E seemed like a good candidate to fill the space vacated by a roommate who had left to move in with her boyfriend. She was interesting, had her own social life and was gainfully employed so my roommate L and I invited her to take the third bedroom in our three-bedroom Brooklyn apartment. It didn’t take long to realize that this only child was completely unprepared to take care of her own mess.
- The first strike was her getting sick on our living room floor (from drinking) and using my bath towel to clean it up. She couldn’t understand why I was furious.
- The second strike was her daily breakfast where she would spill half of her cereal on the floor and refuse to sweep it up so that we would step on crunchy cereal every morning.
- The third strike was her frequent unflushed bathroom visits (featuring some fairly large bowel movements). When I politely suggested she be more aware of this, she said she would but “could I please be more careful of leaving lights on?” Yeah, cause that is totally the same thing.
I should have known how things would turn out when my roommate stole my alarm clock soon after moving in.
I awoke one morning with a terrible headache and a familiar, unpleasant smell in the air. After going back to sleep for a while I realized that the smell was that of the hallway in my high school where they chemistry labs were housed. It was the smell of the gas from the bunson burners. I then walked out into the kitchen where I promptly tripped over my roommate who, having apparently stumbled into the apartment snot-slinging drunk the night before, had turned on the stove just prior to passing out, face down on the kitchen floor. I immediately turned off the stove, opened every window and kicked my roommate in the leg for good measure while I imagined a number of Backdraft-like scenarios in which I flip a light switch and then I’m consumed by a fucking fireball.
On another occasion my roommate stumbled in at around 3 a.m. with an unfortunate house guest who was about to find herself the victim of the sexual inadequacies of a mustache-bearing, tight pants-wearing, malnourished hipster with a substance abuse problem. They clamored about in next room to a soundtrack of “I’m 17 and I hate my dad” music for another half an hour or so. Just as I thought the worst was over, my roommate kicked my door open, flipped the light on and then jumped in horror to discover that I, the other inhabitant of this house, was in fact home and in my bed. He said to me “Oh, uh, sorry. I was just, uh… I was gonna’ ask you. Do you have a condom?” I paused for a moment to consider the implications of allowing this man-child to possibly pass on his unholy seed to the hapless slut in the next room and then replied “No.” I did not,in fact, have any condoms.
He never paid for his half of the bills, likely because every dollar he earned was either spent on the copious amounts of cocaine he snorted on a regular basis and/or used as a vehicle for said cocaine on its journey to his nasal cavity. After he didn’t pay his half the rent for three months, my landlord decided he would terminate the lease and start a new one in my name in a studio that had just opened up across the hall. I guess that’s a happy ending.
As a nice little parting gift, my roommate left his copy of Titty Fuckers 7 in my DVD player.
My sister and I moved in with a mutual friend my sophomore year at college. A month into the fall semester, he adopted a cat, who would spray all over clothes that he began to leave in the hallway which led to my room. Since he didn’t pick up said clothes, the smell became so unbearable that I began to sleep on my sister’s bedroom floor. He would then wear some of those clothes; I never saw him do laundry the entire time we lived with him and his white shirts turned dark yellow. I would, at times, come home to find that he was using the bathroom next to my bedroom – with the door wide open – and would get mad that I came home at that time and slam the door closed. Also, it wouldn’t be unusual to come home at 3pm and find him sound asleep on the living room futon, butt naked with his (hairy) backside facing the front door.
We refused to do dishes that we did not eat off of, therefore his would stack up in the sink and even began to pile next to the sink (since it could hold no more). Out of the goodness of her heart, my sister decided one day to do them for him. Once she got to the bottom of the stack, she found dishes with mold growing in the advanced stages. Another time, I told my sister that she didn’t have to clean his dishes; he came out and started arguing with me and we got into a shouting match over his dirtiness. He would leave food in the refrigerator for months, and once they were covered in mold, my sister would throw them away. For some reason, he did not like this and would broadcast his displeasure toward her. Toward the end of the school year, he allowed two of his friends to “move in.” Of course, they did not help with the rent and contributed to an already high utility bill (without paying that, as well).
Since the lease we signed expired soon, we decided that we were going to move somewhere else since the other two “unofficial” roommates were not contractually obliged to pay rent. One day, the landlord came to fix the water heater that had been broken for about a month; he had not told us this and we had to go elsewhere to take warm showers. After seeing the clothes plus the two extra roommates he allowed to stay over for free and the disaster of a kitchen, he was evicted.
