My parents bought a duplex when I was 19. The plan was for me to live on one side with roommates and my parents and siblings to live on the other side. “Kat”  moved in September 1. From the start she was difficult to live with. She didn’t work a regular job or go to school with any regularity so she kept odd hours. As I was a full-time student AND worked a full time job, her schedule was fairly disruptive. She would make messes all over the house and refused to clean up after herself. Shortly after she moved in, my younger brother woke up in the middle of the night to find Kat standing at the foot of his bed, watching him sleep. She wouldn’t leave. The next day, he had a lock on his door.

Often, I would go into the bathroom to find everything from the bathroom cabinets had been dumped into the sink and the sink filled with water. Other times, I would find the bathtub full of her things like CDs, clothes, makeup and magazines, topped up with water.

There were several times that she was brought home by police because they found her passed out in public places. Just before Christmas she locked herself in her room and wailed loudly, day and night. This went on for about a week.

It all came to a head on Christmas day. As I ran to my half of the duplex to get some gifts, I realized that my front door was open. There was Kat, laying on the front steps in -30 C weather, wearing just her pajamas — no coat or shoes, with her head propping the door open. We called the paramedics and she was taken to the hospital. She was kept in the psych ward for three months, during which time I had to pack her things.

When I walked into her room, the mess was unimaginable. There was a 2 inch thick carpet of old makeup, broken CDs, dried flowers and assorted other debris covering every square inch of the ground, and mashed into the wall-to-wall carpet. It took at least a month to clean and that room was never the same again. I learned over time that she had been destroying sections of my books and CD liner notes while she lived with me and just put them back on the shelves like nothing had happened.

I thought it was all over, but years later, she threatened to remove the cat we had adopted together unless I gave her a large sum of money (her name was on the contact info for the cat microchip). And one day I received a phone call from the police calling me in for questioning over an allegation that I was in possession of stolen property. Turns out she was convinced that everything I owned actually belonged to her. The police officer told me he didn’t believe a word she was saying, but had to question me.

I’ve had to block her on all social media sites, as eight years later, she was still sending me harassing messages. I’ve also had to warn all my friends, as she befriends those who don’t know of her and wrangles invitations to social gatherings, only to make a scene when she arrives. It’s now been almost 13 years since that ill-fated four months and I think I’ve finally erased all evidence of her from my life. I do still have the cat.

There are three of us living in a small three bedroom, two bath house. “Andy” is great, quiet and rarely here. “B” as in “Bitch” is horrible, loud, and NEVER leaves. The lease is in her name, therefore we have to pay her the rent, so it’s “her house.” She has the biggest bedroom but she’s never in it. And she is the loudest person I’ve ever met. She watches TV in the living room with the volume so high you can’t hear anything else. And she talks nonstop … to the TV and to herself. Then suddenly, she’ll be talking to me, and gets mad if I don’t answer. It doesn’t matter if I’m studying or on the phone or just trying to relax and read. She just keeps talking. I really just want one day with her not there.

She doesn’t work and she’s only taking three classes. Did I mention she is always there? In the living room running her loud mouth. She starts jobs in the house, then quits half way. Dishwasher half emptied. Clothes left in the washer for days, until Andy or I need to use it. Then she grunts and groans over having to take clothes out.

Her crap is starting a slow migration out of her room into the common areas. And the bathrooms are awful. Andy and I are in rooms at one end of the house, sharing a bathroom (kept nearly spotless between the two of us). “B” has her own. But she insists that we can’t lock our rooms because then she can’t get into the “house” bathroom. I walked her laundry down to that end of the house one day and her bathroom was filthy. So no, mine is off limits.

But the thing that bugs me the most – stupidly enough – is the Sunday morning newspaper. Every Sunday, she goes out as soon as the paper hits the yard. Then she sits in the living room and reads it as loud as she can. “Oh my GOD, did you know (insert some random foreign news report)” or “Wow, such and such store has a great sale this week”. Just a lovely way to wake up at 6 a.m. on my one day to sleep in. A few weeks ago, she got livid because I got up and shut my door to block her out. She actually threw a tantrum in the hallway calling me rude and immature. But the semester ends in a few months. Andy is transferring to another school. And I’ve got a new place to go starting this summer. So bye bye ‘B’.

My Very Worst Roommate was my co-worker. Before we lived together, we got along great going out to movies, having lunch, trading books. She even gave me my cat as a birthday gift. When I lost my job, I needed a place to stay so she let me crash with her and her husband for a few weeks and it was fine. I got a job, an apartment and moved myself and the cat out. We still kept in touch. Last year she called me in tears because her husband was divorcing her and taking the house. Remembering that she had helped me once I told her to move in with me until she was back on her feet. Stupid!

