People Spill The Unusual Things They Caught Their Roomies Doing
35. Made Him Leave The Day Before Christmas
“My partner had a friend that just went through a breakup and moved back into town and my partner wanted to help the friend as he had nowhere to return to. We allowed him to stay in our second bedroom with the agreement that he would pay a portion of the rent and utilities as soon as he had a job.
My partner set him up with an interview.
He gets the job and has to go get a substance test. He says ‘This fake pee is on lock, it has worked every time for me.’ Fails the substance test, somehow convinced them to let him take the test again in a couple of weeks. He passes that one, is scheduled to start the job, and calls in on the first day.
Never pays rent, drinks expensive booze extensively, orders chicken wings all the time.
It got to be way too much for us. The poor work ethic, the substance dependence, the toxicity, the mooching.
We went out to a concert and came home to find him passed out in his car with it on, our house unlocked, every light on, and the oven on. We talked to him about it the next day, he’s like yeah I won’t do that again.
THAT NIGHT he was cooking when we went to bed at 10:30, and when we got up at 8:30 am the stove was on. That was the last straw for us and made him leave the day after Christmas.
You might think we’re pieces of work for the holiday bit, but I really can’t feel bad. I found out he filmed me at home just sitting on the couch watching YouTube videos and showed it around at my partner’s and his workplace and also sent it to our mutual friends talking about ‘disrespecting common spaces’. Just felt so violated after offering my home as a kind gesture.”
34. It's Like Living With Two Human-Sized Cats
“I used to live with what I’ve decided was one of the most disgusting couples ever.
We lived in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment. They would use my dishes and leave them in their room, unwashed, usually with food in them. They didn’t want to buy a litter box for their cat so they took a plastic gallon tub and just dumped litter in it. Their cat constantly peed in their closet and on their shoes and they’d just continue wearing them.
But the worst: When we moved out, I had to clean everything or I knew we wouldn’t get our deposit back. They had cleaned out most of their things and I let them know I was going to clean their room. They said cool (they were never going to do it), so I go in, armed with gloves, a scarf covering my mouth, and a bottle of bleach.
Boy was I unprepared.
I walk in and this stench just hits me. Their bedroom door was always closed and they always had incense burning so I never smelled it. They had a couple of cardboard boxes filled with poop and toilet paper. I ran out of there so fast and called them, screaming and demanding to know what was going on. They said sometimes I would be in the bathroom and instead of knock or hold their bladder, they would take a dump in the boxes. They tried to play it off as ‘we take it out once a week’ like it was changing the litter box.”
33. Trash Cans Are Not Supposed To Overflow
“Currently, I’m stuck cleaning everything. I live with my significant other, my friend, and my twin sister.
We had to throw away most of my sister’s dishes. We warned her if she left her dishes with food that we’ll do it. She has done this multiple times. She lets food ROT on her plates, cups, bowls, etc. And I’m not talking ‘she left the food for a day or two,’ I’m talking 5 days to two weeks.
She literally has one plate and she hasn’t washed that in three weeks. Luckily, there’s no food on it, but still.
My other roommate, my friend, acts like she’s the cleanest person in the apartment that cleans all the time. She doesn’t help with anything but her stuff. I’m at least thankful she can clean up after herself, but when I wrote a note for the other three roommates to take the trash out, she added ‘Nya and I shouldn’t always have to take the trash out for you.’ I’ve never seen her take the trash out.
(I’m the only person who takes the trash out. If I don’t, they stack trash on top of the trash can and let it ‘overflow.’)
My significant other says they don’t expect me to cook or do anything for them. That’s awesome. But I’ve realized that was a lie. I’m stuck cleaning up after them, making food for them, having to ask them multiple times to do stuff.
It’s like raising three kids. I have things I want to do but I can’t. I’m embarrassed about my apartment. I feel no pride in it. If I don’t clean it, it’ll get worse. I can’t have friends over without first trying to scrub the place down as much as I can. I get even more embarrassed when roommates invite friends over and the dishes are piled high, the living room is unreasonable, and the apartment smells.
I can’t wait to move out.”
32. Creepy Roommate's Mom Ended Up Doing His Chores
“Jerk was really creepy. Whenever I entered the room, he would always say my name with an extremely weird inflection and then giggle.
As soon as Jerk moved in with me and my other roommate, I’ll call him Johnny, Johnny and I started getting mysterious text messages from anonymous numbers. Usually posing as a woman asking to hook up. He would also do prank calls with a soundboard, same thing, asking us to hook up.
Jerk often stole food from me. I eventually caught him after I bought some cookies and found a stack of them missing even though I hadn’t yet opened the package.
Jerk at one point got sick and puked in the kitchen sink. He then called me asking what to do. ‘Uh….clean it up?’ Like… dude. Then I got home and found out he vomited in the sink again.
How does someone do this twice? Hang out near the toilet when you’re sick! Then I had to nag him to clean the sink after he was feeling better and he did a so-so job and I had to clean chunks out myself.
Jerk and I shared a bathroom and Johnny got the other bathroom to himself. I decided to leave for the weekend and visit my parents.
I saw the toilet paper was low, but I had already bought TP several times and decided Jerk can handle it himself.
I get back after the weekend and at about 4 in the morning I get up to pee. I notice my bath towel now has brown streaks on it. I find him in the kitchen up at 4 am and I confront him about it.
He plays dumb and says he has no idea.
I got home one day and found nasty words carved into the door of Johnny’s truck with a key. This culminated in me and Johnny in Jerk’s room confronting him. I tried to be diplomatic, but Johnny was yelling and about to beat him up. Maybe I should have let him.
On move-out day, Jerk decided to dump his trash into the back of Johnny’s truck. We know it was him since the trash had a bunch of papers and other things with Jerk’s name on it. His parents arrived. We had decided to split the cleaning labor and assigned Jerk some work. Jerk’s mom ended up doing it for him.”
31. Fancy Glasses, Secret Drink, And Dog Poop
“My roommate, and best friend at the time, was secretly making boozy drinks at night, which alone is odd because we were both drinkers. But it got weirder because one day I opened up the cabinet that stored all the fancy Waterford drinkware from my failed first marriage and half of it was gone.
After looking through the other kitchen cabinets, I decided to break the roommate code and look in her room, mainly because it just seemed really odd.
I opened her door, her bedroom the typical constant mess she’s always lived in, and see two tumblers on her bedside table. Weirded out, I go to grab them and notice a sudden stench of dog poop.
Against my better judgment, I look under her bed and see the rest of the glasses and random piles of dog poop amidst other debris. Pretty horrified, I grab all the glasses and get out of there.
When she got home, I decided to tell her immediately what happened because of course, she’s going to notice the glasses are gone from her table. I explaining I asked her why she had the glasses in her room and she told me about her nightly drinks. Then I asked her if she was trying to hide her drinking and she got very defensive. So I dropped it and asked her not to use the glasses anymore since they’re expensive and fragile. She agreed and that was that. Nothing about the dog poop was discussed.
About two months later she moved out and stopped talking to me. Her bedroom carpet and room were so gross the apartment charged us almost $1000 for repairs – which she did pay.
To this day I’ll always wonder why the fancy glasses? The secret nighttime drink? The dog poop?”
30. There's Poop In The Closet
“I had just broken up with someone and needed a new place to live. A friend of mine from college was tired of living in Missouri and she and her significant other (who I had never met) wanted to come out to live in Seattle. The three of us decided to share an apartment.
Because I already lived in the area I found a great apartment in a city south of Seattle and paid the deposit with the (written) agreement that they would pay me back 2/3rds of the deposit and we would split utilities three ways.
So we get the apartment and I move in a week before they do, as they were driving from Missouri. Along the way, they inform me they are bringing cats. This was not in the arrangement but I roll with it and tell them they have to pay the pet rent and pet deposit on their own.
They move in and both have jobs. Come first months rent they only pay half of what they should.
They smoke constantly and leave pizza boxes on the floor (in summer) leading to an ant infestation. They never do dishes.
Four months go by without them paying a single thing toward rent or utilities. Eventually, one quits or loses her job and the other got cut way back on hours to the point of almost unemployment but wouldn’t look for more work.
When I would remind them that rent or utilities were due (always in writing) they would respond that I needed to stop pressuring them because it was impacting their mental health.
Around this time my grandfather died and left me $5k. They reasoned that I could afford to support them. In actuality, I could not. That money was supposed to be for a surgery I needed that insurance did not cover at the time. All of that moolah was spent to keep us from being homeless including feeding them because I’m a sucker apparently.
It eventually got so bad that I told them they had 10 days to pay up or get out.
They responded that if I wanted the cash I should sue them. I had absolutely everything in writing as to what they agreed to, all the missed payments for rent and utilities, etc. So I did. I filed a case in small claims court and had them served.
A couple of days later they moved out (without paying) and left most of their stuff there. The court date came and they no-showed.