I was forced to get my first roommate after moving to New Orleans for grad school because of the crazy post-Katrina prices. Older than me, she was also starting law school and had the same breed of dog as I did, and they got along well. She was shy and reserved when we met and I thought would make a great roommate. First weekend there, she and her long-distance boyfriend invited me to the French Quarter to “show me around.” Except they got so plastered that when I woke up the next morning, I found the apartment filled with purple vomit. Even worse, there were feces smeared on the toilet and wall. I tried to keep an open mind and never mentioned it, but things got steadily worse. Her dog was sweet, but completely untrained. He’d get into my room and destroy my shoes, clothing and things (total damage: over $400) and she’d just shrug. One time he got out and I spent 40 minutes dodging cars trying to catch him. She never made other friends and would sulk if I tried to talk to other people on campus. As time went on, she kept more and more to herself, leaving the common area as soon as we walked in.
She would cry to me how her parents only loved her sister and had long, loud, drawn-out fights with her boyfriend. As long as they were on good terms, she’d be jovial and friendly. But as they began breaking up on a weekly basis, she became downright rude. As living there became unbearable, my now-husband and I bought a place with the plan to move in after exams. But a week before exams, she told me, “I think it’s a given, but your boyfriend can’t come over during exams.” I was dumbstruck. I didn’t trust myself not to explode so I wrote her a long email explaining that I was an adult and paid as much rent as she did and she had no right to tell me who I can see and when. Next thing I know, I see her leaving our landlord’s place in tears. I don’t know what she told him but he called me seconds later, screaming and threatening me and actually forbidding him from coming over to our place! I was shaking when I hung up. At home, I heard her crying hysterically on the phone, telling them that I threatened to kill her dog. We ended up overpaying several thousand dollars just so we could move into our new house early and I was moving boxes a day before my first exam instead of studying.
Things started well enough in our cheap, crappy apartment, but after about a month things got lame when my roommate started staying at her boyfriend’s place. You’d think having the place to myself would be great, but it was a little annoying. She’d come back long enough to tear the hell out of kitchen, leave her wet clothes in the washer, the kitchen table piled with her “crafts” of smelly glue-y yarn things, etc. I’d have to call her mobile repeatedly, leave messages to remind her rent was due on the first and demand she clean up her messes. I succeeded some of the time, but mostly she just ignored me, so I just gave up after a couple months of paying late rent fees and started looking for a new place.
The guys next door were pothead losers and usually kept to themselves. One time, when I walked by their door, they all came out, cat-calling, saying things like how I “sounded like a good time in the sack.” I was confused and pretty freaked out, so I reported them to the landlord. My roommate just happened to be there while I was talking to my mom on the phone about it and she started laughing and admitted that whenever she knew I wouldn’t be home, she and her boyfriend would come and have really loud sex in the living room and they liked how the guys could hear and would pound on the common wall. My roommate and her boyfriend were too chickenshit to do at his apartment, so they did it at mine. And then she had the gall to tell me that they always had sex on my cool rug.
The final straw was after the last time her mom came to visit late at night. Her mom was an alcoholic who would drink until she’d fight with her boyfriend, then walk miles to our place, barefoot and try to break into her daughter’s bedroom window to spend the night. This time she tried to break in I was asleep and I freaked out just like I did the other times, because I was all by myself and thought that I was going to be raped and murdered. After the initial panic let off and realized it was her again, I opened the window and let her into her daughter’s bedroom.
As I was walking back to my room to sleep, I could hear her complain about the state and smell of her daughter’s room and then she let out a blood-curdling scream. Apparently, the ceiling was leaking and instead of telling anyone about it, my roommate just stuck a large stockpot on her bed to catch the drip and left. By the time her mother threw herself on her bed, a week or so had passed. The pot was full of freezing water that dumped over and soaked the entire room and sobered her mom right up. Because of the damages, I never got my deposit back (I paid the entire deposit because she couldn’t afford it), but I was able to move out after the year lease expired.
I had My Very Worst Roommate my first semester at college. We got along well enough for the first semester, until she got “sick.” This meant that she rarely went to class and eventually stopped going completely. She slept all day long and stayed up all night lying in her bed playing Dungeons and Dragons online, talking on a headset to her boyfriend in Norway, whom she had met through the game. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper so I didn’t mind the talking, really. What bothered me was the smell. She only showered once a week and it was directly before a martial arts practice, the only thing she got out of bed for. Our two suite mates, who shared our living room and bathroom, quickly became aware of the situation because the smell of urine began to take over the suite. I sprayed her bedding and clothes with Febreze when she was out because I was embarrassed for her but didn’t say anything because I was naïve enough to still believe that she was actually sick. The smell eventually even reached our suite mates’ bedroom, which she herself had never once set foot in.
