A Tool and His Trash
Two years ago, as a singer looking for a new band, I accepted an opportunity to join one two provinces away from me. The drummer of this band, whom we will call B, offered to be my roommate. I had wanted to stay in my hometown to work and save up money before coming, but being impatient to get things with the band rolling, he offered to cover the rent and the bills for the first couple of months until I got adjusted to the new city and had a new job. He failed to mention that his brother J, whom I’ve never met before, would be moving in with us. I trusted his judgement that we would all get along, which I soon realized was a huge mistake. J was uneducated, yet had many rants that he would repeat with little provocation about subjects he had little to no knowledge about and would often state his ill-informed opinions as fact. He was also a gym junkie, prone to outbursts of roid-rage.
B was never at the house, opting to stay at his girlfriend’s place, only coming home to do laundry once a week. J seemed unaware of the arrangement B had made with me about covering bills and constantly harassed me about money, starting on the second day after moving in. I shortly got a job and paid B back for my portion and the harassment ceased. I told him I wouldn’t split the cost of furniture, saying that it made more sense for us each to purchase different pieces, that way there would be no arguments as to who owns what down the road when we cease to be roommates. He told me that was a stupid idea, but proceeded to go to Ikea and just buy it all himself and would occasionally make comments about how I “never paid him back” for it.
I didn’t drive, but J owned a truck, so it was expected that he should take the recyclable items to the recycling centre (there was no pick-up service for this at the time), and he would let bags just sit in the kitchen for months, which made the whole house stink like rotten milk. He would never take the garbage out and I got tired of being the only one to do it, so I just stopped and that piled up as well, until an entire corner of the kitchen was taken over by garbage bags.The house we were renting was a strict non-smoking place, but he still smoked cigars, but did so beside the stove with the fan on. He would have friends over to drink all night on weeknights, blasting terrible hip hop music and smoking cigars with the very loud overhead fan on till about 2 or 3 am, even after I had complained to him that he was keeping me awake and I needed to be up very early for work on weekday mornings.
He would constantly threaten to kick me out if I complained about anything and acted as if he were the “man of the house” simply because only his name was on the lease. When a cousin of his needed a place to stay, he told me I was no longer welcome to live there. That cousin ended up flaking out on him, and I was told “you can still stay here.” Being short on cash and having no other prospects for new roomies, I stayed. Shortly after I noticed that instead of his cheap Ikea butterknives, he was using my expensive cutlery to “hot knife” (a mode of smoking weed, by sticking knives under a hot element on a stove, and pressing a chunk of weed between them, and inhaling the smoke as it burns), thus ruining them. He also had scratched up an expensive copper bottom frying pan by using a fork as a cooking utensil, which I had warned him not to do because it would ruin the Teflon coating. When I confronted him with this he went into roid-rage mode and started saying that because I didnt pay him for furniture, I deserved to have my things ruined. He kicked me out on the spot, and I had to move my things out that very night, despite having paid rent for the month. I moved back to my hometown and have never looked back.
This is one of the scariest posts I’ve read on here. I’m glad you made it out unscathed. But congrats on standing your ground. I know that must have been tough.
Hah so much to say here.
Are you still in the band?
No surprise that the drummer ended up staying with his girlfriend. Band members typically find a girl to leech off. Was this your first band?
Lastly, show some commitment: if you’re gonna be the lousy roommate that comes up with ideas for everyone to buy their own furniture (duplicate pieces FTL), think you can dump the trash on someone else because “you don’t drive” (how’d you get to work in your new province?)…then don’t try to do one nice thing (buying expensive cutlery) and expect the roommate to not sabotage it.
I think that the idea of “everyone buy their own furniture” was a completely reasonable one for the very reason the OP cited
Yeah, how’s the band?
I agree with OP & Emily about the furniture situation. I was in a predicament like that last fall (in a story I actually just submitted here). It’s better to buy the furniture separately because then you know exactly what will go with you when someone moves out.
(I’m the OP), the band is still without a singer, 2 years later. I’m not in contact with them any more, so I have no idea if the lack of vocalist is by choice or simply due to not being able to find anyone good enough.
The “everyone buy individual pieces of furniture” idea was supposed to be coordinated. We were to take a trip to ikea together, and ring up different pieces on different bills. We’d all be present, so no duplicate pieces would have been purchased. But like I said, he just went to Ikea by himself on a whim and bought it all without consulting anyone.
I worked as an office clerk, not owning a vehicle had no impact on my ability to find/maintain employment.