I had a stack of written correspondence almost two inches thick that I presented to the judge and after he read through it he was quite angry on my behalf. The judge ruled in my favor that they owed everything they agreed to pay and never did, plus 12% compounding interest until it was paid off. This was back in November 2014 and to this day neither has paid a dime.
Pretty soon I’m just going to sell the debt to a debt collector to at least recover some of the cash and the debt collector can try to get it from them.
Oh yeah, and sixty days after they abandoned the lease on our apartment the complex manager came to certify their abandonment (the day they left I closed their bedroom door and didn’t go in until she came back to certify the abandonment) and she was like ‘um… do you know why there is poop in the closet?'”
29. This Is Not How You Paint A House
“My junior year of college, I didn’t want to live on campus but left finding a room kinda late, so I ended up sharing a house with two random people I didn’t know. There were 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a living room I saw maybe a total of 15 times my whole year there, for reasons that will soon become clear.
I had a male roommate (Joe) and a female roommate (Em).
Em was mostly okay as a roommate, other than the near-constant smoking with Joe in the living room. I don’t smoke, not a fan of the smell, but I burned incense when they smoked – it was their house too, I’m not here to tell them not to smoke in their own house.
Joe, on the other hand, was a trainwreck of a human being. He liked to cook, and was fairly decent at Chinese cuisine, but never cleaned up after himself.
Constantly left rice/other food all over the stove, leftovers on bowls and plates all over the kitchen and living room (and his room too, I’m sure, but the one time I went in there the smell was overwhelming so I avoided it the rest of the year), dirty dishes crusted with food in the sink. This culminated in an extreme pest problem. Like, turn the kitchen light on and watch the countertops move.
Over winter break he left a bowl of fried rice in the microwave, so the roaches moved in. I can now, unfortunately, testify that microwaving pests doesn’t kill them, but I’m pretty sure it does make them bigger and more aggressive.
He also must have not been thinking straight when he left the roaches their offering in the microwave because when he left to go home for winter break, he left the front door unlocked, and when Em returned from break she discovered that they had both been robbed.
Her whole stash of illegal substances, ~$400 cash, and her tattoo gun, and his gaming console, games, and paraphernalia were all gone. (The kitchen, incidentally, was untouched – I believe the carpet of roaches may have deterred the thief from the kitchen gadgets.) I was spared because I had taken to locking my door to the rest of the house and leaving out the back door which was in my room, and also because you had to get through the kitchen to get to my room, and the roaches must have growled at the thief and made him think twice about passing through.
Joe also was an absolute animal in the bathroom. While the beard shavings coating the sink were kinda gross, the layer of vomit in the tub he refused to clean up for two weeks was disgusting. Over spring break, he was the last to leave, and before vacating the house, he vacated his bowels into the only toilet in the house, clogged it, and then graciously closed the lid, shut the bathroom door, and left, leaving his bowl-wrecker to stew for four days before I got back and had to call the landlord to deal with the clog.
The smell was foul; open trench, outhouse-in-summer, eye-watering horrible.
When we finally moved out of that soon-to-be-condemned house, Joe and his friends all smoked in the living room and decided they were going to make decorations for the house they were moving into later that summer. Out came the paint, all over the carpet in Jackson Pollock-esque swirls and splotches in five different colors. The trail carried out into the front porch, then onto the sidewalk from the house to the curb, then even handprints on the hundred-year-old tree in the front yard, like some kind of illegally-induced tribute to cave paintings.
Our landlord was livid, and none of us got our security deposit back. And that’s the story of how I became extremely withdrawn and depressed my junior year of college, leading to the worst academic year of my entire school career.”
28. Can't Pay Rent But Can Afford A Private Investigator
“I moved into a bachelor apartment with a girl that just turned 18 (I was 23). I didn’t know her well but she seemed nice and I felt bad for her because she didn’t have a place to stay and was sleeping on the floor of some guy’s apartment. Things started fine and we split the apartment down the middle for privacy. A few weeks in she asks if her mom can come to stay with us for a week or 2 because she’s in an unsafe environment and I’m like sure ok.
Well, three months later and the mom is still there. And they fight constantly. Smoking constantly. And the girl has her significant other spending the night all the time too. At this point, it’s getting too much to handle and I’m getting sick and then I get the news that my significant other passed away. I have no reason to stay in that city so I talk to the apartment manager and the mom about signing the lease over to her.
Give them my keys and move out.
Cut to a month later. I just get out of the hospital after a week’s stay. I haven’t had my phone on me and had no access to the outside world (it was a psychiatric hospital as I had a breakdown because of my significant other’s death). My mailbox on my phone was full and I had like 100+ texts from the mom and girl.
They accused me of breaking into the apartment and stealing their cash for rent while I was in the hospital. They claimed they had me on video in the lobby of the apartment and they hired a private detective who dusted for fingerprints and found my fingerprints all over the apartment and they ‘scrubbed all trace of me away’. I asked them how they could afford a private detective when they couldn’t afford rent and they had no answer.
They were absolutely insane and I am still ‘friends’ with the girl on social media and she is crazy.”
27. He Started Treating Me Like His Mom
“I had a best friend and roommate who I’d known as an acquaintance, he was always eccentric and an overly nice guy. He had a problem with glorifying mental illness and drinking/substance use and was kinda obsessed with these things, but didn’t indulge that much. He firmly told me he was gay and couldn’t come out to his family, I felt bad for him, was a very supportive person, we grew semi-close.
Tons of times started adding up when he would make me uncomfortable, like I’d be getting ready for work and he wouldn’t stop trying to talk with me in my room while I’m changing, just after showering. He would always walk near the bathroom when I was peeing… I thought oh I’m just being paranoid.
He started treating me like a mom almost at times, expecting dinner to be made by me, or else he wouldn’t eat, then he just sits there sighing in my living room.
It was constant negativity. he continually complained about not having cash even though he worked a government postman job. He was filthy and I clean a lot. I went away for one week, and the bathroom was literally so disgusting I vomited while cleaning. During the two months we were living together I started receiving weird messages on my email and social media that were very personal and really creeped me out.
His mental health started declining rapidly and it was really affecting me. He didn’t shower for a whole month. His road rage was scary, I refused for him to drive me to get groceries, he would swear insane things at pedestrians. His insults were getting weirdly specific, hated women, and were racially charged.
Anytime I tried to bring up my problems with him he would just say basically I’m your gay best friend and I have substance problems, how could you think I’m a bad person, and he’d flip it on me.
One morning I woke up to a particularly insanely detailed and lengthy email that was a disturbing tale of a fake woman’s love for me and had quotes from the conversation he and I had the night before. It also said just really creepy things like ‘I love to watch you cry’. It messed me up, I didn’t think it was him at first. I was in denial someone so close to me could be manipulating me and sending me threats from fake accounts online.
It was like split personalities when I confronted him, I’m not even sure how to describe it, this guy went into full-blown psychosis. He denied everything, got extremely violent in the space, including picking up the furniture. It was frightening. I kicked him out. I was afraid of him hurting me and he was clearly in love with me but in denial.
The sad part is he was a bit aware that he had really cracked, part of me hopes he got help because I was genuinely afraid for a long time he would try and hurt me, himself, or another random person.
I spoke with his mom later that day, he had told her we were going out. When I started to prod a bit about his mental illnesses and how I think he needs serious help she told me he’s been in therapy since he was a kid for being a sociopath and she was surprised he hadn’t told me. Ugh thinking about that situation again makes my skin crawl…”
26. Spaghetti And Meatballs Don't Belong In The Toilet
“I once sublet a room in an apartment off-campus. I was supposed to be rooming with 3 girls. Unknownst to me they all had live-in partners. There was only one bathroom.
On an almost daily basis the toilet would be clogged up and unusable such that a simple plunge was not enough and I had to call the landlord multiple times to fix the issue and frequently had to run to campus in the morning to use a public restroom due to the toilet always being out of order.
I also had cats at the time, and everyone was aware. For whatever reason, the roommates would leave the windows open a lot of the time. I asked them to not keep the windows open unattended when I was not home as none of the windows had screens. Well, one day I came home to find one of my cats had gone out the window and was walking along with the brickwork outside before he spooked and fell 3 floors.
They still kept the windows open unattended afterward.
One of the roommates left for vacation, and without telling anyone shut off the gas for the stove, so when I couldn’t get the stove working I thought there was something seriously wrong and that we had a gas leak and had to call the landlord again. This made me feel very stupid, but honestly who shuts off the gas when you have several other people living with you?
Finally the last week of the rental agreement almost all of the girls have moved out. It’s just me and one other girl and I finally find out why the toilet is always so blocked up. One of the girls went into the bathroom with an almost full plate of spaghetti and meatballs and flushed it down the toilet.
This situation has long since scared me away from subletting specifically with roommates I don’t know in general.”
