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#1
10-05-2005, 06:17 PM
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I Pit my Roommate - Feel free to pile on
As pit rants go, I expect this to be pretty lame. Please add your own roommate troubles to the list.
Here's what's bugging me: 1. The dishes. She cooks these large, greasy meals for herself and her son and then leaves the dishes (both in the sink and on the stove) for days. I can understand a single day, maybe two for pots and pans, but come on. I complained that I couldn't use the sink, so rather than actually start doing her dishes, she started neatly piling the dirty dishes on the counter. 2. The phone. When she moved in, she said she didn't need to use the house phone, because she and her son both had cell phones. It wasn't a week later that she announced she was having a "dispute" with her cell phone company and could she give a few people my number to contact her here. Since then, 9 times out of 10, the call is for her. It was even better in the summertime when my boss would call (I work from home) and her son would answer. I felt so professional. 3. Her son. At twelve years old, he's training to be a Grade-A freeloader. Since school started (around Sept. 3) he has called me no less than 5 times for a ride home. School is exactly six blocks away. He also prefers my food over theirs at all times. 4. The rent. Probably none of this would bug me too much, if it weren't for the fact that my roommate is constantly behind on her rent. She's promised to pay me Friday what she still owes for September. Anyone else have inconsiderate roommates? 
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#2
10-05-2005, 06:36 PM
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Sampling of their inconsideration: 1. Dirty dishes in the sink for days. I'd leave for work in the morning and the sink would be empty. I'd get home and both sides of the double sink would be overflowing. None of the dishes would be rinsed off, and many of the pots and pans would still be on the stove, their contents stiffening until Saturday rolled around and they finally got around to cleaning up after themselves. 2. The wannabe botanist thought it convenient to store her compost under the sink in the kitchen despite my none-too-subtle suggestions that it stank, was attracting bugs, and should be outside. 3. One or both of them suffered from IBS, resulting in frequent, loose BM's. Neither had ever heard of a courtesy flush before. 4. Lights were left on at all times. As was the TV. And the AC. Even when no one was home. 5. The TV could not be viewed at a normal volume, regardless of the hour. 6. They both had varying schedules whereas mine was static. I'd expressed at the entering of the arrangement that all I really cared about was being able to shower when I got home from work. Some days they'd be walking into the bathroom the moment I walked in the door (same time every day), some days I'd be able to shower as expected, and some days they'd either have just used up all the hot water as I got home or would decide to start doing laundry at the moment I turned on the water. The proverbial back-breaking straw was when they requested something of me by a certain day to accomodate their preference, and became angry with me for not complying a day earlier when they'd changed their plans without telling me. That in itself was no big deal, but when the male half of the pair decided to physically confront me about it, I told him where to stick it. I moved out shortly thereafter and have since declared that I will never share a living space with another person unless we're also sharing the same bed. In hindsight, don't all the inconsiderations seem pretty small and petty? I guess it just goes to show how prolonged exposure to even the small things can affect a person.
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#3
10-05-2005, 07:42 PM
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Simple solution to #3: Explain to your roommate first and then to her son: The walk will do him good. No more pickups no matter what.
She should have to pay late fees if she pays the rent late. Work out a new agreement and get it in writing. Have you had a long assertive talk about the kitchen? Don't let her abuse you this way. (I speak as one who used to leave dirty dishes behind.)
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#4
10-05-2005, 07:49 PM
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What are the lease arrangements? I'd suggest throwing their asses out. After having loathed my roomie during the one semester of college that I lived on campus, I always have made it a point to do w/o roomies. Thery just aren't worth it. You can overlook the foibles of someone you love, at least for a while, but the main purpose of a roommate is to split costs and yours isn't even doing that.
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#5
10-05-2005, 08:04 PM
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Simple problems have simple solutions.
1. Get rid of the dishes. Box them up, smash them, whatever. I once had roomies that were so bad about this, I smashed the dishes and tossed them in the yard. It worked. 3. Let the kid walk, and let him eat the school food. You are not running a cab service or a restaurant. 4. Money talks, bullshit walks. Good bye.
