault me. I literally didn’t ‘escape’ until the next morning. Roommate and I never spoke of it. But I never forgot that part of the trauma. He could have helped, he at least could have called the cops, and he did NOTHING.” hasanicecrunch

16. His Girlfriend Smeared Pie All Over His Window

“We’ll call him Tom because that’s his real name.

I came home after work one warm summer day and my landlord met me outside the house. He was a super nice, gentle guy, and seemed really embarrassed when he asked me ‘Does Tom have any… enemies?’ I said probably, he’s not a very good guy. I asked why and he pointed at Tom’s bedroom window.

My roommates and I lived in a basement in a house in Vancouver; the rooms had little windows above ground level. Tom’s room faced the street, which faced north, and got a good amount of sun all day. Stuck to his window was a full apple pie. It had been smushed against the window and then smeared around, and then left to bake (heh) in the sun. I told my landlord I would take care of it, cleaned it off, and waited for Tom to get home to explain.

Tom had a girlfriend named Becka (this one’s changed) who was awesome. She had her stuff together, super sweet, and very pretty. She was an incredible girl, and Tom treated her like crap. They fought like cats and dogs, always screaming at each other for dumb stuff, then ****** the walls down, then screaming some more. After one of these fights, Tom made her cupcakes as an apology, but they got in another fight and he smeared them all over her sheets. They went shopping together for new ones, and then came home and made a pie (?) together. But while they were making the pie they got in a fight about the sheets, which accumulated in him throwing the pie at her clown-style as she stormed off. I guess the pie survived the throw so she jammed it onto his window.

He got deported a few months after that. *** Tom.” Speednuts

15. He Kept Peeing All Over The Floor

“I’ve had a few, but the worst was the guy who kept p*ssing all over the floor. He seriously got more on the floor than in the bowl, every time.

I had to warn him three times, and then a final warning-begging him to at least clean it up or use a small bucket then wash it out in the shower-then I booted him out. My other flatmate couldn’t handle it and was ready to leave, so it was a choice of kicking out the guy who’s pee I had to clean up and who annoyed the *** out of me, or the cute flirt who cleaned the house twice a week and cooked me dinner.” wafflestomp

14. He Had A Foot Fetish And Kept Stray Birds As Pets

“I lived with a man, let’s call him K. He was an older male, early 50’s. He was kind enough and charged me little rent… but there turned out to be a reason why.

Anyhow, I come home from work one afternoon and he is sitting in his chair, a cigarette in hand, stroking a pigeon. It had flown in through his open bedroom window; he caught it and began feeding it rice. It was obviously injured and couldn’t fly much. He smiled a wide drunken smile and said something to the affect of, ‘I made a friend today.’

He had the rat bird in our apartment for three days. I started up the shower one morning only to discover that he had placed the thing there while he was at work. I literally **** when the thing began flapping all over the place.

The pigeon died after I asked him to take it outside and it cooked in the hot sun on our balcony.

He also offered me a foot massage which I regretfully said yes too. Everything was fine until one of my toes ended up in his mouth. I asked him what in the ****** was he doing and verbatim, he said, ‘What? Did you honestly think I was only going to charge you $300.00 a month to live here without a little something on the side?’

I moved out shortly thereafter.” chaddinguyville

13. He Bought A Chainsaw To Kill Someone

“My roommate was a diagnosed schizophrenic. During one of his episodes, he thought someone had wronged him. He was freaking out really, really bad. It got to the point where he decided he had to take actions into his own hands.

He went to Lowe’s and purchased a chainsaw. In Philly. The cashier ringing him up made a joke saying ‘there aren’t a whole lot of trees around here, what are you buying this for?’ Cue psychopath laughter and ‘I’m going to kill someone’ statement. I’m still not quite sure how he managed to walk out of the store with it.

One hour later he’s back at our 20-story apartment complex walking down the hallway, running chainsaw-only to end up finding his nemesis and cutting down the door.

