My dorm roommate seemed like a good match for me. We had similar tastes in music and movies and sense of humor. We shared appliances (by that I mean she used mine) and she volunteered her wardrobe for borrowing. Then, slowly but surely, I noticed some cold shoulder tension. I don’t subscribe to the belief that it is better to live in silence than suffer an awkward, confrontational moment. My attributes don’t exactly fit-in in Southern California. I tried to be as nice as possible, but eventually it became unbearable. I talked to our suitemates and they weren’t forthcoming with any insight. I asked if they could join me in talking with her to help mediate the situation. They agreed, but when the time came, my suitemates were nowhere to be found. I discovered later that they thought it would be too uncomfortable so they warned her about it and fled.
I knew I needed to get it over with, so I asked her if we could talk. She proceeded with verbal diarrhea of all the things she hated about me. Apparently, she had hated me from the start. All the concessions she had said were fine, but me staying up late, the day my boyfriend had put his suitcase on her side of the room, every Advil she had ever given me, those weren’t fine. Also, she never took out the trash because she wanted to see how long it would take me to do so (I had my own trash can) and she had been placing pieces of paper on the floor to see if I would pick them up. She was offended that I had tried to participate in conversations when her boyfriend was over and she couldn’t stand that I ate fatty foods. Finally, came her complaint that I’m the person who answers honestly when asked, “Do I look fat in this?” She explained that you’re supposed to say “No” and then stroke their ego with a complement.
I was upset, mostly because I was realizing that I was not going to be able to patch it up with her, but I was trying to listen patiently. I fought back complaining about all of her annoying habits and simply asked why she had lied to me for so long. That was it. She exploded with anger at my accusing her of being a liar and starting screaming obscenities at me. Those were the last words we spoke to each other.
I met K in our first year at university. We were both doing the same subjects and, after a night out with her and her boyfriend, I quickly became close mates with her boyfriend’s friends. As such, I started seeing a lot more of her.
Cut to nine months later and I was dating a friend of her boyfriend. K, her boyfriend, myself and my boyfriend found a cheap house to share and all moved in together. K was very intense. She wanted to know where I was at all hours of the day–if I missed a class she would call me non-stop for an explanation. Then she started “Single White Femal-ing” me. She cut her very long blonde hair the same as mine – very short and dark. She’d “borrow” my clothes all the time. She’d mimic my accent.
Suddenly my boyfriend started avoiding home. We both had part-time jobs to supplement university and he would get home much earlier than me. He started going to the local pub and waiting there until I finished work. When I asked him why, he confessed that he found her “creepy.” I stupidly thought he just didn’t like her.
Then one night I came home late, and was standing outside our house on my phone so as not to disturb my roommates. As I stood outside I watched through the front windows as K came downstairs to find my boyfriend asleep on the couch, sat next to him, slowly crept closer to him, rested her head on his shoulder, put her arm around him, and eventually lay right on top of him, as he snored through the whole thing. When I went inside and asked what she was doing, she pretended to have just woken up and claimed they fell asleep watching TV together–despite the fact I watched the whole thing!
My boyfriend and I moved out a month later, after her she stepped up her campaign to “get” him. As a post script, after he and I split up she claimed she had cheated with him a few weeks previously. Sadly that lie ruined only her own relationship, and my ex, her ex and I remain very good friends to this day.
K moved into my 4-bedroom condo less than a month ago and is being evicted this month.
On Saturday, I came home at 6:30 p.m. from a friend’s house and found 20 people in my house dancing to techno music. Each was high on either GHB, coke, MDMA, ketamine, or a combination. I was asked multiple times if I “needed something” as a tray of various white substances and pills was placed in front of me. I was a bit stressed and needed to get out of there. I escaped to the park with my my dog to process what I walked in on. After an hour, I walked back home as I needed to speak with a few clients in Taiwan. When I went to my room, I found a girl passed out in my bed. I walked downstairs to the closest muscular man and politely asked him to remove the girl from my room.
On this day, one of the other housemates, M was away, and another, R, was hiding in his bedroom from the craziness. At a loss of what to do, I do my work and lock the dog and cat in my room with me. I spoke to K around 9 p.m. when he told me that everyone was leaving. At 11 p.m., he told me the same thing. At 12, R invited me to go out with him while he advertises for a club. We returned home around 4:30 a.m. The party was still going. I found K and told him he must remove everyone from the house and that I’m not comfortable with this many drugs and people (whom he just met the previous night) in the house. He told me that because he did the dishes that I should let him have his friends over. I attributed his apathetic response to him being high. Everyone left shortly thereafter to go to another party. A few days later, I explained why I was upset. He told me that his party was no different than when R and I have our three mutual friends over for cocktails as he ‘didn’t know them’. He didn’t understand why it was a bit dangerous to a woman to have 20 strangers drugged out in her home,
I found out later that that this party at my place was the after-party from their partying the previous night, They had gone straight from the after hours place to the rooftop of my condo building then into our home.