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#6
10-05-2005, 08:19 PM
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i hear you.
i posted about my roommate the other day in my i need some advice thread. i can't wait to get out of here.
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#7
10-05-2005, 08:36 PM
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I've had my share of roommate problems.
Currently, I'm stuck living with my asshole housemate, but that's my problem. If you can wing it financially, get on your own. The frustration of dealing with idiots gets very wearing after a time.
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#8
10-05-2005, 09:00 PM
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I had three roommates last year. The apartment's set up with four "master suites" and everyone shares the kitchen and living room.
roommate 1 was ok. A bit messy and had some loud friends and would talk your ear off if you gave him half a chance, but all in all, i could deal with him. roommate 2 was also ok. Very rarely home, had just come back from Iraq when he moved in, a bit messy, but a really nice guy. Then there's roommate 3, the only other woman. She and roomy 2 started shacking up a few weeks before I moved in (and by the time they moved out less than a year later they were talking marriage, even though all she did was complain about him and tell me how lucky i was that my SO lives so far away (!!) even though she knew how hard a time he and I were having with the long-distance thing). She claimed to be an obsessive compulsive neat freak, but she left dirty dishes everywhere, left her laundry in the drier, etc, etc. She started the trend of making the living room into a storage room, a few times even blocking the way to my room. When my bed broke (don't ask) and I was sleeping on the floor, it didn't cross her mind for 3 months that I could maybe borrow hers since she slept in roomy 2's room. By that time I had solved the problem. She made simple conversations into competitive events, tried to out-math my mathmatician SO while asking him for help on a simple problem, tried to correct my cooking skills even though she never cooked herself. Blargh, it goes on. And you would think I would have been happy when she moved out. But, no, she left a bunch of shit in the fridge (some with her initials on it) and lied to me and the landlord, saying it was roomy 1's stuff; she left garbage in the storage closet behind my stuff (that I only got to move in there when everybody else left because it was full when I moved in), and STOLE MY SPATULA! Yeah, I know it's just a spatula, but she lied to my face about it. We had a drawer full of spatulas and wooden spoons. As she's moving out, I check to make sure she didn't accidentally take any of my stuff. The drawer is almost empty, just my wooden spoon and a crappy spatula. I ask her about the spatula, and she says she didn't take any because her only one was melted by roomy 1. Interesting. How did the 5 spatulas that were in there get out of there if she didn't take them? A lot of stuff disappeared like that, stuff she had told me was left in the apartment by other people. The conclusion that I came to was that, if I must live with other people (which I must), let them be boys. I can't deal with women, which is probably the main reason I'm not a lesbian. Sorry for the totally incomprehensible rant, but almost no one has been able to ruffle my feathers quite like her.
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#9
10-05-2005, 09:11 PM
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I've had decent roommates before; and really, this isn't so bad (I've certainly had worse). I guess it's just the money part magnifies the little annoyances. And we're going to sit down real soon to work some of these things out.
Zoe The fines for late rent sounds like a good idea. I'll bring it up, if only as a bargaining chip. SteveG1  Except for the fact that they're my dishes.And yeah, I know, toss 'em out. It may come to that, but maybe we can work things out. But come on, people, I know my complaints are petty! I don't want solutions, I want stories!
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#10
10-06-2005, 03:47 AM
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If you are a tenant you are obligated to pay the rent, simple as that.
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#11
10-06-2005, 06:01 AM
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My last roommate before I got married wasn't that bad. She was relatively nice, paid her rent on time and never ever was home. I really mean never - the six months she lived with me she slept at home no more than three nights. She spent all other hours at her boyfriends house.
DH and I set our wedding date and I gave her a month notice to move out. She decided to leave her couch at the apartment for a few weeks, which was great for us because we didn't have one. So after a while, she calls me up and asks if I could deliver her couch for her. We only had a small car, and didn't know if she'd be home when we went to deliver it (chances are not), so we said that we couldn't, that she should pick it up. She brought some friends over, and DH helped her load it into the back of her truck. Well, she told all of our friends that we made her carry the couch down two flights of stairs all by herself! No, noone came and helped her, she had to do it alone.  She's a bit of a drama queen, and everyone thought she was a little nuts anyway, so they just laughed. But to this day she tells everyone what jerks we are because we made her remove her own couch.