Lived with the guy for about 2-3 years, and that is only one of the stories….” Mysterio6string

12. She Was Peeing In Mason Jars And Leaving Them Around Her Room

“I’ve lived with some real winners through the years. People I’ve had to call the cops on, deadbeats, etc. But one from last year takes the cake: she was too lazy to leave her bed on her days off, so she was peeing in mason jars and leaving them around her room. How did I discover this? By encountering one when I walked into the room, about to show it to a potential new roommate during an apartment viewing.” BearOnALeash

11. The Moment He Took His Socks Off, It Was Game Over 

“During my first year of college, I had a roommate who would never shower. For the whole quarter, he would not shower and wear the same clothes every single day. He’d even crawl into his bed without taking off his shoes. His snoring was obnoxiously loud and I just started being annoyed by everything he did.

Even though it was really cold outside, I would open the windows as wide as possible so that the stench wouldn’t smell so bad. My friends that would come over would notice the smell as well. I had a girl over one day when my roommate was away for the weekend and she was put off by the smell in the room. She pinpointed the smell and said that it was coming from my roommate’s mattress. This was my final straw. I confronted him on his hygiene when he came back by asking him if everything is okay because he seems stressed and it doesn’t look like he’s keeping up with his hygiene. This is when he let me know that he’s just stressed from classes.

I offered to tutor him and recommended some extra review sessions that our college campus offered. I then told him that the room is smelling really bad and asked him when was the last time he showered. He said he was too busy to shower, which made no sense to me. I told him that you have to keep up with your hygiene because it inconveniences others, such as my friends and myself. I told him that he needs to take a shower immediately because I am having trouble sleeping at night because of the smell. He agreed, and that’s when the worst happened.

He took off his socks and the room filled with a vile stench of death. It was so awful that I lost my cool and told him to throw those ****** socks away. After he got out of the shower, I suggested that he should wash his clothes and his bedsheets. When he took all of his stuff to the laundry room, I realized that his stench had seeped into his mattress. I grabbed some cleaning supplies that I had and scrubbed his mattress outside of our dorm.

For the next 2-3 months after these events, I had to constantly remind him to shower, change his outfits, and wash his clothes. Eventually, he got into the habit of doing all of these things without being told and it worked out. I’ll never forget the smell when he took off his socks. I’ve smelled rotting animals and more, but his feet and socks were definitely the worst things I had ever smelled.” CertainDisaster

10. He Was A Stalker And Making Up Stories

“In my freshmen year of college, I had a roommate that started off a bit weird. He was somewhat socially awkward and did not like other people. Well as the weeks went on, the roommate started to get out a bit more and hang out with some other people. He eventually went to a party and some people from my dorm also went. I stayed home as I am not a big party guy.

Anyways, I get a message from him at close to midnight asking me to leave the room as he is going to “get lucky tonight.” I deny him as it’s already late and I really don’t have anywhere else to go and sleep for the night. The guy then tries to bribe me in an attempt to get me to leave which I continuous deny. I asked him why he couldn’t just go to the girl’s room, but he just said that it “wouldn’t work out that way.” The guy comes back at like 3 with no girl and goes straight to bed.

Few days go by and he goes to formally ask the girl he was out with. She denies him and apparently she wasn’t even interested in sleeping with him whatsoever. After that, he asked her out a few more times, each time she denied him.

Then, a week later, he starts waiting outside her dorm for hours at a time or constantly wanting to talk to her at every waking second. Eventually, several other people in the dorm, myself included, are really starting to get irritated with him and tell him to leave her alone. He gets flustered and stomps off into the night. It was at this time that I was informed that at the party, the group had found alcohol and started drinking. Well, everyone except for my roommate. And that also, he had not even talked to the girl that night at all, nor did she accept or deny any offer for ***.

We all start freaking out as, from what we are able to tell, my roommate is now a stalker, and potential ****** who has just run off into the night. I am constantly sending him a barrage of texts asking where he is, if he is ok, etc. I get no response until the next day where he walks into the room, packs up bus stuff, and leaves.

Thankfully he didn’t come back and we have yet to hear from him again.” K3Night

9. His Pumpkin Was Smelling Up The Entire Space

“In college, I had a roommate that put a pumpkin on our fridge for Halloween. He was ‘scientifically inclined’ so he cut a hole in the pumpkin and filled it with some water because he was curious what would happen. He then taped the hole shut and kept it there until right before Thanksgiving. We were not informed of his filling the interior with water.

