Cooking Up Trouble
In my senior year of college, my friends K and F, and I had a vacancy in our apartment that needed to be filled for our final semester. S appeared at first to be very pleasant and stable. She was very nice in conversation, as was her boyfriend who, she informed us, would be staying over quite a bit and we didn’t mind all that much. K and F were vegan and vegetarian, respectively, so it wasn’t all that big of a change for me to have S, another vegan, in the house. I separated all my meat and animal products onto one shelf of the fridge and everything was peachy. S was a fantastic cook and constantly made extra food that she then offered to us. Who could have asked for a more perfect roommate?
This is where the trouble began. I told everyone they could use my brand new cookware so long as they cleaned it afterward and didn’t wreck it. K and F had no problem doing this, but S, it seemed, had issues with cleaning up after herself. When she cooked, she left ingredients and crumbs strewn across all available counter space, as well as on the table where we sat to eat, and much of the floor too. After she was done cooking, she never cleaned up any of the mess she had made and never put away any of her expensive, organic ingredients, but made sure to tell us not to mess with those things, as they cost a lot of money and were hard to find in stores.
She made no attempt to wash cookware, particularly mine, onto which she had seared food or sauce and only upon being confronted did she make a halfhearted attempt at scrubbing (with a dry sponge without soap, because she didn’t “want to waste water†and she thought the soap we had bought was filled with “chemicals†and “toxinsâ€). This lasted about a week per time that we had to tell her. She ended up completely wrecking my brand-new griddle and several stainless steel pots and pans, all of which had been given to me as preemptive graduation gifts by my parents. When F finally approached her about all of this directly, S just shrugged and said, “I just don’t really like cleaning.â€
At one point, my boyfriend at the time, upon seeing our apartment, went into a cleaning frenzy and scrubbed down every surface in the kitchen. It took him three hours. We went to get groceries, which included some chicken breasts and ham, and put everything away in the fridge and cabinets before I took him out to a nice lunch. We returned, and to our surprise, we couldn’t find the chicken in the fridge. At the very back of the top shelf (where I kept my stuff), was a blue plastic bag with a Post-it note on it. Inside was the chicken. The Post-it note read, “Please cover up any meat you put in the fridge. I can’t stand looking at it. I know this is probably weird. Sorry. -S.†I asked K and F about it, both devoted to their dietary choices, and they both remarked that that was “really weird†and that they’d never heard of anyone asking something like that. Nevertheless, I covered all meat in the fridge for the rest of the semester so as to avoid getting into stupid fights.
As time went on, S became increasingly reclusive, verbally combative and messy. Every conversation became an opportunity for her to passive-aggressively lecture us on the evils of the internet, television, video games or any number of supposedly horrible chemicals that were in everything we used. She was holing up in her room along with all available glasses, bowls and silverware, which she refused to bring down or clean. At one point when she was away, I tiptoed my way into her room and around the half-eaten bowls of cereal and soup on the floor just to get a fork and a cup so I could eat my dinner. We later went back up as a group and took everything back downstairs and washed it.
By the end of the semester, her boyfriend was essentially a fifth roommate, despite both of them refusing to clean anything and being conveniently absent from the bi-weekly “clean the apartment†hour we had agreed to. Out of nowhere, they had what was apparently a very bad fight and broke up, and S decided she just needed to get out of town before the semester even ended. She grabbed her essentials and ran sobbing from the apartment to her car, leaving us to clean up everything else she had left behind so as not to get fined when our lease was up. But at least she was gone. The last I heard, another friend of mine was subletting from S and her boyfriend (they got back together), but under her apartment rules, there was absolutely no meat, no internet and no television allowed, even if my friend paid for it all herself. Several months later, she told my friend to “just get out†and forced her to move out with no forewarning or explanation.
by any chance do you live in Berkeley?
I totally understand not wanting to look at meat, guess that’s why she sought out a house where most people were veg. Otoh, if someone wants consideration from the people they share with they should be more considerate themselves, ie not leaving mess in communal areas or wrecking other people’s stuff. And the tv thing, gah, I can see not wanting to have to cough up for a license when you don’t watch the thing, but if the other person is going to pay then whatever.
This is an example of what happens when weak-minded people get too brainwashed by all the sky-is-falling paranoia spread by the Left.
She sounds like a charmer.
No internet, no TV, no video games=No fun.
Yes, those evil people on the Left. Damn them. Damn them to heck!
if i can’t have internet, i don’t want to be in your revolution
@oi – comedy. I am from Berkeley and am with you all the day
@Lisey – not sure where this took place but in the US people don’t need TV licenses
The worst roommates I have ever had, have all been Vegans. Every one of them. They all claimed to be the most open-minded type of people too, but they were really just intolerant dicks. Not to say that all Vegans are bad either (some of my best roommates were also vegans), but the bad far outweighs the good, IMO. My rule now is: No Vegan Roommates.