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#12
10-06-2005, 06:47 AM
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I know it sounds hopeless, but this is really a case of you letting yourself be taken advantage of.
I had a roommate who wouldn't do his dishes once. He left for 3 days and left dishes in the sink. I put them in his room. I'd tell her, "next time you leave dishes overnight, I'm putting them in your room". And do it. Or put them outside her door so she walks into them in the morning. Next time her kid calls for a ride, "nope, sorry. I'm busy." Now, as for rent/phone. I really don't know what to say. I mean, you have to let her know that you mean business but if she still doesn't pay, then what? You can't break a knee cap. My last bad roommate, I just basically had to start looking for another place, and I walked out of a lease with a couple months left. It was worth losing the security deposit.
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#13
10-06-2005, 07:33 AM
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Anyway, Ken was a DJ at a couple of the clubs in town, and Jim was a chef at a restaurant. I was active duty Navy at the time (I was assigned to a ship that was undergoing a 2-year overhaul in Portsmouth, so I had a lot of free time,) with a part-time job at a record store. It was a pretty sweet set-up all around. I didn't get a lot of sleep, but we had some good parties. Ken had met a guy who was also in the Navy, and this guy needed a place to stay. He said he was assigned to the Air station in VaBeach, so I didn't work with him. He was given the den, and he slept on the couch in there. Soon, like within a month or two, he had not paid us a cent for rent, and ran up $400 of charges on the telephone (which was in my name.) And then he just disappeared one day. No one ever saw him again. About a week after that, a couple of the SPs from the air station came around looking for him. He had been AWOL (UA in Navy terminology) for almost two months. And I never got my $400 for the phone.
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#14
10-06-2005, 07:47 AM
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I feel for ya.
My first roommate had Crohn's. I knew she couldn't help it, but the bathroom (and the bedroom) continuously smelled like a filthiest nastiest uncleaned heavy-traffic gas-station bathroom. She had a bunch of other mental problems too; she gained 50 pounds in the short weeks that we were together (actually, I bet the only reason she didn't gain more was due to her disease--I've never seen anyone eat that much), even raiding my drawers and eating whole bags of candy, cookies, etc. overnight (yes, bags, she had and drinking whole milk like it was water. She became my ex-roommate when she stole a good lump of money from me. I don't feel any anger at her anymore though; she had many many mental problems.
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#15
10-06-2005, 08:08 AM
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Have you thought about changing your number and not telling her?
I have several stories about bad roommates. The one lesson I learned is that I can't live with other women except my childhood best friend. Good luck!
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#16
10-06-2005, 08:11 AM
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This is a great thread for me.
I hear you on the dishes and the rent. My roommate told me the night before rent was due that she couldn't pay. I had to loan her $400. She didn't give me any time to have money transferred into my account, so it was lucky for her that I had the extra money to spare. I had to get on her ass about paying me back--she didn't volunteer the money as soon as she had it. She and her boyfriend are practically married, so he's over here all the time. Boyfriend has no qualms about farting all over the goddamn place, so every couple of days I Febreze the hell out of the couch. She leaves him in the apartment while she goes to class. She also lets him borrow her keys. Both of these make me feel uncomfortable; I need to talk to the rental company about possibly getting a lock on my bedroom door. She's the filthiest slob I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. I don't think I'm anal about having things clean, but JESUS, she's killing me. I started a blog about her, just so I could have a space to vent.
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#17
10-06-2005, 08:38 AM
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Nice-looking blog, AwSnappity. Maybe you should open a website where people can kvetch about bad roommates. People looking for roommates can check it and know who to avoid.
 Adam
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#18
10-06-2005, 09:25 AM
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Hoo boy, the stories I could tell. The stories I could tell about Willy D alone. The guy was one psycho fucknut, I tells ya. But I'll just relate one story about him for now.