At first it was cool. She bought groceries and helped with the electric bill. That lasted about a month and a half. Then she fell down the stairs and had a nasty concussion. That’s when it all started to change. She stopped going to work always calling in sick. They finally fired her. Her unemployment was denied. Her divorce was finalized and she pretended it hadn’t happened. She didn’t have money for anything so she sat around in her pajamas all day long watching television and eating ice cream (that I bought). Her weight ballooned. She went from a size 10 to a 24 in a few months. She would eat anything she found in the cupboard. I’m a baker so I would find her eating bags of powdered sugar and rolls of fondant. I would make salads and low calorie dishes for my supper and ask if she wanted any. Nope. Not hungry. Because she had eaten an entire tub of marzipan and a jar of icing.

She didn’t even help clean the house. Her hygiene got worse as her depression became more obvious. She stopped flushing the toilet, refused to bathe because it’s not like she was going anywhere and would put dirty dishes in the sink but wouldn’t unload the dishwasher. She wouldn’t take the garbage out. She never scooped her cats litter box (which she had in her closet) so he used my cats always-clean box. And her clothes smelled NASTY. She developed a chronic yeast infection and got a nasty funk. It went all over the house. If she was on the couch I would have to Febreeze the hell out of it after she left the room. The cats wouldn’t go near the bathroom after she’d been in it. They would wrinkle their noses and try to hold their breath when the walked past. Her funk was so bad that my friends would make comments when they came over to the house. But she insisted it was because of the cats. My mom told me it was sad that with cats in the house the thing you most smelled was unhygienic human being. I put those wallflower plugins all over the house to deal with her smell and they didn’t even cut it. It was nasty.

Her room was atrocious. Besides the smell of her, there was the smell of rotting food and something else I couldn’t identify until she mentioned that if she didn’t want to miss a show on TV she’d just urinate in her garbage can. She read an article about composting human waste and thought it was fascinating, so she was doing that in her room. I was flummoxed by that bit of information.

One day she brought me a used sanitary napkin that was covered in a nasty yellowish gunge along with the pinkish tinge and asked me if this was normal for a woman in their 30s or should she go see a doctor? I know I would if I saw that come out of my body. She never bothered to go, though. Who shows used sanitary supplies to a roommate? It was beyond disgusting.And I am not prudish at all, but there are some things that you just don’t do.

One day I was cleaning out the fridge and tossing bad food and she got upset with me for pitching things that could still be eaten. Example – she took a jar of moldy mayo and said it was fine. She made a sandwich with that crap. I almost gagged when I watched her eat that.

She decided to find herself a new man and started posting on dating sites, but nobody was contacting her so she got upset and would cry for hours. Then she decided that my boyfriend was a good guy so why not try to sleep with him? She stripped naked in front of him while I was out getting pizza for dinner and asked him to marry her. He choked on his beer and texted me to come home ASAP. When I got back he was in the driveway gagging and told me what happened. I confronted her and she told me that if she was in love with him I should let him decide which one of us he wanted. I told her to get out and get out NOW. I had told her to leave twice before but she wouldn’t. She refused this time, too, so I called her mom. Her parents took her to a homeless shelter and made an appointment for her to get into therapy. That didn’t work out too good for her. She decided to take what little money she had left and sue me for wrongful eviction and defamation of character.

Now she’s living with another former co-worker and they claim to be BFF’s and get along great. Let’s see for how long. But at least I got her cat.

I knew there was going to be a problem the day I moved into my dorm. My new roommate’s mother spent the whole time glaring at my boyfriend and his family as they moved me in (I’m already considered part of their family. My boyfriend has been warned, if we split, they’re keeping custody of me J ) which made me feel defensive.

I’m on some very strong medications due to a medical condition. This includes pain meds. As soon as my roommate (let’s call her “Tia”) found out, her mother told me, quite haughtily, that her family didn’t believe in ingesting anything that alters your body chemistry (as she sucked down some latte-cappuccino-something).

When everyone left, Tia started asking a million questions. She wasn’t’ asking about the condition. All she seemed to care about was the meds. I knew what was coming. Tia wanted to try one and she was really put off when I refused to give her any. ’Cause you know since we were such close friends and all (I’d known her for maybe four hours at that point). This went on for weeks. Just at random times Tia would ask for a pill. She pulled a muscle. She had cramps (three weeks in a row, damn). At first I would remind her that it’s illegal and that I actually need them to, you know, function — then I stopped giving any reason, I would just say no.