The weekend before Thanksgiving break there was a pretty raunchy smell in our room. My roommate also didn’t like showering, so I didn’t want to say too much about it. After Febreezing the room every time I came into it for a few days straight, the poor Febreeze was no longer successful in taking care of this malodorous situation.

After I ask for the help of a couple of friends to discover the source of the aroma, we all ended up at the far end of the room with the pumpkin and fridge, we all thought the smell was coming from around there. Upon looking at the back of the fridge I see there is a pool of water underneath the pumpkin and there was a slightly orange-tinted water coating down the back of the fridge.

It did not smell good.

As I proceeded to lift the pumpkin up to see what was going on underneath it I was hit by the worst, most incredibly foul aroma I had never, and also have since, encountered. After needing to flee the room and dry heave in the hallway, my friends and I re-entered with an industrial trash bag, rubber gloves on, and a whole roll of paper towels.  We completed the extrication in less than one minute all while holding our breath, and then used an entire bottle of Febreeze on the room in the next two hours.

When my roommate returned he asked where his pumpkin went, and I told him the above story. He responded with ‘you really shouldn’t have done that, it wasn’t your pumpkin; it was mine. I didn’t want it thrown away yet.'” Scott Robinson

8. She Didn’t Want To Bunk With Me Because Of My Caste*

“I had the worst [experience] with my first roommate in college life. We were like really good friends (at least she was to me) and every year we needed to apply for new rooms with a roommate of our choice. Like a fool I was, I thought we were again going to take a room together (if we don’t apply with someone, we were allotted randomly and sometimes that turns out to be a really bad experience). We were inseparable, had mutual friends, always together, and were like sisters.

Two days before the allotment procedure, she told me that she really wanted to take a room with me, but she thinks she should take a room with someone of her ‘CASTE.’ It was the silliest thing I ever heard anyone say. She didn’t tell me who she was shifting with and I was left with ZERO alternatives. I am glad that one of my classmates later asked me to take rooms with her and we are the best of friends now.

The biggest facepalm was another really good friend of mine asked me why am I sad the next day, and I told her that my roomie is shifting with someone else and she didn’t say anything. Later I found out that my roomie actually shifted with that really good friend of mine. Like they planned it all out and acted as if they didn’t know anything.

When I look back at the incident, I actually feel funny. But betrayal is still a betrayal.” Aishwarya Gayen

7. He Stole From Me To Pay For Pizza

“I was staying with my boyfriend, who had signed a lease with a previous roommate of his. This guy was the gamer type, barely left his room and lived off of frozen pizza, and couldn’t hold a job because of (IMO) pure laziness. One day, on the 2nd of the month, after checking my bank account I saw that $700 was withdrawn from an ABM. I didn’t do it.

After confronting him, he admitted that he watched me type my pin at the grocery store a few days earlier, took the money to pay for rent and pizza, and thought he could get the money back into my account before I could notice. He also admitted to taking cash out of both mine and my boyfriend’s wallets for a few months.

I was more p*ssed than you can imagine.” octaviablaaaah

6. He Would Wreak Havoc But Wouldn’t Go Away 

“I lived in a co-op with 20 other roommates for 4 years so I shared my home with quite a few interesting people. The one that takes the cake is a guy named Kyle. Kyle was 20 when he moved into our house and already had quite a head start on his minor in alcoholism.

We were lucky enough to witness Kyle’s 21st birthday. He had gone out the night before to start drinking at midnight. He’d gone out with over $200 but woke up in our front yard (where his friends left him) with an empty wallet.

I was getting ready to take a shower when I heard a knocking on the front door. I was walking towards it when I heard Kyle start to yell for someone to let him in. I decided I wanted no part of this and made my way to the shower. After I had toweled off and dressed I listened at the door but heard no sign of him. I exited the bathroom and entered my own only to find Kyle sitting on my couch chugging down a previously unopened bottle of whiskey I had been gifted by a friend.