90% of the phone calls we got were for him. Most of the time he didn't want to talk to whoever it was, so he got me to screen his calls. He would have me say "Hello? Yeah, he's here. Can I ask who's calling? Saul? Uh, no, he, er, just stepped out. Yeah, just now. Sorry you missed him." As much as I hated doing this, I agreed to it for some reason. But I decided to change the script to something that was not so transparently a blatent lie. Willy got very upset about that. How come I didn't do exactly as I was told? Because, you psycho fucknut, you're lucky I'm screening your calls at all. Well, apparently it was my job to screen his calls. And I was to stay off the phone at all times just in case he got an important call. Which I was to answer. When I suggested that he either pay the entire bill himself, or pay me for my time, he got upset. Violently. OK, one more story. One day he blew up at me because the apartment was a mess. He said he was tired of living like a college student and wanted to live in a nicer place. Apparently it was my fault that the place needed paint. Imagine his surprise when I agreed that the place needed some work. Surely I was a born slob and would never lift a finger to clean up, right? So we worked out a plan to improve the place, part of which was giving it a fresh coat of paint. I arranged with the landlord to get us some paint, and I started painting. Not the whole place, mind you, but my share. More than my share. Months later I asked Willy why he hadn't done his part. "Hey, I don't have time, I have important things to do!" was his answer. And one quick anecdote: He used to walk around the apartment buck naked and with a big boner. He'd point to it and proudly announce how big and hard it was. If we didn't ooh and ah, he'd get upset. Now that I think about it, he really was psycho.
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#19
10-06-2005, 09:27 AM
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Take your pick as to which was worse:
The diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic (I was in a 3/4-way house situation) who would hang up on anyone who didn't call for him, and I would occasionally wake up to see him -staring- at me from the bedroom door at around 3 AM... Or the 'third man'. Third man was 'good friends' with my roomate when we needed a third for rent. Third man was a bad initial choice because, well, he didn't actually pay us the rent! Not for three months. He also had a police scanner on 24/7 because the cops might be after him (his words). He had a rather... Uhm... Skanky girlfriend who had a restraining order against him, but would show up at the appartment about once a month for a 2-day-booze-and-sex-bender with him, which would always end with a shouting match and her threatening to call the cops. After month 3 of no rent and this BS, I told him politely but firmly he had one week to get me the rent money or his stuff would be on the lawn. A day later, I got a call from his mother. She yelled at me and asked me why I was cheating her son out of so much money! Apparently he had told her that he'd paid the rent, but needed money for something horrible I'd been threatening him with (the gyst being I was extorting him). After I explained that he, indeed, hadn't paid the rent, mom got more understanding. I got the rent money 2 days later, and 3 weeks after that I moved out.
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#20
10-06-2005, 09:35 AM
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I actually get along with my roommate quite well, but I have a minor complaint about last night. It was 55 degrees outside last night. The air conditioner really didn't need to be on. Maybe it was at the insistance of your borderline-crazy girlfriend?
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#21
10-06-2005, 09:51 AM
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#22
10-06-2005, 09:55 AM
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I don't see how either the OP's or soulmurk's complaints can be regarded as petty.
If your roommate's costing you nontrivial money by nonpayment of rent or bills, or running up shared bills such as electricity, that's not a petty complaint. If your roommmate's leaving messes around the place that can be expected to attract vermin, that's not petty either. If your roommate blasts the TV or stereo when you're trying to sleep, that's not petty. When hot water is in limited supply, frequently using it all up at a time when you can expect your roommate's going to need it isn't petty. If you've got a phone line that you use for work, and your roommate turns it into his/her personal line, that's not petty. There's lots of other things I can think of that aren't petty complaints either, but that covers most of those two posts, so I'll stop there.
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#25
10-06-2005, 12:40 PM
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Quote:
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#26
10-06-2005, 12:50 PM
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I lived in an house with three other guys for six months. I should have been tipped off on moving day, but I didn't pick up on the hint. As I was moving in, one of my roommates asked me to drive him down to the landlord's office so he could drop off the rent check because it was due that day.