25. We Can't Stand His Sleeping Noises
“My ex-roommate (luckily), when having a nose-bleed, would leave the blood pour into a cup. We didn’t know this and would later use the cup – of course, he washed it, but he never told anyone. He was caught in the act by another roommate.
He had psychological problems – you could tell. He used to sing at like 2 in the morning or play his weird guitar, which wasn’t a real guitar.
He would laugh hysterically – and don’t get me wrong, I laugh at funny things as well, but not like THAT – like serial killer hysterically.
One time I wanted to use the shower and he needed to go to the bathroom (yes, the two were in the same room), so I told him he could go and that I would wait. But he insisted that I should go and that he doesn’t mind if I shower while he takes a dump or whatever.
Of course, I kindly declined. Then he took it ONE STEP FURTHER and went like: ‘No no, I don’t mind seeing you undressed.’
On multiple occasions, we had these long talks about everyday problems because I felt sort of sorry for him as I could tell he didn’t speak to anyone else, not even to his parents I presume. So one evening he comes to my room, sits down, and asks me what’s better: sleeping with a virgin or a girl who has already lost her virginity.
And I of course said that it doesn’t matter as long as you really like the girl. AND THEN he just casually mentions: ‘Hey X, (he called me by my name but I’ll just use the x-mark here) you know… I’m still a virgin.’ I choke and go: ‘Oh, really? I couldn’t tell.’ Now at this point, my other roommate, who was sitting next to us, dropped his earphones, opened his mouth, and just stared at us in disbelief.
So yes, last year was interesting, but damn did he cook like a French chef. And he wasn’t a bad guy, so I still feel somewhat sorry for him. He later moved out and I haven’t heard from him since.
Now this year I have a different roommate and, oh well… the noises he makes when he sleeps are something else. You’ve all seen at least one Jurassic Park/World movie, right? The special sound effect mimics the dinosaur noises – that’s how he sounds. Every. Single. Night.”
24. She Takes Advantage Of Her "Job Hunting"
“We let her move in after she was allegedly assaulted by her partner. The story was that she was supposed to start a job but couldn’t because of how badly she was beaten. (We found out later the whole thing was a lie but that’s another story). She stayed with us rent/bills free so that she could look for a job and save for the first and last month’s rent.
She was on welfare at the time.
She lived on our couch for 2 years. Never worked or even attempted to find work that whole time. All of her ‘job searching’ was her on POF trying to hook herself a man. Occasionally she would get ‘job interviews’ and need to borrow cash for her hair and nails to be done.
When she first moved in she would clean and cook in lieu of rent but after a few months, that stopped.
She started to bring random men back to the house and when she was asked to stop because I had young kids living with me at the time she cried and said that she ‘needed someone to talk to.’ She criticized me for coming home from work, eating dinner with the kids, and then going to bed instead of staying up drinking and hanging out with her.
My water and hydro bills doubled while she was here. She would be in the bathroom for hours getting ready for hangouts and refused to let my children shower. She began to describe the living room (where the couch was that she was supposed to occupy for a short time) as HER room and she would complain when my kids went in there to watch TV.
She crashed her car and used mine for ‘job hunting’ while I paid for all the gas, etc. I let this go on for so long because she had fabricated stories of horrific abuse by her partner and I felt bad for her.
The final straw was when I was at work one day and my kids had missed the bus to come home. I called her and asked her if she could pick them up at their school 10 minutes away using my vehicle. I got a call from the school principal who was concerned that an intoxicated woman had arrived at the school screaming at my children for interrupting her bath, and then chased them in the vehicle when they tried to walk away from her. I threw her out that night.”
23. He Should Answer For His Slacking Partner
“I took on a ‘friend’ since we worked the same place. Charged real cheap for a master bed and all utilities.
Mostly keeps to himself. Bit messy and doesn’t do dishes often enough. Meh, was whatever.
Then tells me one night ‘Hey, could I maybe move in my -significant other- for a while. She’s in a rough spot and it’s for a few months.’
Ok cool, easy peasy. Pays 100$ more a month…
thought it was that easy… when she moves in she brings a dog and a few items. Again, cool.
Within a week it goes downhill. She was very disgusting. Brought roaches, bed bugs, fleas… The dog was a mean jerk to my rescue husky. Super… duper… crazy. She had no job. So I straight up said after a month of no effort:
‘You gotta clean up after you and your man or find work now and split the responsibility.
No lazy jerks in this house.’
She once yelled at my partner at the time, ‘dishes are done and food’s cooking right?!’ Audible yes, etc.
Of course, nothing comes of it, and I bring down the hammer when I throw 40 plastic plates at both of them and require them done in 1 hour or eviction in 2 weeks. Things got better… she’s still being crazy. She starts buying illegal substances from neighbors…
she gets a job 2 days a week at Taco Bell. Cries cause she’s picked on and ultimately fired because of refusal to show up. She eventually tries to come at me and my partner at separate times. I smack her with eviction. Just her. And she’s gone in 3 weeks. Friend follows a month after, he was dumped by her after her eviction.
It was the weirdest situation and frustrating.
That was 3 years ago.
12 years ago I had a roommate who dealt illegal substances and swore he was in a gang. Decided he couldn’t afford to live with us anymore, and just… left. We knew he had a cat, but didn’t know if he locked it in the room. After 3 days of not showing up, we unhinged the door and… the filth. Maggots in the carpet, needles littered the floor, carpet burns.
The cat… was okay no worries. We just kept him around for a bit. After a month, we hocked a bunch of his electronics he abandoned at our place till we got the $500 in rent. Gave the cat a loving home. Boy was he annoyed when he showed up 45 days later. What were we to do? He wouldn’t answer, friends/family wouldn’t. He tried to bring some muscle but…
He was undocumented in the apt so we just said we’d call the cops. He had no actual documentation he paid rent or lived there. He gathered his stuff and we cleaned up.
There was one more about 7 years ago. He was an in-between. We actually had him as a roommate twice. Once for a year and then again for 6 months. I overcharged it outta him because he was a handful and always messing things up.
I’m kinda laying this lightly as reliving those years… boils my blood.”
22. Gave Us Weird Yarn Jewelry On Christmas
“Unexpectedly our third roommate moved out so we needed someone for just a few months before the lease was up. So we found a girl off Craigslist who seemed fine when we first met her.
When she moved in she didn’t have a mattress so she slept on the couch in the communal living room. We asked her to sleep in her own room and she said she saw a mattress in the alley she could use.
Omg no. So she found a free mattress in the nicer part of town listed on Craigslist and we helped her get it. She never put sheets on that used mattress that was on top of my car. She just slept straight on it.
She had her own food but kept eating ours and worse drinking all of my roommate’s juice. My roommate was diabetic and always kept apple juice in the fridge in case her blood sugar dropped unexpectedly.
We explained to this girl how she can’t drink all the juice that wasn’t hers but she did it again. When it came to the food she said she couldn’t remember which food was hers. I was like it’s what YOU bought on YOUR shelf.
One of the worse things she did was take one of our space heaters that were in the communal space and bring it into her room.
I was looking for it when she was gone and opened her door. It was ON HER BED and left ON. I don’t know how that didn’t immediately start a fire.
She couldn’t really afford rent so she only stayed for two months. It was bizarre. She made weird yarn jewelry and gave us some for Christmas. I didn’t save it.
The other weird roommate I had years ago had a pet 11’ python she slept with every night. She told me he stole people’s souls and she helped him. Yeah, she didn’t last long either.”
21. I Had To Kick The Unapproved Dog Out
“About 10 years ago I had a small 2br apartment and was interviewing potential roommates. This one girl had most of the right answers and seemed a good fit. Soon after she moved in, her significant other, who was about 30 years older than her (we were both in our early 20’s), basically moved in with us yet paid no rent/utilities/etc. The washer/dryer unit was in her bedroom closet.
She wouldn’t let me use it ever. She constantly ate my food even though I never touched hers.
I came home one day to find a new young, untrained in every respect, female, un-spayed pit bull she decided to get without first getting landlord approval. I already had a dog for 2 years at this time (still have him!) who was/is super chill and never once used the bathroom inside or chewed anything he wasn’t supposed to, etc.
THE perfect dog. Her dog would pee and poop indoors, would get period blood all over the carpet and furniture, and chewed holes in the living room carpet. Regarding this last one, I came home to find a huge hole in the middle of the carpet and as soon as she saw my shocked face said it could have been either dog. Like, yeah right dude, shut up.
I’d constantly come home from class to find that she had left food cooking on the gas stove, walked away, and completely forgot about it for an hour or so. She and her significant other ripped the towel rack off the shower wall.
She finally received an eviction notice for an unapproved dog. The night she was moving out a female friend and I were sitting on the couch watching tv or just chilling (can’t remember doesn’t really matter) and she kept making little snippy quips at me as if I was the one evicting her. I’m pretty sure I sniped back because screw her and she stormed out saying to my friend ‘you know he’s gay, right?!’ Then she slammed the door so hard our huge front window that shared that wall shattered. Never saw her again.