Of course, the first words out of my mouth were, ‘What the *** are you doing?’

‘It’s cool, it’s cool,’ he said. ‘Your girlfriend said it was fine.’

‘No, she didn’t,’ I stated, matter-of-factly.

‘You’re right, you’re right.’ He replied, ‘but it’s all cool, right?’ He proceeded to throw a handful of $1 bills at me while saying this and walked out of the room.

I went about readying myself for the day, locked my room and headed to the front door. On my way through the living room, I found Kyle practicing his golf swing (about three weeks later we found a hole in the front window that was coincidentally the size of a golf ball).

I left to run some errands, returned home and gathered some things to go out with my friends. As I was pushing open the back door it stopped with a thud, hitting Kyle in the back. Apparently, his mother had bought him an 18 pack of beer and he had been sitting on the back stoop drinking it since he had lost his keys.

“Oh man, Sephus! I’m so glad you came out here. I have to get ready to be at work in half an hour!” He ran inside and I went along my way. My roommates told me his mother returned soon after to give him a ride to work (for better or worse, at least this kept him from driving).

The story gets fuzzy from here as it’s all second hand. Kyle was a fry cook at a restaurant and during his shift, he was fired for climbing through the kitchen window to grab drinks off of server’s trays.

No one really knows what happened between then and when he returned home. What is known is that when he returned home he still did not have his keys as the following morning we found the basement door kicked in from the outside. Upon seeing this, a number of us went to Kyle’s room to find his door had been kicked in and he was still asleep in his bed. Though he vehemently denied damaging either door he eventually paid for the repairs to both.

The following month was a series of meetings, interventions, second chances and, finally, a fist fight with one of our female roommates, all culminating in a vote kicking Kyle out of the house.

As was tradition, we followed up the weekly house meeting by going to the local bar with half-off night and drank our fill. Upon returning we found Kyle grilling 6 half chickens in the backyard while nearly falling down drunk. He told us all he understood our decision and everything was cool. He offered everyone beer and chicken and we all hung out for a bit before going to bed.

The following morning my girlfriend and I woke up. I opened the door to head back down to my room and saw two cops carrying Kyle down the hall and out of our house. After we had all went to bed, Kyle had stayed up, carved a checkerboard into one of our roommates’ cars and his name into another after slashing her tires. He was being arrested as he had an open warrant. He had a MIP conviction and had never reported for probation. His family came and took all of his belongings and he never returned.” Sephus

5. I Had To Clean Up Her Waste

“I lived with a random roommate my freshman year of college. We weren’t great friends, but she was nice, and the first few months of our living situation were pretty civil.

One Thursday evening, we pre-gamed a bit in the dorm together and then went out to different parties. When I came back to our room that evening, our door was unlocked, all the lights were on, the TV was blaring, and my roommate was face-down on her bed, wearing just a T-shirt, with black vomit strewn across her pillow. She was naked from the waist down, and what could only be human feces had trickled down the backs of her legs and onto the bottoms of her feet. There was even more *** all over the carpet and in the recycling bin. (At least she tried to clean it up?) I slowly shut the door thinking, I am not prepared to deal with this.

I grabbed the RA on our floor, who called an ambulance. My roommate woke up and spent the night in the hospital. I, on the other hand, spent the rest of the night trying to clean the room with two very brave friends. Around four in the morning, while we were still gagging on the smell of human waste, a man in a hazmat suit showed up to my room with industrial strength cleaning products and told me to give him my keys for the night. I slept on a friend’s floor down the hall, woke up to go to my midterm the next day, and when I came back to my room, it was as good as new. By way of apology, my roommate left me a bag of M&Ms on my bed with a note that said, ‘Thanks for being a great roommate!’ Chocolate did not seem appetizing after what had happened.” Deleted User

4. I Had To Scare Him To Leave 

“The dorm room was built for two. Three was definitely a crowd, but that was how Tom, Chet and I started college life.

Two months later, after the normal drop-out period, plenty of room openings were available, but none of us wanted to move. Tom and I got along great. We were different, but he knew my type and I knew his.

