Most of us have lived with an inconsiderate roommate at one time or another. Rarely do things reach the heights of Worst Roommate Ever (seriously, don’t watch that show if you currently have a roomie).
Things can get bad, though. The r/AskReddit thread, ” What did your roommate from hell do to earn their title? ” is chock full of cautionary tales .
Let’s ease into this.
“I had a roommate from Hell in college. He was assigned randomly by the school in the dorms.
What made him the roommate from hell? He was from Hell Michigan.
He was a great guy. He was quite clean and well generally respectful of everyone.
Thought I’d inject a little positivity with my technically correct answer.”
Some say he’s still down there, a bad roommate to this day.
“Forged a check while I was away and drained my bank account. Spent it on cocaine and airfare to the Caribbean. That was 23 years ago, no one has seen or heard from him since.”
Do you really need the whole roll every time?
“Was placed in the barracks with a dude the barracks NCO nicknamed pigpen. Dude was on the boxing team, and while he worked out hard, was asleep when I left for work, after PT, and was out on the town when I got home. Would come back to sweat soaked pt gear on the floor of the bathroom, toiletries on the sink area, and no TP, because he would use an entire roll of TP in one sitting.”
That doesn’t seem normal.
“University. One roommate moved out, switching with this weird Russian without telling me. Guy ended up being some sort of gunrunner. Got arrested, hung himself in jail. When I went in his room after, he had pictures of all the university’s female athletes on his walls – But he’d cut all their eyes out and had shot them with a BB gun.”
An elaborate cover-up.
“He got drunk and threw my ps4 controller at my TV, which shattered the screen. Instead of admitting this, he staged a robbery in which robbers ransacked my place and stole all of my shit. Every piece of furniture was overturned, smashed, and broken. I found out it was him when I discovered he threw everything I owned of value into the dumpsters outside to make it look like they had been taken.”
That’s almost impressive.
“Had a roommate who hosted his twelve-member family for thanksgiving in a 1930s two bedroom hovel while I was away (apartment building was from the 30s, not me). He refused to clean any of all our collective dishware, and so did I.
So it sat there til end of spring semester, and had some fairly fantastic spore castles and mold mountains. I suppose if he went with an art excuse, it wouldn’t have ended in an absurd stalemate.”
John Goodman really upset the guy.
“In my younger years I had a friend who was 80% cool and 20% crazy. That 20% believed aliens try to contact him from their ship and that he was in a blood line of ninjas. He was obsessed with ninjas.
One night we were watching that Speed Racer movie and he got really upset at the scene where John Goodman beat up a bunch of ninjas. So upset that he left the room and then punched a hole through my bathroom door.”
Seems like a red flag.
“Freshman year he called for a meeting with our RA. During it he said, ‘Sometimes when everyone’s sleeping I want to pour gasoline all over the place then light a match and walk away from the mess.’ RA with a stunned face is like, ‘no……no don’t do that.'”
I don’t think that’s how they actually do it in Spain.
“One time he put a frozen pizza in the oven together with the cardboard. I smelled burning and raced downstairs to remove smouldering paper from the oven before it caught fire and burnt our house down. I asked him what he was thinking and he said ‘that’s the way we do it in Spain.’ No shame, no apology.”
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That isn’t very 7th Day Adventist of them.
“I had roommates there were 7th Day Adventists and would eat my food. They said they were not allowed to eat pork so I started buying only lunch meats that obviously contained pork but they still ate it anyway.”
Say it ain’t so, I will not go, turn the lights off, carry me home.
“Woke up everyday to Blink-182’s small things at 4 AM for swim practice. Except he’d keep hitting snooze so id hear it 2-5 times in a row. And he’d be late so his teammates would start banging on the door.
I was a double science major working multiple jobs. I went to bed at 2, coming home from the library. So no sleep for me I guess. I would have to wake up at that time on weekends for my landscaping job and he would bitch and moan about it.”
It gets worse and worse.
“We already weren’t getting along, but never escalated beyond minor spats. That is until he put nail polish remover into my facial moisturizer. He denied it when I confronted him of course, I was even accused by my other roommates of putting it there myself.
Obviously I moved out like 2 weeks later. When I arrived to get my bed, there were fresh bodily fluids on my sheets and pillow case.”
So underwear was part of the dress code?
“She stole my underwear, wore them, then reported me to our boarding school for having personal ‘inappropriate’ underwear when I confronted her for stealing them. She got in trouble for theft, but I still got in trouble for having clothes outside the dress code even though I threw them out after I saw them in her dirty laundry hamper.”
Boundaries are important.
“One of my first flatmates in London was weirdly into me. One time I took a friend home cause she was too drunk to take the tube by herself. My flatmate saw us getting home, asked me if she was my girlfriend and I said yes hoping he’d leave me alone after this… big mistake. He asked if he could sleep with us in my bed (my friend was passed out at this point), said he ‘wouldn’t do anything, just wanted some human contact.'”
I’m starting to think some of this is malicious.
“She released my pet iguana into the wild. She blackmailed me via email from the next room. I caught her going through my nightstand when I came home from work. When I moved out, she poured baby oil and soy sauce all over my N64, SNES, Sega, and controllers. She ran a needle across my favorite DVDs.”
When you have to grudgingly cut your losses.
“She had the landlord return the security deposit in her name, even though I’d paid it in full. It was $1800. When I asked the landlord for the deposit back, he said he already gave it to her and I had to work it out with her. I was 19 and didn’t know any better. Needless to say, she never paid me back. Still bitter 20 years later. I worked full time in college and her parents paid her way. $1800 was a lot of money back then.”
There are so many layers to this one.
“Burned holes through the bottom of my pots making instant ramen in maple syrup instead of water. She forgot it on the stove while playing bongos in the livingroom at 2:00am with some dude she’d brought home off the street.”
At this point, why even have books?
“Yelled at me for reading my own books because it messed up the decor. Books were sorted by color and not subject and reading them made them look not as new.
Yeah.
My own books.”
Putting dirty dishes under the couch. What could go wrong?
“Roomate was a total slob, and I am not saying this lightly. He would eat dinner on the couch, then put his dirty plate (with scraps and bones) under the couch. I would have to check constantly for that or else we would get some foul smells. One time he had pancakes and put the plate under the chair, and due to the large amount of leftover maple syrup we got ants. He would just trash everything and made the house disgusting.”
Relax, it’s just laundry.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was when she took her laundry down to the basement laundry room. The machines were frequently out of order or just always in use. It was common to go up and down several times before being able to actually start laundry, but for some reason one day, she came back up in a RAGE, and started throwing her dirty laundry all over our room. Including on me.”