My Very Worst Roommate (we’ll call him “R”) was actually my best friend all through high school. I always thought he’d be a blast to live with. After school, he moved to the city and I stayed in town and got a killer place to myself. One night, R called me up and told me how miserable he was living in the city and how he wanted to move back to our town. So, I drove to the city, picked him up and he moved in. Now R needed a job. I told him I could get him some food and he didn’t have to worry about rent until he got a job.
It wasn’t long after he moved in that I started to see his disgusting habits–not using plates, sandwiches on the couch, dripping toothpaste in the living room without realizing it, never picking up anything, you name it! Finally, about three months in, I helped get him a job at the same store I worked at and he finally started paying rent. Things have been pretty fun so far.
However, R had a friend. A homeless friend. This kid finished high school and has couch surfed for four years. R started having this homeless kid over and letting him sleep on the couch. Night after night after night! They would trash the place every night, and every morning I would be woken up before my alarm by them doing some fantasy role playing wizard stuff. Oh yeah, this kid stunk up the whole place!
So enough is enough, right? I put my foot down and said this kid can only come over once in a while but never stay the night. Now R thought this was like rollover minutes. Homeless kid wouldn’t be there for a while, and then three days straight. R would find every loophole to have this kid over, not to mention buy him food every night. I don’t hate homeless people, but this kid could have easily got a job. He didn’t because people like R would enable him to coast through life on handouts. The problem pretty much tore apart our friendship for a while. R thought I was the bad guy. So R moved in with our other friend. Of course, the same thing happened and homeless kid is now banned from that place too. Get a job dude!
I worked at a summer camp where the staff worked and lived together during the summers. I had to share close quarters with my roommate who was very sweet, but socially unaware. D slept on the top bunk and whenever she would get up in the mornings, instead of climbing down the ladder, she would just jump off the bed. And she is not graceful, so I would constantly be awoken to a sound similar to that of an elephant falling to the floor. For some unknown reason, she did not bring her cell phone or an alarm clock to the camp, so she began asking to use my phone as an alarm clock. Letting her borrow my cell phone was okay at first, until she began to take advantage of my generosity and kept taking my cell phone from my bedside table whenever she wanted. She kept it in bed with her when she needed it and then neglected to put it back.
D could not contain her belongings. Her hair products and makeup were strewn all over the sink counter, she would leave her fallen hair in the sink and she spilled globs of liquid concealer in the sink and wouldn’t clean it. She would literally kick her shoes off in the air and wherever they landed is where she left them. I would keep finding her clothes, especially her dirty socks, under my bed and mixed in with my clothes. While packing my things to go home, I found an armful of her clothes mixed in with mine and even after trying desperately to separate our belongings, I ended up finding one of her socks in my suitcase days later. It is still on my shelf as a memory of the most unaware roommate I have ever had.
Despite the protestations of my friends, I decided to room with a notoriously moody friend of mine who I’d known since high school. At first her lack of boundaries and burgeoning alcoholism were merely annoying, but they steadily progressed to the point where most debates or conversations devolved into yelling matches. For a year, I endured temper tantrums, constant scolding for drinking all her booze (never touched it), never paying my share of bills (untrue), never cleaning the house (she’d come home two hours before me and begin cleaning – never leaving me any chores to do), and more. I knew things were going down fast when I came home to discover her attempting suicide. Instead of flipping out, or calling the cops (I should have, in retrospect), I calmly nursed her back from the edge. When I tried to speak with her about it later, and tell her how it had affected me, she blew up at me instead, calling me an awful friend who was never there for her.
A few weeks later, it all came to a head when she decided to throw another enormous temper tantrum — this time because I wouldn’t share my dinner with her (she had already helped herself to a large portion at this point). Having taken all the abuse I was willing to take, I threw my plate of spaghetti on the table, and told her to have as much as she pleased, because clearly it meant so much to her. She had been saying some deliberately hurtful things to me during this whole episode, while I just stood there and took it. We then argued for an hour about whether or not she had even said those things. I decided to leave the apartment before I lost my temper. Instead of letting me leave, she physically blocked my exit, even grabbing onto me to force me to stay and talk things out. As I was standing in the doorway trying to leave, she grabbed onto my messenger bag and the doorjamb in a death-grip, and refused to let go. So I did the only thing I could. I used my basic judo knowledge to try breaking her grip. It worked, but she wasn’t expecting it — she careened into the doorjamb and stumbled over.