She also gave her mother my cell phone number, so when her mom wanted to talk to her, she would call me at any time of the day or night if my roommate didn’t pick up her phone. Eventually I told her that her daughter never went to class because she was always sick. Her own mother told me she wasn’t sick and that she wouldn’t be coming back next year since she wasn’t going to pay for her daughter to fail everything. My roommates and I, and presumably her parents, tried talking to her politely about her problems, but she insisted there was nothing wrong. She got the hint that we didn’t like her, but had no idea why. In the end she managed to convince her mother to keep paying for college and she returned for at least one more year though I no longer lived with her. We had the same major so inevitably ran into each other afterwards, but she always turned around and walked away when she saw me. I almost feel bad for her, until I remember what it was like to live with her.
My first roommate in college was a nightmare. We lived in an overflow single (a room that better fit one person but was assigned to two people). She seemed like a nice enough girl. At the beginning of the semester, she told me that she had a boyfriend but that he wouldn’t stay over more than one weekend a month. I told her he was welcome to stay over more but she should check with me if it was going to be more than the one weekend she promised. I thought this was a reasonable compromise.
Soon things started to change. She would sign on to the internet at midnight with her modem (this was 10 years ago) blasting at full volume. Her boyfriend either stayed over every night or would get there at 8 p.m. and not leave till 2 a.m. He might as well have stayed all night. She stopped going to class and spent her time doing her boyfriend’s schoolwork. Around finals, I asked that he not spend that week in our room so that I could have a quiet space for studying and she asked what my problem was with him. She didn’t understand why I wanted some peace and quiet.
I put in for a roommate change after that point. Come springtime, I found out that she had failed her fall classes (since she hadn’t done any of her own homework and stopped going to class) and had to leave after her first semester.
I currently live with My Very Worst Roommate. C and her boyfriend have been living with us for six months. When they moved in, C was pregnant. In the months that followed, my husband and I did everything we could to help them with anything they needed. My husband was the only one employed so I cooked, cleaned and took care of everything. Once I found employment I scaled back on housework, opting to take care of things that would be harder to handle once I was working again.
C started doing less around the house while complaining that it was disgusting, forgetting that the mess she said she cleaned was the one she was whining about. She labels every item of food she buys, but still uses what we buy and doesn’t replace any of it. With my schedule I have to be awake at 6.30 a.m., so both my husband and I have asked her to be quiet when I’m asleep. A few nights ago she started yelling at her boyfriend and slamming doors. This lasted five hours, until 4.30 a.m. I yelled at her to be quiet so I could get a couple hours of sleep before I had to leave. She proceeded to yell at me for half an hour about every imagined slight.
As of this morning I have been accused of stealing her mail, being disrespectful and my animals being the reason her three-month old baby can’t learn to crawl. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I was 19 and living in Arkansas in a great three bedroom duplex. My two other roommates moved out, one graduated and the other was getting married, so I had my best friend move in and another friend, who ended being My Very Worst Roommate. The duplex was laid out so that there was the living room in the front, followed by a kitchen, first room (MVWR’s), bathroom, bedroom, and my bedroom with bathroom in it.
The first night MVWR moves in, he gets into a phone argument with his girlfriend and smashes his phone to bits on the wall. He proceeds to quit his job, and can’t pay rent. That’s fine, it happens, whatever… Well one day, after my girlfriend and I finished getting it on in my room (my bed touched my other roommate’s wall), we were watching TV when my best friend walked in.
“I got home my door was locked and [MVWR] was inside,” he said.
It turned out MVWR was looking at porn on my best friend’s computer while listening to us having sex.
I wanted to keep this short but there was some more details, including him not paying full rent and dropping out of a lease two months into the one-year agreement, plus small claims court, and a threatening voicemail from him…
After being someone else’s Very Worst Roommate (by not paying the utilities when I was supposed to, and her boyfriend hating me), my very best roommate and good friend moved out. I could afford the rent and utilities (now turned on again) on my own and lived alone for a while.
Then, I learnt that a guy I knew in the neighborhood was losing his place because his roommates were leaving for a different state. Since I had the extra room, I told him we could give the roommate thing a shot. He arrived on the first night with a duffel bag containing all his belongings and a jug of cheap wine.
He planned to sleep on the couch until he could move his bed. That first night, after I went to sleep, he apparently drank half the jug of wine, and apparently peed it all out onto my couch.The next morning, he was gone without a word, leaving his half jug of wine behind. He called a few days later to make plans to come back. I told him it wasn’t going to work out and not to bother coming back. He never mentioned the couch or his jug of wine, which I gave to my next roommate as a welcome gift.
