Fifteen years ago, my boyfriend, T, and I decided to move in together to an apartment in the big city. To save on costs, we asked a mutual friend from the internet, L, to move into the two-bedroom apartment we had selected. We knew her as part of our social circle, but you don’t really get to know someone until you live with them, and we were wrong, wrong, wrong.

L was perennially short of money. All of the bills were in my name, except for cable, which was in hers. A few months into our lease, when the cable wasn’t working and she’d claimed that it was due to technical issues, I called and found out that it had been shut off due to non-payment. She borrowed my car without asking, several times, until I started sleeping with my keys. She ate our food and denied it.

When L lost her job in a grocery store deli, I was waiting tables at a restaurant where you have to wear pins with pithy sayings on them. I begged, and they hired my roommate immediately as a hostess. Around the same time, she started importing guys from the internet to “spend the night” in her room, and when they’d leave; she’d suddenly have enough money for rent. One time, L had a guest and chose not to go into work, or even to call in sick. I tried to make her excuses, but she was fired.

It was Superbowl Sunday, a very busy day, and I had to work a double shift that day. I was bone tired and dirty and hungry when I finally got home, and thinking with longing about sitting in the bathtub with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I knew it was in the freezer when I left home that morning, so I was sure that it was still there. No, she’d eaten it all and put the empty container back in the freezer.

Things were tense for months, and when she moved out while T and I were at a baseball game, we were mostly relieved. Unfortunately, she took all of my good pots and pans with her. She disappeared from our social circle, but a few years ago, I heard that she took her little habit of meeting men online and getting money for her “services” to a more professional level in her hometown.

My Very Worst Roommate is supposed to move out in three days. She was randomly assigned to me by the school. There are four of us in the apartment and she and I share a bedroom. She spends at least 18 hours a day in our bedroom. She showers about once every other week, and has done laundry once in the four months that we have lived here. When we moved in, she told me that she wouldn’t be home much because she has a very demanding major. The first three weeks she never left the apartment, except for one trip to the grocery store.

After that, she started attending class about once or twice a week, and complaining about how busy she is. The rest of us in the apartment are all under 20. She is 25 years old, yet she acts like she she is 14. She talks in a condescending childish voice, and is very manipulative. She rarely talks to people directly, instead choosing to leave notes for people. She is easily upset and if you accuse her of anything she gets very defensive. She acts unpredictably, and if you ask her something as simple as if she would mind doing her dishes you never know if she going to break own and cry or yell at you. She has no friends and spends at least 12 hours a day online with her laptop in bed, and never studies or does schoolwork of any kind.

She made it a point to make sure that we all knew that she has food allergies. She can’t eat milk or eggs, or a few other random things, like carrots and honey. She posted a list on the fridge of everything she can’t eat on the fridge, with sad faces next to the things that she claims will make her “instantly projectile vomit.” She complains often about her food problems. When she moved in, I felt bad for her, because she is rather overweight and she seems to not be able to eat much. I thought it must be a medical condition. It turns out, the things that she can eat, she eats a ton of. Several times a week she will get 2 foot-long Subway sandwiches with extra onions and a jumbo diet coke for lunch, and eats it in her bed so out room smells like onions for several days. The only usually only 3 foods she will eat; Subway, pizza, and taquitos. Other than that, she occasionally will make food but usually leaves it sitting next to her bed for several days after cooking it until it starts to mold and rot. She also will eat almost anything of mine. I have asked her a few times to ask me before eating my food, but she always denies ever eating my food, even when I confront her while she is eating it.

Our room has started to smell like something is rotting. After a while, I realized the smell was coming from her. She sits in her bed for so long and doesn’t shower that she now smells like death. It is so strong, that when she comes into other rooms of the apartment, you can see people holding their breaths until she leaves.

She refuses to clean. She brought cleaning supplies, but will not use them. The rest of us living here are very clean people, but she won’t clean up after herself. She leaves dishes in the living room for several days, but regularly complains that we are out of clean dishes even though none of the dishes are hers. Her only contribution to the apartment is dozens of old videos. She claims to be allergic to dust and mold, yet wont clean up anything. We have the end of the semester cleaning check tomorrow and the apartment complex gave everyone a checklist that will take about 4-5 hours each. She won’t do anything except vacuum because she said that she is allergic to cleaning supplies, even though her summer job was as a janitor.

We go to a very religious school, and it is mandatory to attend church, although it is not enforced. She never goes, which really isn’t any of my business. I don’t care whether or not she goes, but she always brings it up on Sunday mornings and has a strange excuse as to why she can’t go. One week, she had a baby shower, but the baby died so it was cancelled. Another time, she had to have a webcam party with her grandmother, because she was turning 100, even though she had previously told us that she had no living grandparents. The first two weeks, I believed her stories, but after that it because too obvious. As time went on, all her lies became more funny. I’ve been counting down the days until she moves out for the past two months.

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 currently live with MVWR, W. I’ve come to realize that it’s really not just W and myself that live at my apartment. It’s actually quite the paradise for all of “W’s” friends who are, coincidentally, unemployed.

My apartment turns into what I call, the UEP (unemployed playground) when I leave for work. W wakes up, presumably around 11 or 12, makes himself breakfast, eats it under the covers on the couch, and then calls his friends to come over.

Then one, maybe two or three of them show up, plunk their dirty asses down on the couch (which I’m strongly considering NEVER sitting on again) and watch TV/Movies/Sports and smoke blunt after blunt until its time to, surprise! EAT again…

They may go out to lunch, you know, spending that unemployment money wisely, but more than likely, they will be ordering in. I know this because of all of the wonderful take out containers that have made their way into my cabinets (still covered in oily grease btw)… Then, its time to smoke another blunt…

Now, if one of these dreamboat, super cool and productive friends of W’s has a car, perhaps a blunt cruise and a stop at the convenience store for some Arizona iced teas (which will be spilled either on the couch or on the floor shortly thereafter) and then rendezvous back to marinating on the couch for hours upon hours…

That is when I come home. I walk in after a 10-hour work day, house smelling like old asshole and blunt, the sink littered with dishes (that used to be in the dishwasher, but for some reason, W has decided to place on the counter) and the living room filled with refuse. And by refuse, I am referring to the 2-4 dudes who have done nothing all day except serve as an excellent examples of sloths personified…

And he wonders why I lock myself in my room/stock up on Febreeze/am gone as much as possible/avoid him. I cannot take living at the UEP anymore. I seriously cannot. But thankfully, the lease is up soon. May 31, may you come quickly for us all.

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.