Unfortunately, MVWR, W, was a good friend of mine who later turned into a she-wolverine. We had decided somewhere in the middle of sophomore year that we wanted to rent an apartment together the next year.

Bad idea. We had lived together before as dormmates before, and at that time she had been the messiest person I’ve ever encountered. Clothes on the floor, desk strewn with make-up products and papers. However, for whatever reason, she became a neat-freak with the new apartment. Maybe because her boyfriend, Z, also decided to live there.

Anyway, I began dating my now-boyfriend around that time, and one day I showed her a ring that he had bought me from Tiffany’s. Her response was that I looked like a gold digger and that he and I wouldn’t last. And then the next day she proudly showed me the Tiffany’s earrings she made Z buy.

I think some sort of twisted jealousy is what started her VWR behavior. I began staying over at my boyfriend’s days on end (partly because Z said that my boyfriend had to pay rent if he wanted to stay over). One day, W decided to yell at me regarding how messy I was, which was confusing for me because I hardly even lived there enough anymore to be able to cause a mess.

Later on, my best friend A visited and we stayed at the apartment. W refused to be in the same room with us, and when she had to be, she refused to acknowledge either of us. We were out one day when I received a text from Z asking what “this brown shit was on the wall” was. Bewildered, I said I didn’t know anything about it. When we returned, Z immediately pointed to this huge splash of brown on the wall, asking if I had thrown something at my boyfriend in a fit of rage. I was dumbfounded. “Well, I don’t know what it is,” he continued, “I’ve tried examining it. Just clean it up.” After he left the room I realized what it was and that he was trying to set me up somehow. I left, pissed, texting him: “It’s hot chocolate. Clean it up yourself.”

Needless to say, things only got worse as they moved the TV and other public space items into their own room. The last straw was when they blasted anime at 7:30 a.m. when A and I were still asleep; I think they had just left it on in their room and left. After A went back to Chicago, I moved out. The cherry on top was that they wouldn’t even let me find my own subletter who could move in immediately, saying that they had a friend who wanted to move in. Two months later. And I would have to pay the rent for those two months. And if I tried to get my own subletter, they would throw his or her stuff out on the street.

My year of MVWR hell started on day one. I was living in a 3/2 apartment during my sophomore year of college when my friend D from high school and his friend J came to live with me. J was cool, but D was an absolute nightmare. Prior to moving in, he asked if he could bring his one cat and I agreed. On D-day, he arrived with his one cat, the cat’s sister, and her six kittens! And to make things worse, he already owed me over $400 for rent, utilities etc. After arriving, the bastard only had $80 to his name, proceeded to give me 40 of it, and then nonchalantly informed me that he needed the rest for food. This is definitely one of the times I regret not consulting the magic 8-ball!

Things only got worse. The eight cats he kept coralled in his room decided to use his dirty pile of clothes and streek-marked tighty-whiteys on the floor as their litter box and filled the entire apartment with the stench of cat piss and crap. He then spent the next two weeks sitting on his “6″ watching my TV (when he was supposed to be looking for a job of course). He eventually managed to secure work at Taco Bell for five days before he decided that it just wasn’t for him. Meanwhile, his debt to me kept rising and the eight mangy cats succesfuly shredded not only the newly shampooed carpet throughout the apartment, but the covers to my brand-new tower speakers.

Why keep this idiot around one might ask? Well, if J and I could have afforded the place ourselves, we would have given him the boot. D’s answer to this financial dilemma (with him now earning a wopping $400 per month in 1999 at a local playhouse) was to invite his friend M to live with us too, thereby splitting expenses four ways instead of three (because this of course was the only way D’s sorry butt could afford to live there). M, of course, slept on the pull-out couch and promptly awoke at the first bit of sunlight to loudly play final fantasy on MY tv and my now-shredded speakers on most mornings. One time when I made the “mistake” of asking D for his portion of the bills, he actually threw his wallet directly at my face. He blamed low blood sugar. But wait, there’s more!

M’s cat got fleas somehow, and of course M could not afford the medicine as he was in penury. I ended up buying the poor cat’s medicine, and the fleas soon dissapeared. I added the cost of the medicine to his debt which I now realized will probably never be repaid. My requests to D and M (J pretty much stayed in his room all day eating ice cream and playing video games) to help out with the horrendous mess they created daily around the apartment went unanswered, effectively turning me into their maid. D also slept nude (don’t ask me how I found out!). And then his dad and brother visited for Thanksgiving!

His dad bought stuff for the meal and they cooked and ate it while I was at work (leaving nothing for me of course). I came home from work to find his dad standing in front of the TV–like he was expecting poltergeists to fly out at him at any moment. My new DVD player was definitely to his liking. Fast forward one week: I sat in the living room watching TV and J had returned to place his pizza in the pre-heated oven. The oven door openned, and I heard a loud, “Ooohhhh…Myyyyyyy…God!” As I looked over at the oven, I could plainly see the massive chia-pet that used to be a turkey still sitting in the oven. If it had been left in the oven any longer, it might have sprouted legs and impregnated us all with its spores as we slept. Or maybe it already had…

Things from that point onward pretty much remained as crappy as they had been since he moved in. Towards the end of the year, D decided to move out (as in, decided to leave before I could tell him his sorry debt-ridden butt had to go), taking M with him. Watching him leave was bittersweet. I was relieved to see him go, but was annoyed knowing that I would never see the $500 he owed me. The douche tried to “friend” me on Facebook awhile back. He probably needed some money or worse, a place to stay.

