As someone who's in college and has been for a good long time, I know a lot about having a really bad roommate. My current one is pretty cool, but last year it wasn't much fun. My roomie liked to party, and I mean party. He'd come back to the room drunk every night and half the time I had to help keep an eye on him for fear he'd crack his head or something. Then there was the really annoying drunk guy behavior, and the hangovers the next morning. Add that too him bringing in his drunk friends and well... I'm glad I transfered XD. Has anyone else here ever had a really bad roommate?
Nothing as serious as getting drunk. Just cleanliness (or lack of). I'm sort of OCD, and like everything lined up, stacked up and in order. My former roommate wasn't like that. I can tolerate disorganization and mess as long as I don't have to pick up the mess. We got into an argument once because a sheet of newspaper was stuck to the coffee table. (She would spread newspaper over the coffee table in front of the Tv and eat dinner there.) While I was scrubbing off the newspaper from the table, I suggested that we should eat our meals at the dining room table instead and she blew a fuse. The last straw was when she accused me of not paying the rent. I had given her the payment early in the month from a bonus and told her to keep it for me. By the end of the month, it was gone. I paid her again, and then I packed my bags and left. After that I landed a job near LA and decided to move back with my parents. Two years later, she rang me up and said that she couldn't sleep for a night because she finally recalled that I had given her the rent money. We're still friends, but didn't make for great roomies.
I've never had roommates; my brother scared me off of ever having them because of the people he lived with. It was so bad. Five people (two couples and my brother) in a two-bedroom apartment. Plus four cats. And almost all of them smoked. Every time I went over there, I would have to immediately put my clothes in the wash when I got home, because they reeked of my brother's apartment. None of them would do the dishes. It was always, "I'm not doing them, it's <roommate>'s turn." One time they were arguing about this when I was over there, so I told them I'd clean their kitchen just so they'd shut up. It was disgusting. The sink and counters were crammed with dirty dishes, most of which were moldy. There were maggots at the bottom of the sink. I had to go out and buy dish detergent with bleach in it. Afterward, I yelled at them all about being lazy and bitchy. Also, even though three of the people there owned cats, no one ever cleaned the cat box. But they would get mad when the cats peed somewhere else. Poor animals. I think they definitely got the raw end of that situation. It got to the point where I couldn't hang out with any of these people without them complaining about the others in the house. It was all they wanted to talk about. Finally, I just started avoiding them. Yeah, never having roommates if I can avoid it.
When I first met my husband, he had two roomates who actually lived there and several friends who may as well have. Anyway, when I started coming over, there was no soap in the bathroom and they didn't even own a toilet brush. For my own wellbeing, I bought them supplies and used them. One of his roommates didn't know what an "inside voice" was and yelled everything he said. He also kept his porn collection on public display on the bookcases. The other roommate was fond of bringing his friends to the house in the middle of hte night and watching tv full volume and drinking. Not all his friends were of age either. One night Steve and I were trying to sleep (seriously, that was all). He had to be at work at 6 the next morning. We tried to ignore the tv going full blast. When underage people started loudly puking in the bathroom which shared a wall with the bedroom, he went out to enforce landlord authority and make them leave or shut up so he could get some sleep before he had to get to work at 6. The girl who had been puking was a class act and retorted, "You're not sleeping. You have a girl in there You're just mad because you're trying to get..." you can supply that word for yourself. I was very happy when the roommates moved out and we could get some sleep and ....well...you know.
Not for long. Baked beans, the right chili peppers and lots of soda...I can erupt with farts that remove wallpaper! Bad roommates used to look for OTHER places to stay! LOL
I had two roommates in one room I was in at my fraternity. One was Howie, who was an ok guy, even though he became a lawyer. He owned a Great Dane named Bruce, who should probably count as a fourth and Fifth roommate. But the other roommate was Gary, who was the most obnoxious hippie/vegetarian/rabid pacifist ever. How is that obnocious? Well, he was inexorably confrontational with his pacifism and sermonizing, and would NEVER back off! And of course, threatening him with violence was against the house rules anyway. One day, close to summer, he did a favor for a friend of his. His friend had to travel for a couple weeks, so Gary took care of the friend's very pregnant beagle. Well, the beagle gave birth to a litter on Gary's bed. When the friend returned to collect the dog and her pups, Gary left withher for a couple more weeks, leaving the bed and bedding saturated with canine amniotic fluid and bits of placenta, and I believe some urine as well. Did I mention it was summer? After several days had passed, Howie ad I, along with a couple guys in the next room, rebelled. We opened the window to the alley, and out went Gary's bed and bedding, and miscellaneous clothing, snack food, and whatnot, three floors to the ground. We cleaned the room and the carpets to get rid of the stench. And that night we partied. Best of all, when Gary returned, he was so pissed he actually balled his fists and started yelling, instead of that endlessly patient annoying lecture voice.
Hehe. My flatmates are awesomeness with Texan accents Unfortunately, they're only here til December I'm gonna miss em.