That friend has been my wonderful wife for about 8 and a half years now.”
20. There Was Hair Everywhere
“So, it’s the middle of winter, and I come in after classes and look in the mirror. My hair’s a mess from all of the wind we had been getting. Spur of the moment, I decide that I’m sick of it. Haircuts cost quite a bit though, so I grab some scissors and start chopping 10-13 inches of my hair off. My roommate didn’t come in until I had mostly finished and started to even it out.
There was no good way for me to see the back of my head, so I loosely wrapped a belt around the top of my neck and tried to go off of that.
So, she walked in around then, with bits of my hair everywhere, a belt tied around my neck, and me squatting on a chair (weird mirror position) trying to cut the hair on the back of my head.
That was the first time I had ever heard her curse.
Once she cooled down, and finished telling me how stupid I was, and not to ever tie belts around my neck, she helped me even it out and left me to clean up all of my hair. I had caught most of it in double-ended ponytails, so it was all of the small pieces from straightening it out that were the issue.
They were on the floor, counter, and all over me.
So I clean up the bathroom and decide to take off my shirt and vacuum it too. It works, for the most part, and I notice that there are bits of hair all over my back and chest. So I take off my bra, turn the (smallish) vacuum around and start vacuuming my chest. And she walks in again to see me topless and basically stabbing myself in the chest with a vacuum.”
19. Left The Eviction Notice On His Bedroom Door
“I needed cash and a friend of a few years needed a place to stay after a breakup. We signed a lease. He moved into the spare room. Within a week, the room was trashed. He left his things everywhere around the apartment. There were coffee stains on the counter because he never wiped up after himself. The carpet in the living room had new stains.
I had bought four loaves of bread and put them in the freezer. That would have lasted me two months. I came home to find him eating an entire loaf of bread just on its own. Shoving three pieces in at a time into his mouth. Gross.
I found out the hard way he was an addict. I had a no-smoking rule in the apartment. One day while cleaning, I raised my hand to pick up what I thought was an empty pop can and I wound up with ash all over the floor.
He was also a hoarder. Left black boot stains on the wall. Left these coins under the couch which I later realized were the kind you collect at those naughty stores — I didn’t even want to know.
I warned him multiple times if he didn’t get his act together (he was late on rent the first month) – that I would have to boot him. I told him keeping his room clean was part of the deal.
Two months in, I finally went into his room and was appalled at what I found. I cleaned it up as best as I could and left an eviction notice on his bedroom door. He had 48 hours to find a new place to live since he was late on the rent again. He moved out.
A week later — knock on my door. It’s a detective in plain clothing looking for him. He had skipped out on his car payments that were under his dad’s name. He basically hit rock bottom and screwed over literally everyone who tried to help him out.
I swore from that day forward — nope. No more roommates.”
18. He Thought There Would Be A Place For Him To Come Back To
“The worst roommate I ever had HAS to be the person I considered a best friend. We’ve known each other since the 1st grade, were in the same group of friends, shared interests, etc. So anyway, we’ll call this person John. So John always showed glimpses of how egotistical he is, but nobody would get the full scope until you start living with him.
John was cheap when it came to anything regarding the apartment.
Like, I would buy big packs of 3 ply paper, which he gladly used since he pooped 6 times a day, only for him to buy the ugly ones, of course only a 4 pack. Now some would say, well maybe John was broke, except John would spend a ton on himself. He would be drinking every night (which would lead to other pleasant experiences I will talk about later), would buy himself knockoff watches from AliExpress and of course, he would buy Adidas shoes for 100 EUR (which is a lot for the living standard in the country).
Other examples are – I would buy the big 10Liter bottles of water, he would drink from those, only for him to buy 1.5 Liter bottles, just for himself.
John really liked spending time in the kitchen, and what he would do is he would never clean up after himself. 1 year after we’ve been living together, my significant other of many years would start living with us.
She really liked the place to be clean, and she would spend hours every weekend cleaning up, especially the kitchen, which was in an ugly state because of John in the first place. As soon as she cleaned it, he would go in there and make sure it was EXACTLY like it was before she cleaned it. What I mean by this is – let’s say he wants to cut some salami – he would do that, but he would just leave the salami like that, without putting it back in the fridge.
This would happen with cheese, milk, BUTTER, anything that had packaging – he would just leave it on the counter, NEVER throwing anything cuz he ‘forgot’ (he would always say that).
Due to his fondness for drinking, John would often (and sometimes not even because of that) eat anything and everything he saw. John was also super lazy, so when he didn’t have something to eat, instead of going to the store to stock up – he would just eat our stuff, and, subsequently, leave the packaging on the counter.
So not only would he eat your food, he will taunt you with what’s left of the packaging. One time, he ate HALF A KILOGRAM of the ‘good’ bacon (first and last time we ever bought that with my significant other) in 1 go, when confronted he said, ‘well, it wasn’t that much and I was hungry’. At this point, my significant other finally snapped at him and made him smaller than an ant.
He felt ‘bad’ and went to the store and bought the cheapest, nastiest bacon, which btw he still ate half of the next day. That’s another thing he would do, he would eat your food, drink your booze, and would only compensate you when confronted, and then he would just buy you the cheapest possible substitute. Of course, this would only happen when he had to compensate you, for himself, he always bought the ‘Good Thing’, which was always eaten as soon as he got it, god forbid he doesn’t get his money’s worth and we dare to eat some.
John liked the fancy life, and our apartment wasn’t the best, but it was very affordable, spacious, in a good neighborhood with great access to public transport. So he would often talk about how ‘we’ need to find a better place, and by ‘we’ he meant me. Another thing that didn’t help was… John’s mom. You could see why John was the way he was – his mother was treating him like he’s this little precious prince boy god, he always had to have the best stuff, live in the best place, and she would DEMAND we treat her baby boy the best way possible.
In essence – I was basically a friend-servant to the star that is John. So whenever she visited (which was more often than I would’ve liked), she would constantly complain about how ugly the apartment is, how I (!!!!!) need to find a better apartment, because this is unacceptable, etc. It didn’t help that she would often come and visit for upwards of a month. She also shared some of his living habits, which I will explain in detail in the next point.
John really liked the light, so much so that he would leave the light on in ANY room he ever walked in. He’s the type of guy that would leave the light on at noon in his room, just for the extra lightness. Now, leaving the light on, in every room, every bathroom, means that the electricity bill would always be pretty high, and when confronted time and time again – John would just say, ‘yeah, I forgot man, don’t be such a jerk about it’.
On top of that, John would always complain about how much we pay for electricity (!!!!!) and would never take responsibility for his messed-up actions. This was a big thing with him – he REALLY hated being guilty of ANYTHING. Like, when confronted about his despicable living habits, 8/10 times he would get super defensive, in this Greta Turnberg ‘HOW DARE YOU’ tone, which, you can understand, can be very annoying to deal with.
There’s a lot more when it came to dealing with cash with John, he would always take a handout, but would never do the same for you, in fact, he’s the type of person you’d be treating drinks 3 months in a row, and the one time he would get you a drink – ‘That’s 5.50 dude’. Another thing about him was he REALLY liked listening to music, and he would listen to the same songs, over, and over, and over again at the MAXIMUM volume his 1 + 2 stereo set would allow.
When confronted – he would get mad cuz ‘THIS IS HOW I LIKE TO LISTEN TO MUSIC’.
The last part is about how John moved out. So, again, this is a person who I’ve known for the longest time, so is there gonna be at least 1 last night of drinks for us to go our merry way? GUESS AGAIN! So John got a significant other, and one thing about him and girls is that, unlike with his friends which he would do nothing for unless there is something in it for him, he would bend over backward for girls.
So he got this new girl and he’s now a ‘fitness addict’ and last I saw he had a picture with her at the zoo as a volunteer (this is the same person that wouldn’t even go to the store). So anyway, he starts seeing this girl, and, since he didn’t need company anymore, he wouldn’t even say hi when he got home. Until one faithful (and GLORIOUS) day, out of nowhere, I get 1 message in the lines of ‘So I’ve been talking with my significant other and we’re talking about living together, so I want to ask – will you be looking for a new roommate when I move out?’ That’s it – no, ‘I plan on moving out on the Xth day’, no nothing, just – ‘I plan of moving out, but if things don’t work out, I have a place to crash, right?’ Oh and by the way, at this point, he was jobless for 3 months, only got a job cuz my significant other got him one in her company (which he never even said thanks for, among other stuff like me taking him in, feeding him, basically babysitting), so guess who covered for him in those 3 months… Yeah… I am still yet to receive even 10% of what he owes us. So he moved out in 1 day, no goodbye or anything. Doesn’t write, gives no care about us, only heard from him cuz he once again wanted something, I think it was my mic.”