The most hilarious thing about this is, every one of my friends who ever met “J” would use the word “tool” to describe him… and then whoever at MVWR titled this used the word as well
Er, meant to say “without a singer, ONE year later”. I can count, I swear! lol
TheRestOfTheStory……What?
@Laura, I bet he wore Ed Hardy, didn’t he?
No one bikes, walks or takes public transit! That’s just crazy! And obviously when one of you moved out, you should have sawed the jointly bought furniture in half! There’s something you’re not telling us!
This situation sounds like it really blew. At least you weren’t stuck in the lease I guess.
@Andrew lol no, other than going to the gym, he NEVER went anywhere, was content to just smoke cigars under the LOUD-ASS stove vent all night, or play video games, so all I ever saw him in were pajama pants… the SAME PAIR always, which is kinda gross.
I sympathize that this was a tough situation, but you let yourself be walked on. I don’t know how Canadian landlord/tenant laws differ from US laws, but here you can’t just be kicked out with no recourse – unless you let it happen. I highly suggest you read up on some of the relevant legalities so next time you’re rooming with someone who turns out to be less than ideal, you’ll be prepared.
@Laura, I’m kind of disappointed in the lack of Ed Hardy, too be honest. There’s never an excuse for it but it makes me happy knowing there are tools out there who wear it.
Wendy, she stated that she wasn’t on the lease, so it’s much harder to invoke tenant rights in that kind of situation.
@Wendy, My name was not on the lease, and i would pay him my portion of the rent in cash, as the landlord had prepaid checks from J. I had no proof that i paid anything. Besides that, i really didnt want to live in fear of my things being tossed on the lawn or locks being changed every time i left the house. Sure, there would be reprocussions for such an action, but that doesnt make the experience any less of an inconvenience
Ugh sound horrible. I swear if I can help it I will never have a roommate.
yeech….kind of funny in some ways….reminded me of when my sister and I did hot knives with hash years ago!
Why in the world would you purposely wallow in your own garbage just to be passive aggressive! And, in a house full of crappy, cheap (yet surprisingly functional) IKEA furniture, with a guy that clearly doesn’t care about possessions, why did you let him use an “expensive copper bottom pan”? Said IKEA has perfectly usable (yet oh so throwawayable) pots and pans for pennies on the loony. It’s like telling a three year old to “mind the Hummel figures dear, they’re fragile” only to go apeshit on the toddler when one breaks.
I got in the habit of just staying in my room as much as possible, so I didn’t have to look at the garbage too much. Like I said, I got tired of being the only one doing it. Considering HE spent all his time in the kitchen, I’m surprised he could stand the smell and didn’t just break down and do it already.
I didnt go out and purchase expensive kitchenware to contribute to the household, I simply had a box of kitchen things from my previous living arrangement, which were good as new because my old roomies were way more respectful and awesome. I thought if I were hiding my pots and pans, only bringing them out when I was using them, he’d notice and probably have something to say about it, and then I’d have to explain to the neanderthal why I would feel the need to hoard things away from him. PLUS, I assumed that grown adults would just respect each others things, and could grasp the simple concept of “sharp metal on teflon = BAD”
He did have cheap pans, not sure where he got them, but the first time I used them, the black coating bubbled and chipped off of the surface and all over my food, as if they had been spray painted or something. So my nicer pans were a necessity. As much as I hated my roomie, I wouldnt want him dead from eating whatever the hell coated the cheap pans
Not to mention… what the hell is with all the “why did you, why didnt you, you should have” comments all over all these stories? The purpose of this site is entertaining stories of shitty old room mates. If we had done all the things you think everyone else should have done (because you know so much better), there wouldnt BE a story to contribute, and this site and all its stories wouldnt exist. Geez.
We tend to agree
Adults should be expected to behave like adults, and not have all these excuses made for them, like if you didn’t like it you could “just move out” (like that’s so convenient) or you could just stop caring about hygiene or whatever. Why is it always up to everyone else to accommodate these overgrown babies?
Lol
While this roommate sounds like an ass, you could have paid him back for some of the pieces of furniture and those pieces would be what you’d keep. Instead you just suggested something but never made any attempt to follow through. I can see how that’s annoying.
Why would I pay for furniture I didn’t get to pick out? We were supposed to all go together, then we could have discussed and compromised and found furniture we all liked and then bought pieces separately that would go well together. It’s not that I didnt “follow through”, its that it was too late… furniture was bought, and he expected me to just pay for something I didnt agree upon.
Yeah, you shouldn’t be held responsible for paying for something you didn’t ask for to begin with.