Most of my "bad roommate" stories are told ABOUT me and not BY me. I'm quite a clean person and have told told I take excellent care of my pets, including straightening up after them and so on, but I'm very loud. I swear a lot. I don't really get angry much, and in fact am a happy person in general, but I swear loudly at the least little thing--for example, dropping my fork on the floor when I'm on the way to the table--and sometimes throw things. I like to throw things. I don't really have much of what people would call "respect for inanimate objects". Smashing things made of glass or porcelain is particularly fun for me. (No one gives me stuff that's valuable for my birthday.) I also like to sing. If I'm not working (I work at home and have done so for many years), like if I'm washing the dishes or something, I'll sing loudly. I have a good singing voice, but it puts people off. I think it's my choice of material, not my voice, actually--"You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" is a perennial favorite, along with "Cocaine Blues" (you know: "I shot her down 'cause she made me sore! I thought I was her daddy but she had five more!). Anyway, I don't really have the time to get into everything that I do that I know has annoyed people who lived with me in the past. As for bad roommates living with me--pfft. If someone starts to bother me, he's gone. If he doesn't wash the dishes, or plays music when I'm trying to sleep, he's bouncing like a hot check. Hm... I also tend to write a lot of bad checks... that's probably something else I do that would bug a roommate. Anyway, I hope this information was useful to you. yours in Chaos, Scarlett
It helps after the first year when you have some friends around you can room with. That seems to be a better situation for most than taking a pot shot and hoping the person your paired with isn't a jerk.
My freshman year, I had... well, I wouldn't call him a "bad" roommate precisely... Well, okay, he was pretty bad in a couple of ways. The biggest was his tendency to wander into the room, turn on his computer, start his music playlist (techno-dance mixes and Tori Amos, pretty much exclusively) and then wander out again without saying anything. I never knew if he was coming right back or what. Sometimes he'd be gone for hours and hours, and I had to sit there with irritating music that I didn't dare turn off for fear of being rude... He also had a big poster of Tori Amos... on the ceiling above his bed, which was a little creepy. Then he changed it out for a poster of Alfred Hitchcock, which was frankly a bit worse. The really awkward part was that he realized halfway through the year that he was gay. I didn't know about this until I walked in one day and he was making out with this dude named Shawn (about whom I knew nothing except he bleached his hair white; very noticeable on an African-American dude). I just kind of nodded cordially, dropped off my backpack, and wandered back out to the kitchen to read for a while. I was and remain more upset about the endless loop of Tori Amos. That alone kept me out of the room most of the time. ("...and the little plastic castle is a surprise every tiiiiimmmeee...")
A four-foot tall close-up shot, hanging right over the bed where it's the very last thing you see every night and the first thing every morning? I dunno. It seems a little weird. Dude was a helluva filmmaker, but not exactly a looker.
When I was in the forces, during basic training, one of the guys in our barrack block had a habit of getting up in the night and sleepwalking while urinating all over the floor. You really had to watch where you stepped in the morning.
yep, had a couple of bad roomies. the first one was the drunk kind... the gross drunk kind that throws up... ew. the second decided to start hating me for no reason (she's done it to every single roommate she's ever had) and she tried to bad-mouth me to everyone we knew. some of the people who didn't really know me tended to half-believe, but any of them who knew me even a little could tell it was a load of crap and paid no attention. still, it made me sad oh well. no bad roomies when i lived in china, but oh, the neighbors. loud about everything. and i mean everything.
That makes me even more glad that i'm comuting to and from Uni Although it's gotta be fun most of the time - I'd hate a room mate that came in drunk alot. Thing is I know i'll get homesick fast and i'm inclined to quit in situations like that - and i'm determined not to quit For now though, my Brother is a nightmare to live with. He chucks his rubbish on the floor and leaves all cooking equipment and food wrappers everywhere Sure my room and desk is a mess but i respect the rest of the house!
When I was in the British Paratroop we had a fellow git who would would crap in the shower and sometimes in anothers boots. We dubbed him the phantom sh!tter. It was most annoying. Once he went too far and got us a punishment detail. (Don't ask) I guess you just have to make the best from a bad situation if one of the folks you share with is a complete pratt.
lol - Try living with someone that insists on watching hentai while you're in the room on the computer. Luckily, the desk faces away from the television and I have headphones. *still recovering*
I had a nightmare housemate. She would leve for weeks on end and leave the front door open or all the windows open and never lock anything. I'd think she was in her room because I could hear her tv but when I knocked she wasn't there and my other flatmate would say she'd left again. Her rent payments were intermitten leaving my other housemate and I to pick up the slack, she'd use all the plates and leave them dirty in her room. Change the thermostat so the heating was always on and eat all your food and never replace it. Then when either of us would have a go and tell her to buck her ideas up she'd tell us to stop being so moody. That and her boyfriend moved in for three weeks unannounced and wouldn't help pay the bills... I love living by my self!!
When Don and I got married I lived with 6 girls about 4 hours from Don. We had only been married 2 weeks and known each other for 6 weeks. When he came down on the weekends all the girls flirted with him and openly propositioned him with me sitting there. Very uncomfortable for both of us. Just glad they are no longer room mates and Don still is.