17. Food Fights Are Not For Everyone
“At university, I shared a flat with a gay dude and a girl. Both very loud and ultra-feminine, they got on like a house on fire, in a way that I (straight dude) couldn’t really join in on. A rift formed.
Dude was super promiscuous and brought tons of new guys back to the flat, on occasion leaving them in the flat the morning after when he’d go to university, the accommodation was cheap which meant the walls were paper-thin.
I’d often fall asleep to the sound of my roomie getting it on. One of these times he rolled in at 3 am, hammered with a new guy, an older guy, they were loud and began playing music. I text a couple of times asking him to keep it down. As soon as he received my message my roomie came to my door, knocked on and I answered.
He didn’t address the message and instead asked if I could give him protection so he could hook up with this dude. I said no, but only cause I didn’t have any. They hooked up anyway.
One time I came home and my two roomies were laughing hysterically in the kitchen. I went in to find the kitchen absolutely DESTROYED, they had had a food fight, they were both covered in sauce, and peanut butter, and noodles and there was milk on everything.
This was a problem because the accommodation was super tough on students messing up their rooms like this, we could all lose our deposits cause it was in a communal area. I told them it was messed up and went to grab something to eat in my room while they cleaned up. Lo and behold, my food was all gone, but their shelves were still well-stocked, these idiots had a food fight with MY FOOD.”
16. If He Won't Move Out, I Will
“Rented a house with a dude I didn’t really know all that well beforehand. A friend of a friend. We were both musicians and wanted a house that we could use for recording/playing music. Awesome. I get to live in a house in the country for pretty cheap and get to do music stuff whenever I want.
This dude turned out to be an extreme narcissistic/borderline sociopath.
He could do absolutely no wrong and anything bad happening in his life was, of course, not his fault but everyone else’s. He would leave cabinets and drawers wide open in the kitchen and then get upset when I asked him to please close them when he was done taking stuff out of them. During the conversation, it was blatantly obvious that he was disinterested in anything you had to say.
He also chose to sleep on the couch every single night even though he had his own bed in his own room, thus making what should have been a communal area not very communal. He claimed that he was a Christian but used his faith more as validation for the judgment of others than anything else.
Now granted I wasn’t the best roommate. I worked the third shift and wasn’t the friendliest due to constant lack of sleep/exhaustion.
I am also very nonconfrontational so instead of trying to talk things out with him, I chose to hide in my room. He would typically get home around 3 pm which was the middle of my night. So I would wake up and have to pee, look out the window and see his car and just decide to hold it. If he was home on the weekends and I had nowhere to go I would just hide in my room.
Only coming out for food or absolute bathroom emergencies. I was at one point considering peeing into bottles so I wouldn’t have to go out and be around him. I gave myself a UTI from just holding it all the time.
Things came to a boiling point when he left to bike across America. He had been training for 4 or so months and finally left. He said he would be gone for about 3 months.
We lived in Ohio so he had someone drive him out to Maryland to start. It was absolutely glorious. I realized what garbage I had been living in and just how complacent to the situation I was. I had friends over for campfires and movies which I never did when he was around. I started writing music again and was even sleeping better.
It was short-lived though.
One week into this glorious reprieve I was napping on the couch and heard keys in the door. His mom comes through the door saying that he will be here in about an hour. He decided it was going to be too hard and was coming home. Props to him though because he made it from Maryland all the way to Cincy before throwing in the towel.
I was immediately depressed and anxious at the thought of having to go back to living as I had been.
I sought out advice from my parents and friends that day as I tried to figure out what to do. I went home that night and told him either he moves out or I do. Things aren’t working for me and I need a change. He agreed to move out and I gave him a month to find a new place.
I offered to let him keep his name on the lease so he wouldn’t tank his credit and agreed to take over all payments. I woke up the next morning, went over to my parents to help my dad with some firewood, and when I came back that evening all his stuff was gone. I don’t think I have ever felt as much unbridled joy as I did in that moment of walking through the door to all his stuff being moved out and knowing I wouldn’t have to put up with him anymore.
I haven’t heard from him since and still have a peacoat and a clothes iron he left behind. I really do hope that he’s doing well and has realized what an absolute jerk he was and is working on becoming a better person. I would also be curious to hear his side of this story. As I said I wasn’t perfect but maybe I could’ve made more of an effort to make things work.”
15. He Wanted To Have Fun In The Wrong Place
“In college, we had a house with 5 rooms and for a while had a bunch of roommates come and go pretty quickly. This resulted in ‘Steve’ a random friend of a former roommate moving in and shortly thereafter Steve’s brother ‘Kevin’ moving in and a couple of weeks later Steve moved out. So we’re now left with an empty room and Kevin who we really don’t know and seems like a really sketchy guy.
Turns out he was a really sketchy guy, very heavy into illegal substances and just generally trashy.
One of my other roommates ‘Carl’ lets me know the morning after a party that someone is coming by to check out the room later so we start cleaning up the cups and trash leftover from the night before. My little brother had stayed the night so we were cleaning the upstairs and Carl was out front cleaning up some things in the front yard when the person coming to look at the room pulled up.
Carl goes and introduces himself and starts showing her around the house. He brings her upstairs and introduces her to me and my brother and then shows her to what would be her room. Finally, he walks her out and my brother and I start talking about how she seemed kinda trashy and a little bit old to be interested in a room by a college campus like we had but whatever.
All of a sudden Carl comes running up the stairs laughing his butt off. He explains that after he’d finished the tour and walked out with the girl she stopped him and said, ‘I don’t think you know why I’m here.’
Carl responded, ‘you’re interested in the room we have, right?’
She responded, ‘umm no. Someone named Kevin called for me.’
It turned out Kevin had called her to sleep with him and we just gave her a tour of the whole house. I can’t imagine what was going through her head as he’s saying things like ‘and here’s your room’ and ‘this is my roommate and his brother’ she must have thought she was getting into some crazy freaky thingy.
Needless to say, she didn’t move in and we encouraged Kevin to move out shortly thereafter.”
14. He's Fond Of Young Women On Vacation
“My ex broke up w/ me years ago, and since I was living with him I had to move out. I found the only place I could afford in my city living with an older man and a young European woman on vacation.
The day I moved in, he told me he liked to walk around unclothed and I couldn’t have people over (I didn’t want any at this point but w/e).
Doors closed? He opened. We only had one bathroom, so the rule was to leave the door unlocked if you were showering since it would free up the toilet for anyone else there. Even the shower curtain was clear lol, the cleanest shower curtain I have ever seen in my life.
At a certain point, I realized that he would only sublet to young women who were on vacation, or who had just gotten out of a relationship, which meant that there were always young, beautiful foreign tourists coming in and out of his door, or people like me who just needed someplace to get themselves together bc they didn’t want to go back to their parent’s place.
He later confirmed this to me and said he had slept with every one of his roommates (this part I don’t believe, but he definitely hit on all of them).
I guess what was really weird is that he was such a cool guy, but this was just so creepy and weird. He wasn’t even really the worst person I’ve lived with if you include family and the time I just lived with a couple who fought nonstop. But this was just so bizarre to me… I can’t imagine being 50 and constantly rotating through strange roommates who didn’t speak the language, paid in cash, stole from each other, and were basically helpless due to being broke/emotionally broken/too young to know better. Even if it was only for 3 months. Even if they were cute. I just can’t imagine.”
13. The Electric Bill Made Them Do It
“Our first roommate started all right, then kept bringing up these unfounded concerns and misinterpretations. Eventually, they got crazier and crazier, and she would start fights with us in our peaceful home. Turns out she had paranoia issues and saw messages that weren’t there. Examples being the way the forks were arranged in the kitchen drawer was a threat to fill her tires with snow. Another being that the way the hand soap was placed near the sink was a complaint that she was using too much hot water.
We found out that she was also drinking while on arthritis medicine. We kicked her out when she accused my mother of plotting to kill her for life insurance payment. We found empty booze cans stored in secret locations inside and outside the house after she was gone.
The second roommate was a career squatter. She moved in like she would be a real roommate, then never paid rent.
Her Linkedin profile was all lies and she didn’t have a job. She also had 5 dogs in the house, and two of the dogs would fight so they had to be separated at all times. I liked the dogs though. We had to go to court to have her evicted. That’s when we found out that this is how she lived, she had 3 unlawful detainers before us.
She never paid the damages. Years later, she got a job at my place of employment, then went to HR with an untrue story and got me fired (HR lady was a real jerk).
5th roommates were a couple, who were not problems until they started doing illegal things. Not sure what they were doing, but all of a sudden the electric bill tripled. When confronted about this, they freaked out and installed cameras all over the house, including 3 in the kitchen.”
12. This Is What It Looks Like Inside A College Town
“Years ago, I was moving back to my old college town to be closer to my family, my grandmother had just passed away. I reached out to some folks and ended up agreeing to move in with an old co-worker (well I was her boss back then) and her friend with who I was told I’d get along – a late 20’s male, they were both early 20’s and female…
in a huge party school town. What could go wrong?