At that point, I ran out the apartment foyer and didn’t look back. Even though she had assaulted me, I had to wait a full month for her to move out. Apparently, she had told the landlord that she was moving in with her boyfriend. The one who had just dumped her the month previous. Not wanting to make things any more difficult, I just went along with the ruse. This was a situation that didn’t need any more escalation. After that, she had the gall to ask me if I’d help her move. I told her I would, and then flaked out on purpose. Fifteen years of friendship down the tubes because she wouldn’t put down the fucking whiskey. Thankfully, my new roommate is absolutely awesome.
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.
My Very Worst college Roommate was S, a spoiled brat who had all her bills paid by daddy and tortured us with her sense of entitlement, pathological need for attention, and lack of respect for others. I have not met anyone in the three decades since college who had a more self-absorbed attitude than this miserable little snot.
She was engaged to a guy she let live rent-free with us – without asking us first, of course. Although he was using water and electricity, leaving his razor stubble in our bathroom sink, and invading our privacy, she would come unglued if we did something she didn’t like, such as turn on the heat when it got cold or come in late from bar-hopping.
We had a front-row seat to their baby-talk at all hours, which was gross because even though her boyfriend slightly resembled Tom Selleck, he had a high-pitched voice like Porky Pig. It was not a good combination. He was so whipped, he would get up with her at 6 a.m. on weekends to watch Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies, which were her idea of relationship nirvana.
The worst thing was, she wouldn’t let me lock the bathroom door if I planned to take a shower because her bladder was small and she might have to use the toilet. Once I was taking a bath and the beeyotch came in and took a quick picture of me—mascara streaming down my face, looking like a drowned rat. She showed it off at her next family get-together, although she lied and said she didn’t.
The whole world revolved around her—when her hometown church burned down, she screamed bloody murder because now she couldn’t get married there as planned. After months of her BS, my other roommate moved out in disgust. I suffered on, but was ecstatic when the idiot Princess moved out the next term. She complained to daddy about my “bad attitude,” and he paid for her to live in a co$tly condo.
A was randomly assigned to me in my freshman year of college, and I could tell on the very first day of school that we were not going to be best buddies.
As I began to settle into a group of friends, MVWR usually tagged along with us wherever we went, generally alienating everyone in the group with backhanded insults. For example, my friend K mentioned that she was considering rushing a sorority, and A asked, “So you can be, like, a dumb sorority girl?” in a valley girl voice. She also asked awkward questions, like whether we thought sex outside of missionary position was sinful. Whenever someone said “fuck you” to anyone, she would respond with, “Right here, on the table?”
One night about a week into school we hung out and drank in a guy friend’s dorm room. I left early, and A ended up staying the night. When A arrived the next morning, she looked as though she’d been strangled. Her neck was covered in about 30 hickeys, which she had received from our friend’s roommate, who’d been passed out drunk when I left. The guy later reported that at some point during the make-out session she told him, “I think I’ve just been bitten by a vampire!”
All of her weirdness might have been tolerable, had it not been for the smell in our room. A loved to eat salmon-flavored cream cheese, which she would spread on crackers with the same crusty knife that she never washed. The knife would sit out on a cardboard box that she used as a table, which was also covered in crusty salmon dip and made the whole room smell like fish. The smell was so bad that my friends refused to hang out in my room at all. To counter the stench, I went out and bought some air freshener.
One day, I came into the room and was met with a particularly pungent odor, so I sprayed some air freshener, and A poked her head out of her loft bed and looked at me like I’d just killed a puppy. About 20 minutes later she posted a note on Facebook titled “Air Freshener,” which never specifically mentioned me, but discussed how she generally felt unwanted (I’ll admit that by this point I had stopped inviting her to hang out with my friends and me), and friends posted comments saying things like “Don’t let her get to you!” To this day I have no idea why my spraying air freshener was so offensive to her. It was a very long rest of the year after that incident.
When I taught overseas, I shared a tiny flat with a couple of other single, American women. They were all super nice, but one older woman from Texas was more to deal with than we expected. First of all, she was overweight, and always came up to our fifth floor huffing and puffing. We were worried for her health. She also wore hearing aids that she would take out in the evening. I guess they were uncomfortable. To make up for her hearing loss she would play her music super loud.
We all shared one bathroom and had to keep it unlocked, so when she knocked on the door she couldn’t hear me say, “Just a minute.” She thus constantly bursting in while I was on the toilet or just stepping out of the shower. She also suffered from sleep apnea and had a loud contraption with motor that she put on every night to help her breath. It kept the rest of us up. She also never “got” the fact that the oven temperature was in Celsius not Fahrenheit so she would be constantly burning things.
She was so nice that we didn’t want to make her feel bad, but I was relieved when she moved out.