Chet was from Long Island. His wardrobe cost 10 times what ours did. He got an allowance. He was clearly a mama’s boy. He was naïve, nice and had nothing in common with either of his two roommates.

We asked him to move. He refused. We asked again. He said he was having the time of his life. We found a single room for him. He refused (can you believe it)! We begged him to move. He said he was very happy to be with us. We were good boys…

Well, that gave me an idea, ‘a wonderfully awful idea.’

He studied until 10 in the library every night. I usually saw him coming from our window facing the commons.

This night I prepared a special scene for his return. Two props and the appropriate music were needed as staging. I had found an empty vodka bottle in the trash. The baseball bat leaned against the desk. The CD player was queued up.

As I saw Chet heading towards the entrance, I took a shot of JD, swished it around in my mouth for a minute and felt it warm my throat on the way down. I wiped the glass dry with the front of my shirt.

I hit the play button to loudly launch ‘The End’ by The Doors.

I picked up the baseball bat and turned away from the door towards Chet’s bed. As he entered, I was happily clubbing his pillow with the bat and singing, ‘my only friend, the end…’ I slowly turned to face him. Putting the bat down on the floor, I stumbled towards him. I mumbled a profuse apology, coming right into his face to make sure he got a good smell of my breath. I went back to his bed and straightened the pillow.

As we lay in bed before falling asleep I said to him, ‘sometimes I just get possessed by a monster, I am really a nice guy, sorry for scaring you.’

He moved out 10 days later without ever saying a word.” Raymond De Vries

3. He Ran After My Friend With A Gun

“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 beers and I said cool, but not here because my roommate is acting like a total ******.

So Chris, who also lives here, picked me up and we went to his girlfriend’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 he said 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 to let’s 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 sh*tty mood. His normal mood is usually pretty sh*tty on an average day but he’s been EXTRA sh*tty 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 ****** *** ignorant **** ****** wh*re’ who woke him up. Claire is pretty shaken up and Chris looks scared sh*tless. 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 **** and I was honestly confused and more than a little buzzed, so I had to yell over him to try to figure out what ****** happened.

Dane goes back to his room and storms back in, cursing up a storm and cocking 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, it’s 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 if frozen in his tracks. So me and Dave 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 weed, sun up to sun down, 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 *******. 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 *** 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.” Fred Montgomery

2. He Accused Me Of Stealing Private Information

“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 more bada*s 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 worried that maybe he had finally overdosed in there or something. 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 beer 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 myself 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 any more unless I know them already.” Kathryn Hedges

1. Those Ex In-Laws Are the Worst

“My wife came to me and said, ‘I know you are going to say no, but I am going to ask you anyway…’ Young men reading this, this is code for, ‘You need to just agree to do this.’

She pitched me a plan to let her ex-sister-in-law stay with us two weeks while her trailer was repossessed until she got a new apartment. I said I hated the idea because her ex’s family were all from Kansas. I told her ‘Two weeks?? I’ll be happy if she is gone by Christmas.’ And we laughed because it was early May. I agreed on one stipulation. Her oldest son, who was 19, is not allowed at the house ever. In the family, he is known to steal from his family, and I don’t need that crap in my house.

When I had agreed, I had forgotten this lady also had two shelties, a stupid breed of smallish dogs. Her daughter was my youngest’s age, 7 at the time, so they could play together. The first night she is there, we have a cookout. Because we have always been broke, kids get hamburgers and hot dogs, adults get a section of steak. I cook the 2 large steaks to perfection and start on the rest of the stuff for the kids. Only to turn around to see her and her daughter chowing down on each of the steaks, only to eat half of each and throw the rest away. My family-me, my wife, and 3 kids-had a grocery bill of $200 a month because we were broke a lot of the time. We knew how to live within our means very well. When she moved in, we spent $200 a week on food. They were always eating, and throwing *** away. Now, this could be a minor annoyance in itself, I have a lot of patience.