We had lots of issues pretty much right away, but I came home at 2 am one night, walked in the dark house barefoot (drive a stick, took my sandals off), and stepped on a huge piece of glass. Turned on the light and it looked like a bomb had gone off. The apartment was DESTROYED. All the stuff on the walls was even wrecked.
There is music blasting and I can hear very loud nasty noises coming from up the stairs where the girls have their rooms. So I’m bleeding profusely, banging on the roommate’s door that is making all the noise asking her to shut up, and there’s a knock on the front door.
Of course, it’s the cops, eyeing me suspiciously. Noise complain. I explain that I just got home and need to take care of my foot but he was welcome to go knock on the roommate’s door.
Lol. She yanks open her bedroom door butt exposed and sweaty with a dude without clothes on the bed and screams ‘WHAT THE’ and sees it’s now the cop and not me at her door. She’s a 9/10 by the way, very attractive. And very wasted. And very mad.
At some point, I’m able to talk everybody down and the cops leave with my promise that it’ll settle down immediately in there.
Again, college town.
Turns out the two girls had a major blowout (the other slept through all of this and she was across the hall) and a massive brawl. The fornicator left to go get wasted at the bar and came home with the random guy. The sleeper got wasted at home in the mess, I guess. Sleeper had a thing for the fornicator, they’d hooked up a couple of times but it wasn’t an exclusive thing.
They made up the next day, I moved out a couple of weeks later as soon as I could manage.”
11. Living With Your Brother Is Not Always A Good Idea
“Unfortunately my roommate is my brother, he’s 27 and I’m 21, we both live with our father. I’m usually pretty good about cleaning up after myself and not imposing on him in any way, he however is a giant idiot.
He’ll take hour-long hot showers every day, which I suspect is the main cause of the bathroom ceiling collapsing, he’ll leave piles of his dirty laundry on the floor of the bathroom.
He has a significant other that lives with us (she doesn’t pay rent) and she uses like 30 different soaps which clutter the bathroom, some of the soaps aren’t in bottles, so she just puts them on the side of the tub and they’re neon-colored and leave stains. He owns 3 dogs which he does not take care of, never sends them to the vet or gives them shots, they have no toys, he barely feeds them, and on top of that they’re not house trained in the slightest, peeing and dumping on the carpet every single day (mostly in his room, but when he leaves for work he leaves his door open, so of course they pee and poop in the living room) and he hardly ever cleans it, he’ll throw the turds away but pee stains jut soak right in.
When he cooks food, he will turn the electric burner all the way to max just to boil some water for ramen, makes the house smell like poop for a few minutes, and never does the dishes. Anytime my dad asks him to mow the lawn or whatever, he just ignores him and waits for dad to tell me to do it. When it comes to laundry, he will overload our washer all the way to the top and forget to move it to the dryer for days, not allowing me and dad to use it (we just put his wet clothes in a basket if we really need to use it).”
10. I Never Got Lucky With Roommates
“My friend was having a difficult time getting along with her own roommates so, naturally, I invited her to stay over at my place thinking it wasn’t going to be too long until she found a different place for herself. She had a somewhat of a long-distance partner who lived 3 hours away, who decided to stay for a weekend without my permission. One day out of the weekend I left my apartment for less than 10 min to go across the street to the dollar store to grab some candy for a movie hangout with my significant other and me later that night, came back to a completely awful smell only to find out they were in the middle of doing the nasty…
on my couch!! I was so full of anger I left immediately as I saw them.
Another story is that I’m currently living in a dorm that has a shared common area, shared bathroom, but individual rooms. Upon moving in late August, I had no idea who my roommate would be for the school year. On move-in day both of our families were there to help us move in, including her dog.
Now I’ve had dogs all my life growing up so I’m not allergic to them or afraid but when I moved into my dorm I did not expect to be living with one or taking responsibility for one. Turns out this dog is her emotional support animal and will be staying with us. Like I said, I had no problem with it until the dog had become an absolute nuisance.
She goes to parties nearly every other night and leaves the dog to dig in the trash or be locked in the dorm all day. I can’t ever leave my door to my room open or it’ll chew one of my things (as it has already chewed one of my items) or beg for food, and I always have a difficult time vacuuming or blow drying my hair because it barks and tries to climb me like a tree. I’m not a very confrontational person so I’ve been having a difficult time figuring out how to weigh this situation, especially because I find it to be controversial that it is her ’emotional support’ animal. All I know is that when I signed a contract for my dorm I did not sign up for a life with an animal that I did not want.”
9. Passive-Aggressive Notes All Over The House
“My Junior year, I moved out of the dorms into an apartment with a girl that I’d known since my Freshman year. She’d had the apartment to herself the previous year but could use the help with splitting the rent, and I think just missed having someone around all the time like you would at the dorms.
It started okay, but with a few tiny things here and there.
She never cleaned out her stuff that was now in my bedroom closet, but I didn’t own a whole lot of stuff, so it was more annoying than actually a problem. Over the first three months of living together we butted heads a few times, but nothing major. She did a great job keeping her stuff clean, we shared cooking responsibilities, she picked up after her cat.
I’d had worse roommates in the dorms, to be honest.
Around November, I start going out with a mutual friend of ours, and that appears to have been the tipping point. Suddenly she’s very angry with me, most of the time, and I tell her that maybe we just weren’t meant to be roommates. She starts looking for someone else to come in the next semester, I arrange things to move back into the dorms.
She didn’t think I was trying hard enough to find a replacement roommate, which was fair, but I was also immature and didn’t really think it was my problem.
Around Thanksgiving, she’s got an applicant to sublet next semester in the living room. I came in, so she was with someone, dropped something off in my room, and left. I didn’t need to be around for her interviewing her next roommate.
I come back a few hours later, and she’s got the radio on obnoxiously loud. I’m clambering underneath the sink for some pots and pans to make something to eat, and when I get up, she’s standing in the kitchen yelling at me about how if I’m just going to ignore her, I should leave right now. Honestly, between the music and the pans, I never heard her.
So now we’re shouting at each other (again, I was immature), which ratchets up to her calling 911.
The cop shows up, talks to us both separately, and then together. She says that with all of the yelling, she was afraid I was going to hit her. The cop asks if I did. Well, no. He tells me that if I’d so much as touched her, I would have gone to jail that night.
I thank him for letting me know that crimes have consequences, and if there are any other things I didn’t do that would have gotten me in trouble (again, immature). We work out that I’ll be gone in five days, to give me some time to find a place to crash, and she spends that night at a friend’s house.
The next four days are spent leaving increasingly hostile passive-aggressive notes to each other in the apartment, and finding out from a classmate (my roommate and I were both in the same minor program) that her story was that her roommate had grabbed her by the wrist and twisted it, so she’d been wearing a brace.
I then had to out myself as the roommate in question, and tell them the same story, which was that the police officer was clear that had I so much as brushed against her, it would have been an assault, and I would have been locked up, which didn’t happen.
I ended up spending the last three weeks of the year bouncing between a coworker’s house and a friend from high school’s dorm room floor, as student housing didn’t have a place to put me for that short of a time. I saw the roommate in passing a few times but had actually finished with the minor program that semester, so that was more or less the end of it. And yeah, if she wrote about it, I’m sure I’d be the worst roommate experience.”
8. He Moves In And The Cat Goes Missing
“Several years ago I moved to Vegas with my then-roommate and good friend. We had our share of ups and downs trying to get our footing in the brand new big city life but overall had many great times and I thought we were all doing alright. My brother soon followed after we moved to Vegas and began living with us. We seemed to be a nice albeit slightly dysfunctional family.
Fast forward to when my roommate got a significant other and moved him in. This caused a slight rift because his significant other was ‘allergic’ to cats and wanted us to get rid of our two cats. This was obviously off the table. This was our house and we weren’t getting rid of our pets so that his significant other could move in and I also had my doubts he was even allergic.
Before moving in he spent loads of time at our place and would barely even so much as a sniffle.
Anyway, shortly after he moved in we ended up moving into a new place together. Not even two whole days into the new place, my brother’s cat went missing. With how weird my roommate and his significant other had been acting my mind went immediately to them.
I called my roommate and questioned him, he adamantly denied doing anything to the cat, and honestly, that was the first red flag. When my brother had called me and asked had I seen the cat, I replied calmly, ‘No, I haven’t. Why? Is she missing? When’s the last time you saw her? Did you check such n such?’ But when I called my roommate directly after it was, ‘NO! I didn’t do anything!! Don’t question me!’ I knew he had something to do with it but figured he purposely left the door open for her to get out, nothing too sinister.
WRONG.
For days and days, my brother searched the area, calling her name, shaking around a food dish, knocking on doors, etc. We never found the cat.
Sidenote: I think it’s important to include the fact that my brother was suffering from depression and had ALWAYS wanted a cat of his own. One day when he was particularly down, I surprised him by taking him to pick out his very own cat.