Then mid-November I got a call from my doctor’s office. The nurse had intercepted a call from my roommate who had become “increasingly concerned” about my “drug use”. The nurse wanted to warn me about the call. And to laugh because apparently I was taking “something like 30 or 40 a day” which would go through my month’s prescription in a few days. (I’ll put in that no I wasn’t, I don’t get how anyone could take that many. And my nurse knows me.) Thank God she warned me because I walked into my room and smack into the middle of an intervention. Tia and three of her little sycophants wanted to help “bring me to the light of the Lord” and away from the demon drugs. At that point, I lost it. I asked her about all the nights she came in reeking of alcohol or cigarettes. About the night she came in with the strange guy who smelled like marijuana. I didn’t care that she was cutting loose out from under mommy’s thumb, but I couldn’t stand the holier than thou pretense. Unfortunately (or not) I had not realized she’d included her mother in this little show via webcam. And mommy heard it all, including her daughter’s tantrum that everything would be OK if I would just let her try one pill.

Mommy was there the next day. On the bright side, this little fiasco convinced my boyfriend’s parents that dorm life was not the best place for me. And that moving into the house with him, his brother, and their three friends would not be the end of the world. It’s been over a year, and though it’s crowded, the toilet seats are always up, and not one of them can do a load of laundry without ruining something, it’s still better than the dorm.

My Very Worst Roommate story actually began just after I lived with someone who formerly held the title of MVWR. We’ll talk about her first. She was one of my best friends growing up and after I married, an unfortunate chain of events led her to need a place to stay. My husband and I offered her the use of our second bedroom which we had been using as a computer room.

She wasn’t too terrible a housemate, actually. She was clean, and she paid rent on time and helped buy food and household items. The problem was that she was recently single and worked as a stripper so she would meet random guys and bring them home without notice. It was quite a shock to discover strange half-naked men in the bathroom as I was trying to get ready for work in the morning.

We also only had one car between us. MY car. However, since my hubby and I worked during the day, and she worked at night we often agreed to let her use the car. This wasn’t too much a problem until one day when hubby and I were getting ready to leave for work and we realized she had never come home the night before. Which meant my car hadn’t either. We both had to call in as we had no other conveyance. When she arrived near to noon she apologized, saying that she had gotten too drunk to drive and had gone home with a friend. She never used the car again.

Getting drunk at work turned into a semi-regular thing for her and more than once we were called to come pick her up because she was too intoxicated to work. She was so drunk she would have to be carried to our car by a bouncer then my hubby would have to carry her upstairs to her bedroom.

After about a year she was set to regain custody of her two small children. Unfortunately, she could not afford to live alone and our place was too small for all five of us. So, when our lease was up we moved into a much larger apartment. Everyone understood that the increase in rent meant hubby and I could not afford the place on our own, but that didn’t stop her from moving out with her new boyfriend only a month after we moved in. It was just as well. She was a neglectful mother and would often take off without saying anything and assume we’d babysit for hours on end. Even when she was there she didn’t supervise her kids at all and they would run wild.

She cleared out her stuff while we were away one day. In the process she also took off with my hairdryer, curling iron, clothes iron, some movies and a Winnie the Pooh piggy bank that hubby had given me while we were dating. We didn’t talk to her again for nearly a year after that.

Now onto MVWR. She was my brother’s girlfriend. Claiming abuse, she moved out of her parents’ home when she was seventeen and somehow my brother convinced my parents to let her stay in my old room in their house. I guess things got a little tense after a few months and my brother begged us to take her in. As we had the room and were having trouble paying rent after the former roomie bailed on us, we agreed.

What a mistake! Not only was that girl a complete slob, she was also a moron who completely lacked common sense. To top it off, she also had pretty serious emotional issues. The slightest things would set her off and she would scream and throw whatever was within reach (usually at my brother who was her customary emotional punching bag). Unfortunately, a lot of the time the things she threw were OUR dishes and glasses, which would break. My brother sometimes got her to make amends, but more often he replaced the things himself. I would have kicked her out had he not moved in to “keep an eyeon her”.

She used our things and would frequently lose or break them. She locked herself out at least twice a month and would break in through a window (which cost us half of our deposit when she destroyed a screen and damaged a wall.) She would spill food and knock over glasses daily and then leave it there for us or my brother to clean. She would tell offensive racist jokes in front of our bi-racial friends.

When I became pregnant she didn’t curtail her marijuana use, and would try and talk to me with lit joints in her hand. More than once she even blew smoke toward me!