I’m vegetarian (and pregnant) and had to ask the ‘guy in the garage’ roommate to not leave uncovered raw meat in my cast iron pot in the fridge. I can’t wait till he leaves in Oct.
@Shannon – I took it that the meat the OP bought still covered by plastic wrap – I’d hope so anyway
Shannon – Completely understandable. Any raw, uncovered meat is begging to bacteria to grow. Ugh.
Wow, intense. I think in some people’s minds, if they do something nice for you, even if you didn’t ask for it, they expect you should give them a free pass for other things or “pay them back”…i.e. “I voluntarily offered these people food, so therefore they should either do the dishes for me or overlook the fact that I left them dirty.” This ignores the fact that people appreciate good deeds a lot more if the deed is not thought of by the giver as a deposit with repayment to take place in the future. I mean, if someone does something nice for me unexpectedly, I usually want to do something nice for them too, but it’s tacky to make payback an expectation.
I have also had a tough time living with save-the-world people, from the girl who was crazy about saving the environment yet cluttered up the living room with garbage bags of clothes she kept meaning to take to Goodwill for reuse but never did, to the girl who admonished me for not taking part in “Earth Hour” even though she never bothered to learn how to recycle in our district.
At first I was wondering if she maybe wrecked your pots sort of on purpose because they had “evil, chemical” nonstick coatings, but you said they were stainless steel. Just chalk it up to douchiness I guess…
As the person who submitted this story, I will make the following statements/clarifications:
1. I did not go to to Berkeley, but good guess!
2. The chicken was *freshly bought* several hours prior from a grocery store and still in its styrofoam tray and plastic wrap. I’m not stupid enough to leave raw meat sitting uncovered in the fridge; we cooked it for dinner the next day.
3. I have plenty of vegan and vegetarian friends, none of whom have been anything other than amazing, kind, and good-humored people (e.g. the two other roomies I had here). In fact, I think my vegetarian and vegan friends outnumber my omnivorous ones. It just happened that this particular roommate was fucking insane, absolutely inconsiderate, and a complete bitch to everyone.
4. I consider myself pretty liberal/left-wing, but I draw the line at believing in conspiracy theory bunk like SLS causing cancer and “toxins” being in everything that wasn’t farmed on a commune by trust-fund hippies who only believe in eating raw food and don’t ever wash themselves because of the body’s “natural balance of oils”. It’s one thing to be a leftie; it’s another thing entirely to be crazy. You’ll find plenty of the exact same conspiracy-theory-pseudo-naturalism bullshit on the far right too; it’s amazing how much ultra-left hippies resemble ultra-right evangelicals.
5. I wouldn’t have had any problem covering up meat in the fridge if she’s told me from the get-go that it made her uncomfortable; instead, she put a note on it preemptively placing herself as the victim in the whole situation, as if I’d purposefully been insensitive to her feelings (which I had no idea about because she’d never told me) and then proceeded to shove it to the very back of the fridge where it was hard to find. At first I thought it’d just been thrown out! And she never once mentioned this to me in person; her desire that I respect her supreme disgust for meat was entirely conveyed in ridiculously childish, passive-aggressive gestures like post-it notes and hiding food behind other food.
I’m also on the left and I love my tasty animals, yum yum. It seems to me that the “right” are more apt to buying into conspiracy theory BS. If it wasn’t created by jesus, it just isn’t right.
Rob– what was her rationalization for why television & internet are “evil”?
(Just curious about the theories that are making the rounds— I lead a sheltered life, surrounded by mostly sane people.)
If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s self-righteous vegans/vegatarians. I have no problem with normal, tolerant veggies and have lived with them before. As long as they tolerate and respect my meat eating tendencies, I can respect their desire to not consume meat. But when you get those totalrian nutso who think your evil spawn for eating the dead flesh of a cow, chicken or what have you, that just throws me off the dead end.
This isn’t even close to a left or right thing and anyone who would equate it as such must be fairly small minded as there are intolrant whackjobs on both sides of the spectrum and I equally dislike them all.
ha! i dunno Berkeley attracts those crazy types. At this point probably I should mention I am a vegetarian myself. I believe in what you choose to eat is none of my business (unless you choose me for dinner) or what I eat is none of yours. period. I am an adult I like to make my choices and I believe you’d want the same.
I will never understand how in countless roommate stories there are people leaving food/dirty dishes in their rooms to rot. That is so unbelievably disgusting. How could people do that?!?!!?!?!