He was OVERJOYED and the two had been inseparable ever since. The cat would come to him when he called and would always sleep literally on top of him. So this was very much an emotional support cat that he had for about a year before this incident. And my roommate knew how much this cat meant to my brother (who is super unproblematic and was always super nice and friendly to my roommate).
Anyways, fast forward some weeks, and my brother, my roommate, and I are all sitting on the couches watching TV when my roommate decides to go hang out in his room. After he walks out my brother looks down and sees a phone on the couch and asks if it’s mine. I tell him no. We both look at each other for a moment and he immediately jumps up and snatches the phone.
He pulls up the messages between our roommate and his significant other and what do we discover? My roommate and his significant other going back and forth talking about how they’re going to put his cat in one of the moving boxes, seal it and throw it in the dumpster and that’s exactly what they did. We proceeded to read texts that showed them laughing at my brother for crying about the cat and looking for the cat.
They also talked about how I accused them of doing something and how ‘I’ll never find out if they just keep their story straight.’ We heard my roommate’s door open, my brother locked the phone and dropped it on the couch where it was left. My roommate had no idea that we’d seen any of the texts.
A few short weeks later I found a job in another state and moved my brother and me out of there before my roommate and his significant other got home from work.
Anyone willing to kill a helpless animal who was dearly loved and their very own roommate’s animal at that – can not be trusted. So we dipped… and I haven’t spoken to him since. He has reached out to my brother and said he ‘misses us’ and I noticed he unblocked me from social media (why he blocked ME I’ll never know) but I have no interest in being his friend or talking to him ever again.
On top of that, I got a $1000 light bill that was charged off in my name because I forgot to change it out of my name before I moved. So they just let it go to collections and I ended up having to pay for it to get it off of my credit even though I wasn’t even living there at the time it was being billed. Definitely one of the worst roommate experiences ever.”
7. This Is Why You Should Just Drink Moderately
“I was living with three roommates at the time in a college town with a housing crisis. Three of us were girls, and there was a guy, who we’ll call W. We all suspected that W was functional substance-dependent. He would very often get blackout wasted, then behave inappropriately towards us and our female guests. It was usually something small, such as putting his hand on our thighs.
Occasionally, he would do something bigger. We all individually thought that we were the only ones to who he had done this. It wasn’t until he stiffed us on rent one month that we started talking about him and it turns out he had gone into all of our rooms while blackout wasted while we slept. He once tried crawling into my bed (left as soon as I woke up and asked him what he was doing) and I slept with the door locked from then on.
He did this to all of us and denied it. I wouldn’t be surprised if W actually didn’t remember because he was constantly blacking out.
When we realized how ugly his behavior was, we confronted him and demanded that he move out at the end of the following month (month to month lease). Obviously, that was a struggle, and he was convinced we were just a bunch of ‘lying people’. We were terrified that he’d stick around, and even contacted the landlord about our concerns. I share my concerns with my friend and after that, a few other women came forward and shared their experiences with us. He still denies any wrongdoing and denies having a drinking problem. Thankfully, he moved out.”
6. I'm Tired Of Cleaning So I Didn't Take Revenge
“During my Masters’s year, I lived with two guys and a girl. In order to fund my degree, I used to work nights. I would wake up at around 02:00 and leave at around 03:00, work until 09:00, then attend lectures and seminars. I would often get home in the evening, between 16:00 and 18:00 depending on the day.
One day, a housemate of mine had gone out drinking.
I heard smashing noises and weird vocal noises coming from downstairs at around 01:00. As you might expect I was livid. I went downstairs and saw my two mates near their room. I asked them what they thought they were doing. They told me to look around the corner into the living room.
Our third housemate had vomited all over the floor and on some of the furniture.
He was laying on the couch, half-awake, kicking, and making weird noises. I dragged him upstairs and threw him on his bed.
Now, my two friends hated this third housemate and thus refused to clean up after him. It occurred to me that they would happily leave the vomit there for him to clean up at a later time. In other words, it would stay there until I got home.
So I cleaned it up. Everything.
By the time I was finished it was 03:00. I had missed my breakfast. So I had to go to my cleaning job without having eaten. So I went to my job, went to my lectures, went to my seminars, having eaten nothing all day.
You can imagine how angry I am at this point.
I get home at about 17:00. I walk into the house and see my third housemate in the kitchen.
I calm myself down and ask how his night was. I then say, what I think is quite reasonable: please don’t do that again. His response? No sorry, no apology. ‘I don’t see what the problem is’.
I could have murdered him. I wanted to murder him. Given that we were in the kitchen it would have been so easy. But then I’d have had to clean that up as well.”
5. What Are You Gonna Do With That Screwdriver?
“Ashley worked with me for a good 3 years. We went out a lot and she never struck me as the bloodsucking, maniacal, pathological lying piece of work that she became and probably still is.
Anyways, Ashley had suggested multiple times that she was looking for a roommate but I lived with my parents at the time and didn’t want to spend extra to move out. Eventually, things changed and she talked a lot about it so I said why not, what’s the worst that could happen? Thinking back I laugh at myself for that.
We signed a lease for 12 months and about the 1st 2 months everything was pretty normal. Then it started…
She started having guys over what seemed like every other night for drinks, but she and these guys would not only consume ALL of the drinks but all of my food at times. Not to mention that I could hear them hooking up on our living room couches (WHICH I PAID FOR) instead of her perfectly good room.
I would confront her about it and she would insist that the food would be replaced and that it wasn’t a big deal because she paid rent and besides she ‘was clean.’ This went on for a while and eventually, it died down.
Flash forward like 2 months and you’d find Ashley rarely did her laundry (maybe once a month). She would constantly use my toiletries and then lie about never touching them.
She never cleaned up after herself, left the toilet bloody and smelly on multiple occasions. I had added a lock to my door and put a camera up and finally had to draw the line at her sneaking into my room and stealing not only my underwear but also my headphones and even a small sum of cash one time. I showed her the whole thing and she accused me of privately recording her and attempted to hurt me with a screwdriver.
I called the cops and broke the lease a day later and haven’t looked back. Go screw yourself with that screwdriver Ashley.”
4. She Left Me Alone With Her Wasted Friend
“My freshman year roommate was an unpleasant experience for lots of minor reasons, but one incident made her a very terrible roommate. She was on a sports team and one of her friends from back home came for an ‘unofficial’ recruiting visit. He was a junior in high school. She texts me on a Wednesday and asks if her friend could stay with us and sleep on the floor (we shared a room), not to mention that it’s a guy.
I’m generally hospitable and say it’s fine. Turns out his plane was landing in two hours, so I don’t know what would have happened if I had said no.
Anyway, when I meet him a few hours later, I’m surprised that it’s a guy, but I’m like, I’m in college, it’s fine. Things are a bit awkward. He’s set to leave on Friday, so it’s not that long of a time.
On Thursday night, my roommate and her friends take him to some house party and he drinks way too much. Here’s where the screw-up occurred: when they get back, she lets him into our room where I am sleeping, and she leaves the room to go do homework in the common room. He’s shaking me awake. I’m groggily trying to figure out what is going on, and then I realize it’s this wasted guy who could easily overpower me and we’re alone in my room.
I freeze.
Thankfully, he lets go, but only because he threw up all over my stuff and then passed out. He ruined some shoes, my bookbag, the carpet – it was profoundly disgusting and smelled badly of vomit for about a week. I had to hunt down my roommate at 3 am and demand that she clean up his mess. The guy was totally passed out, which actually scared my freshman brain even more because I didn’t want anything seriously bad to happen to him.
Also, who leaves a wasted stranger alone with their roommate??? My roommate baked me some cookies and replaced my shoes to say sorry, but honestly, she’s lucky the situation wasn’t worse.”
3. The Thin Walls Reveal His Secrets
“I had this kid move in. I was… 24 and he was 21. I was firmly out of college by that point, working a 9-5 and living a generally quiet existence, and he was still deeply IN college, which concerned me. But he seemed okay and went to the college my landlord taught at so I thought he’d stay in check. I was sure to tell him it wasn’t a party house (landlord lived upstairs!) and he was very ok with that.
A couple of days after moving in, he says he needs to confess he’s actually only 20. Pretty put off by him LYING, I tell a friend of mine (this conversation has stayed in my memory) ‘if it turns out this was a red flag, I’m aware I’ll feel stupid later when I have ignored it and something worse happens. but it’s happening so I’m hoping for the best.’
He was…
a garbage roommate. Just the general kind of pain in the butt entitled kid going to school on his parents’ dime.
He was vegan which means most of my food wasn’t tempting to him, but I DID discover things like oats, pasta, etc. that he had consumed MOST of without telling me he was using them. Pretty rude when you’re expecting to have a whole ingredient and there’s nothing left.