This struck me as a little odd (what would he have done if I hadn't been there?), but eventually the truth came out: this particular guy had bounced so many checks that the landlord refused to take personal checks from him any more. Every month, he'd have to collect rent from the other two guys, then get a cashier's check for the entire amount, and then mail it to the landlord. And every month, he'd be late. He was a dot-com CEO. On the day I moved out, a courier delivered a subpoena from the IRS for him and his company. Suffice it to say that people who consistently fuck up the little things in life (bouncing checks, late rent, can't pick up their son from school) will inevitably fuck up the big things in life. Boot the fucker out.
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#27
10-06-2005, 01:02 PM
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Agonist, I agree with aamco. From what you've posted here, in my opinion, your roommate is a user and a scammer, and you will regret living with her some day. Lock up anything valuable that you can't afford to lose. She's giving you all the signs that she's un-trustworthy - it's up to you to listen to them.
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#28
10-06-2005, 01:13 PM
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The funniest thing he did was lecture me, his girlfriend, and the third roommate on what it was like to be black in America today. Of course, we'd never understand it fully the way he did. "If yo ain't no brother, yo can't understand what my homies is goin' through." The girlfriend and the third roomie, both black, had to point out to Willy that he was, in fact, white. And from an upper middle class suburban home.
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#29
10-06-2005, 01:15 PM
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#30
10-06-2005, 01:19 PM
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But I think the roomie's crime was leaving a towel in the bathroom.
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#32
10-06-2005, 01:25 PM
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How I lived with the guy for 2.5 years is beyond me. But when he moved out, third roomie and I danced for an hour.
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#33
10-06-2005, 01:28 PM
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Well, roomies come in all varieties, but I think the point is that they're all fucking nuts. I don't do the whole sharing territory thing, but a friend of mine roomed for a summer with a girl she was very good friends with and a guy that they were basically friendly acquaintances with. So one night, I was over with the two girls, and we got really drunk, and I got the brilliant idea to check out their male roommate's computer to see if there was porn on it. Strictly curiosity, as he was a computer geek and we figured there'd probably be something entertaining on it. Turns out he had a thirteen gigabyte harddrive devoted to porn. Specifically, child porn. (And foot-fetish stuff, which made the footrubs he'd given his roommates somewhat creepier in retrospect.) Thirteen gigs of images is not really dilletante-level. Nope, dude was apparently devoted to his hobby. For various reasons we didn't end up calling the cops. But it ended up being an uncomfortable summer for my friends.
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#34
10-06-2005, 09:33 PM
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Screw roommates, they suck, I've found that that its cheaper to live by yourself than to support a roommate (girlfriends included) . My horror story from a ways back http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...97#post6278997
Nowadays I live by myself, I don't care what it costs, the cat may not have a job or pay rent, but she at least doesn't piss on herself (the other one is fat and happy living with my folks, read the linked post). Kick them to the curb, because as soon as your nice by covering them or helping them out, your the worlds biggest asshole for not being their windfall. Screw roommates, its not worth the hassle.
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#35
10-07-2005, 05:58 PM
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The assholish solution to someone who refuses to take care of his or her own dirty dishes is to leave said dishes in the person's bed.
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#36
10-07-2005, 08:54 PM
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Not me, this was my friend's psycho roommate. This was in a college dorm, so they were literally sharing one smallish room.
My friend J. and her crazy roommate didn't get on well from the start, but it wasn't that big a deal until J. noticed that some of her underwear was missing. Turns out the roommate thought J. had stolen some of her food (she hadn't), so she'd retaliated by stealing J.'s knickers. Cool. But the most remarkable bit was when she stole the phone. J. was involved in a long distance relationship - and I mean really long distance, about 8,000 miles. She and her bf talked on the phone a lot and as you can imagine, her phone bill was pretty hefty. But J. had always paid on time and in full (the bill was in her roommate's name), so it was a little bizarre when, at the very end of the school year, her roommate unplugged the phone, put it in her bag, and carried it around all week, so J. couldn't make any calls unless Crazy Girl was around to supervise.
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