If it did, my PG&E bill would be a LOT lower. Just because I offered you free utilities when you moved into the spare bedroom, because I was desperate to share the rent with someone.
It’s not a reason for you to leave both my big screen TV in the living room and your 25" TV in your bedroom turned on, WHEN YOU’RE NOT EVEN HOME!!
By the same token, please do not leave the thermostat cranked up because you are cold, thereby making the apartment roughly the temperature of the surface of the sun, and then LEAVE YOUR DOOR CLOSED!!! Hey Einstein: if your door is closed, the warm air cannot get in!!
Natural gas is not free, nor do electrons flow magically out of the outlets all over the apartment without first passing through a meter which charges me for them!!
I have one who habitually opens the windows upstairs, (to let the steam from his shower and the frying from his breakfast out, without regard to the handy ventilation supplied for both these purposes,) cranks the heat up, and then leaves for work.
He has no concept of how a thermostat works, no matter how many times I explain it to him – as far as he’s concerned, it has two settings – all the way on, and all the way off. He likes it all the way on, most of the time. He sits around in cotton shorts and a wife beater after work, so he likes it toasty. He doesn’t understand why everyone else says that they’re uncomfortably warm, what with them wearing clothes and stuff.
Since he’s been here (and especially since I spend time away from the house, and can’t always be around to close the windows in the morning or turn the heat down below “face-melting” at night) my gas bill has gone from an already-outrageous $140/mo to $210/mo. I know it’s not entirely his fault, as gas prices have steadily gone up over the last year, but the usage has been increased significantly, too.
Why don’t you people do what I used to do when I had roommates who engaged in rampant fuckwittery? Tell them to cut the shit, and if they don’t, take nasty retaliatory action. Works like a charm. I even drove one I didn’t like out after a few months of abuse.
I could think of some creative uses for ice cubes, for instance…
I used to have two roommates who had one recipe for everything: Place food in pan, place pan on stove, turn flame on high, take a nap. Let tdn scrape burnt food and melted pan off of stove.
I had a roomie who, when not vomiting from alcohol abuse, was despoiling the larder (which was not a fucking communal foodbank) and leaving the refuse scattered and smeared all over the kitchen.
So I put a lock on my door, and put the dirty dishes in his bed. When he put a lock on his door, I kicke it in and resumed the punishment. When he threatened me physically, I got an aluminum baseball bat, and brandished it one evening, making him quite aware that I was very serious about my willingness to use it defensively.
Due to the rise in electricity costs (plus it was a hot summer in Florida, as usual) we have told our tenants that we will pay the first $100 of the electricity bill, they are responsible for anything above that. This month cost them $50.
Can you do that with your tenant? You’ll have to put it in writing, but it might wake him up a bit.
A roomie once did this to me. Unjustifiably, I might add - It wasn’t my turn in the rotation.
I responded by picking my destroyed sheets up by their corners, making a bundle of all the dirty dishes, lighting the whole thing on fire and throwing it out the window.
Yeah, I know. Not one of my most mature moments, but it felt good.
And to think I was considering a reverse Pitting of my roommate who insists on leaving the lights off, and keeping our curtains drawn to “keep in the heat”, to save electricity. I keep coming home and finding him sitting in the dark next to the gap in the curtains with a book, no music on, nothing.
Me (flipping on lights): You do know our monthly rent includes utilities, you know?
Him (creepy voice): But I’m saving Mother Earth.
My last place of residence was a one-bedroom apartment in a five-apartment rowhouse here in Baltimore. Heat was included in the rent, so cost wasn’t an issue for us. But temperature was.
The thermostat for the heating system was on the second floor landing, right outside apartment 2R. Well, the tenants of apartment 2R were Eritrean immigrants. Very nice folks, always with a smile and hello. But unfortunately, they also had a preference for Eritrean-type temperatures, and in winter would crank the thermostat up to 90 degrees. I was on the ground floor, and even with all the radiators in my apartment turned off it was way too hot.
So i or one of the other tenants would frequently make the trek up the stairs to turn the heat down to a reasonable level. Finally, after one winter of this, the landlords put a cover on the thermostat. I hadn’t complained about it, and i’m not sure whether anyone else did. Maybe the landlords just wanted to keep heating costs down.
We don’t even have the heat on in our place yet, although this morning i had an unusually strong reluctance to get out of the shower, which often indicates that things are starting to cool down. We’ll probably have to turn it on in the next few weeks.
There once was a man from De Grasse
Whose gonads were made out of brass
In inclement weather
He’d bang them together
And sparks would fly out of his ass