We had cats who, for whatever reason, liked to pee on the stove. The electric burners were oddly proportioned so burner covers were inefficient. However, we had these cheap ceramic plates that when flipped over were the perfect size to cover the burners and protect them from the cats. One day she went into the kitchen to cook something. She moved one of the plates and turned on the burner. Unfortunately, she turned on the wrong burner. A minute later we heard a horrible crashing sound. The plate that was on the red-hot burner had exploded sending super hot ceramic all over the kitchen. It exploded with such force that pieces of plate were embedded in the walls and hot ceramic had literally melted into the vinyl floor (there went the other half of the deposit).

In the end we fought all of the time over her thoughtlessness and she and my brother moved out a month before the lease was up … into the same complex we were preparing to move into down the street! Ah, well. She was a much better neighbor than she was a roommate!

My husband and I actually just kicked out our Very Worst Roommate.  My husband is in the Marine Corps and when one of his coworkers was having trouble in the barracks, we happily offered her our spare room. I considered her a good friend and I still do. It was actually her boyfriend (now fiance) who was the worst roommate. I’ll call her Kawaii and him Oni (as in demon). We knew that he would be staying over frequently and didn’t have a problem with it, as at the time he was also considered a friend and was having trouble with the barracks, as well. It was all his own doing, but we decided to try to help him, anyway. Skipping the abuse of his anxiety meds and his little annoying habits, I’ll get right to the final straw:  His ‘demonic possession’.

My husband and I are Pagan, as are Kawaii and Oni, and after confirming that they were not allergic to the ingredients, my husband went through the house with a delicious smelling smudge stick of cedar, lavender and sage. Oni asked me what the smudge stick was and I explained that it’s used to cleanse negative energy. This is where the proverbial shit hit the fan. He started breathing weird, saying the smell was harsh and painful. The smell was actually very subtle, but just in case my husband went ahead and put out the smudge stick and opened all the doors and windows. This is when Oni went upstairs and ‘collapsed’. Funny how he managed to make it all the way up the stairs and collapse on the nice soft bed…But nevertheless, my husband took him to the military hospital about 45 minutes away to be safe, while Kawaii and I stayed at the apartment.

An hour later, I get a call from my husband, who sounds pissed. Apparently, on the way to the hospital Oni began speaking in a demonic voice ‘in another language’ and cackling like a nutter. After a few minutes of attempting to talk to him, my husband finally snapped and shouted that the moment they got to the hospital, he was going to tell them Oni was crazy and have him put in the psych ward. Magically, Oni ‘came back out’ at that moment and began to sob and beg my husband not to do this, pleading that he had been possessed by a demon a few years ago. My husband was pissed, but because he had nothing other than hearsay to plead a case, he let it go. Oni was released from the hospital the next day after the doctors found nothing wrong with him.

Upon his return, my husband and I informed him that he was no longer allowed to stay with us, seeing as he was batshit crazy. We explained it in a nicer way, of course. He had the gall to act pissed, but left nevertheless. Though we’re still dealing with the situation (This involves my husband’s requirement to report Oni’s psycho-ness, catching Oni in his lie after a fake exorcism, and so much more bs), Oni has never stepped foot in our apartment again. Unfortunately, he took Kawaii with him when he left, but that’s a totally different story.

In undergrad, I lived with two guys, “Al and “Kevin” and one other girl, “Sherry.” The guys were fine, but Sherry was not.

Sherry started a chore wheel. She did chores for two weeks. The guys lasted a bit longer, but after a short while, I was the only one cleaning the bathroom regularly while the rest of the apartment was rarely cleaned.

My boyfriend of three years and I were desperate for a place after he was made redundant and we couldn’t afford our old place, so we decided to go flatting. We moved into a very nice house with another couple also in their twenties. Let’s call them Joe and Sally. There was no bond, and that suited us really well.

We were so broke that we were barely managing to eat, and Joe and Sally seemed like really nice, friendly people. Everything was fine for the first two months and we had some good laughs together. Then one evening, we got home to find all the tea towels taken out of the kitchen and strewn all over the stairs. I asked Sally about it and all she said was “Oh, I threw them there” before darting back into her room. So I picked them up and put them back in the drawers, but they didn’t stay there, they disappeared overnight.

Also, upon moving in we paid a week’s rent in advance, so you can imagine my surprise when Sally cornered me in the hallway and demanded that we pay her another $200 “to cover my bank account”. She handed me a typed letter that she’d signed stating that if we didn’t pay up within two days she would throw us out, and we were so desperate to keep a roof over our heads that, like idiots, we scraped the money together and paid her.