He would also use the toilet paper and then not get more. Multiple times I sat in snowstorms on my way home, DYING for a pee when I finally got in the door, only to discover there was NO TP. MULTIPLE TIMES.
He threw a party once. He said it wouldn’t be a big production and he’d have everyone out by 10. By the time I got home at 11, he was blackout wasted and kept ‘forgetting’ when I repeatedly asked him to turn down his music, send his friends home.
Not to mention that these were LIKELY underage friends.
He would cook with hot oil and then leave the stove a mess, so there was just greasy and cooked-on oil everywhere. It smelled foul and it was infuriating. He never cleaned.
The roommate before him had moved out and taken all the living room furniture so he kept asking me when I was going to get more. I kept telling him I was happy to go in 50/50 but I was broke as a joke and not interested in furnishing a house so that HE would be less embarrassed to have his significant other over to an empty living room.
Speaking of the significant other. They would fight constantly. I could hear him through the walls scolding her constantly. Snapping at her. Once he yelled at her for coughing.
(side note: I could also hear him two-timing his significant other through the walls. He stated to me several times that this ‘study buddy’ was just a friend. But you know. Their noises woke me up. I texted him from the next room over to keep the nasty noises down.
The next day he claimed he had no idea what I could have been talking about. They were just friends. Yeah right.)
Ultimately, one night he and his significant other came home wasted from a party and he started insulting her and she cried and tried to talk to him about it and he responded by attempting to drag her out of the house by her hair and screaming in her face.
I got in the middle of it, trying to separate them, and fortunately, the landlord called the police.
She told him the next day he needed to move out by the end of the month. I heard him crying on the phone to his mother saying he didn’t understand why he was being kicked out. Yeah right. I avoided him for the next several weeks, and on the day he moved out, I took the day off work so I could supervise to make sure he didn’t mess anything up on his way out.
He hated this. He was malicious and snarky and creepy the whole day.
Do you know those people who just have dead, black shark eyes? That was this guy. I think a legitimate sociopath. I was put off by him, and then (after the violent incident with his significant other) outright afraid of him.
His significant other stayed with him for a few more years. Last I heard they’d broken up and she was trying to get a restraining order against him. I do hope she was successful because he still gives me the creeps and it’s been YEARS.”
2. Jerk Roommate Talks Behind My Back
“I recently moved out of my family home and moved to an apartment complex at the beginning of February. I had also just moved out of my first apartment and into my second apartment in August.
As it turns out, the person who shared a room with me was a gigantic jerk to me behind my back, and I had that feeling within a month after moving in with her.
She would almost always give me this deadly look whenever she looked at me, whether I was acknowledging her coming into the apartment or not. I remember in the beginning when moving in, we told each other that if there ever were problems with one another to let each other know. Well, I asked her several times and she never gave me an answer whatsoever.
Come move-out time this past August, I was moving out my stuff and decided to help another roommate take out the trash.
While I was gone, she ranted to my other roommate, telling her, ‘It’s about time she took out the trash!’ When my other roommate told me this, I couldn’t help but laugh.
For one, I had always taken out the trash, and also cleaned the dishes whenever nobody else was home and when nobody else would do it. It would sometimes frustrate me to the point where I would do a ‘strike’ and not clean anything at all until somebody else finally did it.
And two, it finally gave me the closure I needed about her. She had always hated my guts, and I’m glad I got that closure the day I moved out.
I now live in another apartment and have absolutely amazing roommates. However, because of her, I always have fears of my new roommates hating me for no reason. Thankfully, there have been no signs of it so far and we get along great! And the person I share a room with is an absolute sweetheart!”
1. The Trashiest Roommate I Ever Had
“I have had different roommates over the years. A lot of them have been bad but this one guy takes the #1 spot. Let’s call him SD aged 27 but mentally 14. We met each other during our orientation for our college a couple of years ago. We lived at different places before but would always hang out after classes since we had a lot of common interests.
We moved to a big city for work and decided to live together since we knew each other. We got a cheap two-bedroom apartment.
At first, things were great. We would cook together saving us coin and time. We were clean and would always ensure that we balanced each other’s common spending (e.g. if I got TP he would get the hand tissue roll etc.)
As we learned more about each other I realized he was a good friend but a bad roommate.
(Now I am a guy and don’t have particularly high standards for cleaning but this dude tested my patience.)
He would pee with the toilet seat down so there would be pee all over the toilet seat. I had to yell at him multiple times for him to clean once but he just would revert back to peeing on the toilet seat like a small kid. I thought I would be living with an adult but this was clearly a sign that I wasn’t.
We only had one washroom in the apartment. He would poop (not shower and brush just poop) for 40-50 minutes and make me late for work almost every day. No calls or texts would make any difference. Then he would tell me to message him on social media if he is in the washroom like huh. He uses one full TP roll each day and doesn’t replace it ever.
Unsure what he does with all of it. It’s not that I couldn’t afford it but dude enough is enough. I had to get my own TP and hide it in my room so he wouldn’t use that as well. Also, he would get mad if TP was finished and wasn’t replaced, even though he’s the one that always finishes it.
We had set up a schedule for cleaning the common areas once a week which I think is more than doable for any human being.
If I cleaned the washroom he would clean the kitchen and living room floor and vice versa the following weekend. His standards for cleaning were that of a poor person. If he cleans something I would have to go and clean it again. For e.g. If he mopped the floor of the living room it would look like it was never mopped. I would have to go and mop it again to ensure it is clean.
Once I came home after a week on vacation and found a pile of wrappers of cookies and chips on the dinner table. Went to use the microwave and found food that had spilled over on the microwave glass plate (this has happened multiple times and I cleaned it out of grossness). I was furious and confronted SD. His response was I will clean it later and he went back to playing his games.
The following day, he put all the trash out and cleaned the dinner table. I go to check the microwave with high hopes and it was cleaned from the outside and was still the same inside. I had to show him a YouTube video on how to clean a microwave. The microwave was back to its dirty condition from the inside in no time though.
I have been telling SD to take out the delivery boxes from Amazon that he gets.
He however has all the boxes piled up in a corner of the apartment. Initially, I took them out thinking he would do the same. After trying to tell him to take them out for almost a year (yes a year. I was that patient) I lost it. I yelled at him till he got up from his computer chair not to take the boxes out but to yell back at me with no logical reasoning.
He didn’t take them out saying that I asked him to clean the washroom too which he hadn’t done for months now.
Eventually, his job prospect didn’t work out and he was at home unemployed. This was the worse time of my life. He wouldn’t shower for almost a week and the whole house would stink of his bad body odor. One day I came home to seeing used plates sitting on the dinner table.
Food had dried out and gave a foul odor. I went to confront him and he was sleeping in his room. He woke up when I went out to eat more and left that plate on the dinner table over the first one. I come home again to more of this and flip out on him. SD’s reasoning for leaving the plates – When he was eating he felt like he had to poop urgently so he went to the washroom urgently then went to get something from his room and passed out (Can someone be this lazy).
We both were on the lease. The lease states you have to give 60 days’ notice before moving out. SD said he has no plans to move out at first and will look for a different job after being unemployed for 3 months. One month later tells me he is moving out in 30 days. I later find from my mutual friends that SD had no plans on staying back and was always going to move out.
Thank you for informing me in advance loser. He was too lazy to help me look for a replacement for him (rent was cheap for the location).
I found a replacement and I told SD to take all his stuff out before it moves and to of course clean his room. He said he has a cold and may need some help. I wanted this pile of negativity out so I said I will come home by 6 pm the same day and help him.
He decides to clean his room (his version of cleaning) by himself and leave. I come home and find 4 big bags (25 lbs. each) of garbage staring at me as soon as I walk in. I go to his room and it’s in the worse condition it could ever be. Boxes and boxes of empty delivery boxes. Room stank of his odor. Left his bed and some other stuff behind.
I go check the fridge and his food is all there. Now we divided our fridge compartments so I would never look at what he would get. I had to clean his part of the fridge for two hours. Everything there was expired from two years ago, moldy. The bottom had turned brown from white.
I call him and he said he cleaned by himself and left.
I yell at him for all the stuff he has left behind and he tells me to just take it out. He then hands the phone to a mutual friend who is yelling back at me cos SD told him I was the lazy and dirty one. SD’s reasoning – I left this for you (I am in no need of your garbage loser).
SD is now living with this mutual friend for a couple of weeks before he goes back as he doesn’t want to pay rent.
This mutual friend calls me back in a week to say sorry now that he sees how dirty SD is and commends me for dealing with him
New roommate comes in. Obviously doesn’t want SD’s bed and is extremely mad. I apologize and help him clean everything and take the bed out. SD has also left his smelly linen which he probably never washed. This wooden bed had to be dismantled and took hours to take out. We now find used Q-tips and used napkins under and behind the bed.
By far the grossest person I have lived with. All these are from one person only. May you rest in your own trash SD. By being yourself you have lost a good friend. Hope you read this SD. You know who you are.”
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