The next day…Yes, day two… I wake up to kids playing and find my youngest son playing with her daughter. I look at him and he is flush and developing hives. I ask him what he ate this morning, he had frosted flakes, and he is allergic to corn. We tell everyone he is allergic to corn, he knows he is. I ask my house guest, what’s up with the cereal? ‘I didn’t give him corn, it’s just cereal.’ I said, ‘it is corn flakes.’ She then insisted it didn’t matter, it was not corn…This was the start of a long list of things she would give my youngest son: Fritos, Doritos, tortilla chips, hard candy…even ****** popcorn. I said ‘POPCORN HAS CORN IN THE *****’ NAME!!!’ She responded, ‘Well I told him not to eat the little yellow corn bits.’

I can not make this stuff up.

Her daughter was something else. She could outsmart her mother. Her mother would say something like ‘Come on, it is 10 o’clock, time for bed’ (way past my kid’s bedtime). Her daughter would reply, ‘No.’ This immediately raises my ***** pressure, in my world kids do not get the option of saying no. But I wait for a response. She tells her, ‘Well if you don’t come to bed now, you will have to stay up and watch TV with them.’ The little girl responds ‘Okay,’ with a smile.

‘Listen to your mother, get your *ss up and go to bed right now,’ I hear come out of my mouth as my ***** boils, ‘we listen to adults in this house.’ She sprung up from the couch like she was slapped and walked up to their bedroom.

In June, we left her at our house to watch our animals while we drove from KS to WA on vacation. Because I lived in KS, I also told all my neighbors I was leaving and told them to watch out for anything weird, including her son. I reminded her of the rule I had, her oldest son is not allowed in my home, and I gave her instructions on how to feed my dogs.

I had three dogs, schnauzer, Labor-doodle, and Great Dane. Small, medium, and large. Half scoop of food for small, one scoop for medium, two scoops for large in the morning, Great Dane gets fed alone outside. We get to WA, and I get a call from my neighbor, ‘Hey, I thought you were joking when you said to watch out for a strange young man, but there seems to be one there with some of his buddies since last night.’ This I sorted out quickly, he was just there for a day or two… uuuggg. Video games were missing, kids toys, yeah I was not happy. Then a couple of days later, as I am camping at Mt. Rainier, I get another call from a neighbor letting me know that another neighbor had taken one of her dogs to the vet.

Come to find out, she had been feeding the dogs as wrong as possible. She was feeding them all outside at the same time. Her dogs and my dogs together in the back yard. She was giving the little dog 2 scoops, the medium dog one scoop, and the Great Dane…half a scoop of food. After a couple of days of this nonsense, my Great Dane had enough and took a bite of one of her dogs, almost ripping its head off. Emergency surgery was needed to save its life, and my neighbor put the bill on her credit card… Yeah, I paid that too. (Come to find out, the vet had recommended euthanasia, and this was what was agreed on when my neighbor busted out the credit card, once the card came out it turned to emergency surgery). I loved living in KS, because of my neighbors, you do not get that anywhere else.

Also, because she was feeding them all at the same time, she was also leaving them all in the yard together, and her sheltie knocked up my schnauzer, this created a b&stard breed of dogs that were… special. We gave all the puppies away for a $50 donation towards medical bills.

December rolls around, and I put the boot on her a*s and told her now is the time to move the *** out. She moved into some apartments a block down the street.

My son spent the night at her place where the only thing he ate all night was… popcorn. Every day at dinner time, she would waddle her a*s down the block, bring her dogs and kid and just help herself to dinner. Until I just snapped one day. I was already on edge from a disagreement over a fence repair that was needed from another neighbor, and my dog had caught her ear on a barb of said fence. So I was trying to stop the bleeding in my living room when she barges in for dinner releasing her dogs into my house.

‘Get the *** out of my house, from now on, you call before you come over don’t just show up, you are not welcome. Get your sh*tty dogs and leave now.’

‘Uhhh, you don’t have to be rude’ she snips.

‘I have not started to be rude, waddle you’re a*s on home, that’s rude.’

She never came back with me around. And I was much happier.” David Christensen

That was the last one. Do you have a story that could make the worst roommate ever list? Hopefully, it’s one you can look back on and laugh about now.

*The caste system is a social hierarchy in which people are divided by the jobs that they do. The lower you are on this hierarchy, the more isolated you get from society. 

All images in this post are courtesy Pixabay.