A week later, Sally and Joe mysteriously disappeared just like the tea towels. They took the TV with them and were gone for three weeks. When they got home, it was clear they stopped speaking to us. They started spending all their time lurking in their room with the curtains and door shut periodically giggling, stopped using the lounge and kitchen and started living on Burger King. My favourite scarf disappeared from the lounge and I saw Sally leaving the house with it wrapped around her slimy neck.

They used up our entire month’s Internet within five days and then refused to pay their share of the bill, borrowed our towels and returned them by throwing them, unwashed, on the bathroom floor and stopped doing any housework. They refused to take their turn putting out the rubbish, so my boyfriend and I ended up having to clean a month’s worth of stinking rubbish, complete with maggots, from the outdoor bin. We couldn’t get even a simple “hello” out of them! Then they took all the pots and pans including ours out of the cupboard and dropped them round to Sally’s mother’s house. We confronted them and they at first denied it. It took two weeks to get our pots back.

Sally always smelled like an old woman and her vocalizations were limited to huffing, sighing, giggling and coughing. I would hear her get home and stomp down the stairs every night and go “siiiigh” and she was a shower hog too. It was impossible to get a hot shower on weekends. She was also fond of taking my wet washing out of the machine and dumping it on the floor so she could use the machine. When the lease ended on the house, they only gave us a week’s notice that they were leaving. In fact, we found out from the landlord and had to secure a new place within the week. They left behind a huge mess of fast food containers for us to clean up and I am thankful that we no longer have to live with those psychos.

My Very Worst Roommate was a woman I shared a room with in a hospital. After the birth of my daughter, I was very sick, confined to bed with a nurse stationed in my room watching me for a day or two. The drug they had me on for the birth could have bought on convulsions and I was weak from blood loss. I wasn’t able to even feed my baby, so she was tube fed. When I gained strength I was able to keep her by my bed so I didn’t need to make the trek down to the nursery.

The nurses told me she had the cutest, quietest little cry as did the other patients whom I had gotten to know over the two weeks I was there. A day or so after I gave birth, a woman was moved in to the other bed in the room. She had two older children – a boy and a girl. The  boy constantly yelled, ran and jumped around the room, and because the hospital was old, the floors were bouncy and I felt every jump vibrate through my bed and every yell vibrated through my head. The girl was quiet.  In fact, if she made any sound at all she was yelled at by both parents to shut up. If she moved she was yelled at for moving. Their visitors were loud as well.

When everyone left and we were left alone in the room, my daughter started to cry to be fed. From the other side of the curtain, the woman instantly started complaining about how loud my daughter was and that she couldn’t relax. She complained about every little noise, so I had no choice but to take my daughter down to the nursery. By that time I was able to spend a little time out of bed. I asked the nurses to come and get me when she next needed feeding and not to bring her to my room.

Later that night they came to get me and I went down there to feed her, change her nappy and then sat just holding her for while. While I was there the other woman’s baby woke and they got her to come down.  She had the baby on the changing table to change its nappy and was fumbling around like she didn’t know how. When a midwife took pity and offered to help, the woman literally hightailed it out of there as if she couldn’t get away quick enough, leaving the midwife to change the nappy and to bottle feed the baby.

I was looking on in amazement. After she left, the midwife turned to me and said that it’s a bit of shock for these first time mothers. She was shocked when I told her it was her third child. This hospital usually only had expectant mothers with complications, usually unless there were major complications with the birth. Mothers and newborns were transferred to another hospital. The woman’s baby had a problem at birth so they kept her an extra day before sending her on. I was so glad to see them gone. The next daywhen my baby was checked over and given the all clear to go home, the matron wanted me to go to the other hospital, but all I could think about was having to share with that woman again and begged her to let me go home.

Writing this has reminded me of another thing that happened while I was there. While I was getting a progress examination checking my baby’s heartbeat and positioning before birth, the privacy curtains were closed around my bed when a man walked in. The nurse pulled up the blanket to cover me and asked him what he wanted. He said he was looking for his wife. The nurse told him that his wife’s bed was on the other side of the walkway. He said he knew that, but she wasn’t there. The nurse told him to go and wait for his wife at her bed, finally getting him to leave. He walked away, but  left the curtain open a touch. The nurse went on with the examination for a moment before we both realized he was perving in. She asked him what he wanted this time. He said that he was looking for his wife again. Using a firm, tone she told him that his wife wasn’t in here and to go away.