My Very Worst Roommate actually was the roomie of a friend of mine. Considering I was a part of the worst time to transpire, I figured I’d submit. My friend S was living in a college apartment with three other roommates. They all got along reasonably well at first but it did not take long to realize one of the roommates, we’ll call her J, had quite a drinking problem. She was known to cook some pretty peculiar things up in the kitchen and one of the other roommates, C had become a bit upset when J had continuously used metal on her brand new Teflon pots and pans. This left them scratched and ruined so she had asked J to pay in order to replace them. This created some hostility between the two, especially as they shared a room together.

A few nights later it was Kerry/Bush election night and I was at S’s watching coverage on TV. C was gone for the evening at her boyfriend’s. J came home from dinner and drinks and was obviously extremely drunk. She began to rant and rave about how upset she was that Bush was probably going to win and declared that she was going to call her dad. We abruptly unplugged the phone without her noticing and she attempted to call several times insisting that the phone was broken. She intermittently seemed to believe she was on the other line with someone and continued on her tirade while stopping occasionally to hit the phone violently screaming that it was a piece of shit.

When she finally gave this up she went into her room and we all hoped she was headed to bed. Shortly after we heard a loud banging and S went to check on her. She had managed to kick a giant hole in the wall and when S confronted her she looked at with shock and proclaimed, “Holy moly, S! There’s a hole in my wall. How the hell did that get there?!” She marched into the kitchen and began to yell how C was a bitch and how she didn’t think she should have to pay to replace the pots and pans she’d ruined. She grabbed these pots and pans and began throwing them around their bedroom until the handle broke off of one. J admitted she was beginning to feel a bit unwell from her night of binge drinking. She then went to C’s bed and screamed “This is what I think of this stupid bitch!” and intentionally vomited all over her sheets and comforter. We looked on in horror and begged her to stop.

Shortly after she got a phone call from a friend saying that an old friend of hers from home had passed away. This sent J into a crying spell and she insisted she needed to get into the shower. She was in there for quite a while and just as we thought we might have to bust in to make sure she was alright she emerged in her towel. She went straight for C’s comforter and took it to the bathroom sink. She said she felt sorry she had thrown up all over it and proceeded to try to clean it in the tiny sink. This accomplished nothing and instead just soaked the already dirty, disgusting comforter. S managed to get it away from her and we put it outside.

J was ready for bed by this point but insisted she couldn’t stay in her room due to the smell. S decided to keep an eye on her for the night as she slept on the floor of the living room. S woke up to J dry heaving and then spitting in her shoes. C was very upset when she came home to see her comforter hanging outside covered in vomit. The school removed J from the apartment after that and a couple years later I learned she moved back home after having a baby.

JA seemed very kind and bubbly when we initially met and toured her duplex. She was younger than me, but I wasn’t a bastion of maturity at age 20, so that seemed fine. I moved in on April Fool’s Day. The first night, she had extremely loud sex with someone I assumed was her boyfriend. Our bedrooms were adjacent, so I went to the living room, where I could still hear her shrieks of pleasure.

The next morning, I was awoken by her ex-boyfriend screaming at JA and her current partner: “ARE YOU FUCKING HIM!?!?! IS IT BETTER?!?!?” He was so loud that everyone on the cul-de-sac came out to watch the show. Quickly, the current partner jumped in his car and peeled off. The ex stuck around. JA and the ex had significantly quieter sex that day, so I took it as a gain for me.

I came to realize that none of JA’s friends had their own place. At all hours, a minimum of four teenagers sat in the living room, smoking and selling pot, getting drunk, and generally causing a ruckus. I don’t have a problem with a little drinking, but I had recently turned 21, and even though I never bought them alcohol, I was afraid I’d be arrested if the cops came around. I explained to JA that I needed my sleep, and I really needed everyone to keep it quiet after midnight on the weekdays. JA obliged by moving out, but continuing to pay her half of the rent.

I felt guilty, as it hadn’t been my intention to drive her out of the house. Then, about a week later, I came home to a junkie sitting on the couch. He was visibly dirty, and I thought he had tried to rob the house, and was waiting to kill me after he realized I had nothing of value.

“Hey man, what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Oh dude, JA totally said it was cool for me to live here.”