I have had several bad roommates over the years, but K definitely took the cake. K was a co-worker who seemed warm and friendly at first, so when she mentioned that she was looking for a roommate, I decided to move in with her.

As these stories go, everything seemed to be going great at first. But it wasn’t long before I started noticing things going missing from my room. At first it was just hair clips and makeup  and then it was clothes. (Never mind that K was about half my size!) After the fifth or sixth thing disappeared, I finally went snooping in her room and found all of my things stuffed under her bed. Like a fool, I said nothing. I just took back my things and started keeping my valuables hidden.

Shortly after I moved in, K broke up with her boyfriend and she started dating a new guy, our boss. I would come downstairs in the morning to Boss sitting in his underwear eating a bowl of cereal. Definitely awkward. Before long, their relationship started to cool, and while they continued to date off and on, K began seeing her ex-boyfriend again, and she took a job at another company.

Things got really weird one day when the boss pulled me aside at work to ask if I’ve heard any updates on how K was doing, and to ask if her mom had made it here from California in time. I had no idea what he was talking about, as I had just seen K a few hours earlier and she seemed fine. Boss then proceeded to berate me for being a terrible roommate. Totally confused, I asked him what on earth he was talking about. Apparently, K had told him that she had to have open heart surgery, and that she was going to be recovering for a while so she wouldn’t be able to see him. That’s when I had to sit Boss down and tell him the truth–K is a pathological liar, and that was her way of breaking things off.

In addition, she lied to her parents about taking classes (which they were paying for). She would try to keep up the charade by leaving and saying she was heading to class, only to come home a few hours later with an armload of new clothes from various stores. (I said she was a liar, not a good one!)

Eventually, I moved in with B, an old college friend and eventually my very BEST roommate. K’s cousin and a friend moved in to my old place with K. Because she was the only one officially on the lease, they would give her their checks for rent and utilities, and she was supposed to be paying the bills. About three months after they moved in, K moved to another state, and it was only a few weeks after that when the utilities were shut off and they received an eviction notice from the landlord. She had been pocketing their money and not paying the bills.

I have no idea what became of K, but I imagine that she is somewhere out there still scamming her way through life.

When I was 19, I let a friend of mine move into my studio apartment as she had nowhere to live and I was basically living with my boyfriend across the hall most of the time. Everything was fine at first.

Until, that is, she refused to pay her share of the rent, had loud sex with her boyfriend on my futon (once while I was showering over there, gross.) I went on vacation for a week and when I returned there was a pile of dirty, decaying dishes in the sink which she refused to clean. Her excuse was that since it was technically my apartment I should do the dishes. She finally moved out after a few months and I then discovered she had taken more than a few items of clothing with her.

When I confronted her about this, she flipped out, denying it and calling me crazy for even thinking to accuse her of something like that. Well, a week later she called me and said she “found” some of my clothes she must have taken by mistake when she moved out. I went over and discovered a pile of sweat pants, old tee shirts and just casual clothes. None of the nicer clothes were in the pile. Also, I found that she had taken a few pairs of thong underwear.

The best part was that I had an Armani shirt that I had cut the neck out of. She screamed at me that she had borrowed that shirt from another friend and that it wasn’t mine. I had never seen anyone else around with this shirt, nevermind that the neck was cut out! It was a nightmare and I don’t want to live with a roomate again after this.

Part II from yesterday’s post…

My Very, Very Worst Roommate was a girl I lived with for the next three years. (Why would I do this to myself, you ask? Because I’m a “nice person” and we were friends.) My second roommate, call her A, was a slob. I was not the neatest person my first year, but after the catastrophe that was B (yesterday’s story), I got clean. So, I’m a tidy person living with a slob. Not such a huge deal. Until you add the manipulative, passive-aggressive component, which made everything so much worse. I couldn’t even talk to her about trying to tidy up because she chalked it all up to her “terrible childhood” and the fact that she had Asperger’s, which she neglected to seek treatment for. Finally, once she had left bloody underwear out, left raw chicken on the counters for hours, “forgotten” to lock the door all semester and neglected to pay laundry money, I decided it was past time to ditch the friendship, and my other roommate, E–who is fabulous–agreed that it was time for A to find new housing. A drew it out for many weeks, but finally she was safely moved out and E and I were able to live in a clean, happy apartment. E and I expect to be friends for many years to come, but nothing can erase the terrible images that have been seared into my mind by the terrible roommates I’ve survived.

Which roommate do you think us is the Worst one?  Tell us below.