I called JA, and she explained that he had recently gotten clean, and needed some help. I wasn’t too pleased, but since JA paid her half of the rent, I felt that I couldn’t complain. The junkie was a nightmare. He stole my coca butter, which I saw sitting on his bed. He took my toothpaste. He invited his NA friends over to listen to doo-wop and reminiscence about their drug days. And he constantly brought home girls, so I still had to listen to loud sex.

When the lease was up, I ran out of there.

College was a fantastic time in my life, but it certainly didn’t start off that way. Firstly, my mother contrived to stick me into an all-male dorm under some silly notion that I wouldn’t get into trouble. Truth be told, guys who live in coed dorms tend to be a lot more civilized than their animal counterparts in all-male dorms–but I guess that’s water under the bridge at this point.

Secondly, I had not one, not two, but THREE roommates, in what they called a “quad” (which was basically a slightly larger room–nowhere NEAR the same amount of square footage per person). Granted, I was a total nerd and a basket case (from never having to share personal living space as I grew up), but these guys were assholes, too. The nerd blood was in the water on day one–and these guys clearly relished in making my life miserable.

One of the aggravating factors was that I resisted partying with my roommates, which they correctly interpreted as a snub. They were able to get back at me, though. One night I got totally smashed with my friends, and paid the price in the hall bathroom (in these dorms, there was only one large shared bathroom per hall). The bathroom was a locker-room type setup, with benches in front of the showers. Anyway, after my stomach was sufficiently emptied, I stumbled to one of the benches and passed out. My next memory was my three roommates standing over me with the exact same smile on their faces. One of them finally spoke:

“Hey, do you realize some dude’s naked, hairy ass was pressed on that bench? Your face is right up on it, dude!”

I passed out again, and I remember thinking “he has a point.”

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.

I am unfortunately living with MVWR until June when his lease is up.

I bought my condo last year and looked online for a roommate. I am recently divorced and managed to start my life over as an independent single woman. I’m proud of my house and have made it a nice, cozy home. Well, I found this guy and had pity for him because he was getting divorced and moving out of his ex’s house. What he didn’t tell me before moving in was that he had a DUI, no car, no job, and was waiting for his lawyer to complete a car accident settlement. He’d lost his health insurance, so instead of paying cash for meds for his back pain, he drank up to a case of beer a day, followed by shots, while checking Facebook from my couch. This would end in loud, late-night mournful sing-a-longs with his laptop.

One night he was so drunk  that he told me he wanted to “puke scotch all over my tits” and another night he “accidentally” took a muscle relaxer after a day of drinking. He ended up baking a tomato on a cookie sheet and putting water to boil in a casserole dish on the stove. He’d managed to fall asleep with his hand down the garbage disposal before I told him the kitchen was closed. Another day I got a text that said, “If you see a young girl in the house when you get home, don’t freak out – her boyfriend beat her up and she needs a place to stay.” (Oh, no problem! Not freaking out!) That girl stayed for a week and a half.

Last weekend, I came home after being away, and the whole place smelled like there’d been a tire fire. I cleaned all day and when I finally saw him I asked him about the smell and he said, “Oh, do you think it was the pot?” Now, I don’t care if people smoke marijuana, but he signed a lease that said absolutely no illegal substances in my house.

I was nice enough to let him stay through to the end of the lease. What’s most shocking is that when I told him he absolutely had to be out the day his lease ended, he was genuinely surprised!

My Very Worst Roommate experience happened during my sophomore year in college. I was living in the dorms, and was randomly assigned to room with three people I didn’t know. Unfortunately, while they were all very nice, one of them was an alcoholic.

She was a freshman, but she still bought beer so she must have had a fake ID. Also, she would leave beer bottles (and once an enormous vodka jug) lying around our den, even though we kept telling her not to do so. At any time, the RAs could have looked in (or smelled) and told that there was someone drinking in the room, and they actually got a citation once.

She also brought her friends over, sometimes on weeknights when I had class in the morning, after they had all gone to bars or clubs and were drunk. Then they would drink more in her room until 3 or 4 in the morning. However, the worst thing that happened was one night at about 4:30 a.m., she and about five of her friends came back from a club drunk. They proceeded to drink more and woke me up by laughing really loudly.

I was about to go out and tell them to shut up for probably the third time that week, when a random guy I didn’t know BURST into my room, vomited all over the floor, and ran out. He them vomited into the toilet, loudly, for about five more minutes.

That’s not the worst part.

The next morning I went to brush my teeth and I only to realize (fortunately before I started brushing) that this random drunk guy had used my toothbrush and that it was covered in vomit.