You are rather evidently under the peculiar illusion that in posting here people are to obey your own very immature and precious little boundaries. After reading this thing, I come away with the impression rather that you are one maladjusted and cretinous little bitch with a rather excessively good (and rather evidently unjustified) opinion of yourself. It’s quite amusing to see you using the word fallacy above…
Use of and right to occupy, not the right to change the decor of the common areas of her house. Decorate your room with photos of your sister and her girlfriend all you want. That’s your right. If she were removing or covering up this photo on a bulletin board in your room, you would be in the right, but she isn’t and you aren’t.
When you buy a home of your own, you can put up life size cardboard cut-outs of that photo anywhere you want. Until then, keep it in your room where it belongs.
She can put whatever she wants on her fridge. She owns it, and the rest of the house. In exchange for money, she has given up her right to use and occupy your room, and to allow you use of the common areas. It’s not reasonable to assume that you would be putting photos on the fridge no matter what you think. It’s presumptive of you. You have the right to store food and medicine in the fridge, and that’s it.
It’s not going to go that far. Since you have built this up in your head to a battle of wills rather than accepting that you don’t have the right to do what you have been doing, you will probably explode. Then she can have you removed, lease or no lease.
It’s kind of shocking to see how entitled you feel.
Hardly ever using the common areas doesn’t give you additional rights. It’s your choice to either use or not use the space.
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It wouldn’t have occurred to you because you’re too young to have internalized yet that not everyone in the world thinks like you do. Likewise, you’re too selfish and entitled to have considered beforehand that the refrigerator is not at all “public space” in the home, as you suggest; it’s a piece of private property. That doesn’t belong to you. (The kitchen is shared space in the home; the decorating space of the refrigerator door is not.)
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You’re not a roommate there. You’re a tenant. You seem to keep forgetting that. Just like you forgot to mention it in your OP. And for several posts thereafter. And in the subtext of all your protestations against the sound critiques of other Dopers in this thread.
I’m sure you would have adhered to a rule were it laid out beforehand, but come on! You expect your landlord to stipulate every conceivable rule permutation in a lease, beforehand? Jesus! Grow up already. Don’t decorate other people’s appliances, even if you’re living in the home (especially if you’re living in the home as a renter!). This is just a no-brainer.
It’s NOT “shared space”. It’s her refrigerator door. In her home, she gets to pick the carpet pattern, wall paint color, and what gets posted on the fridge door. It’s difficult for me to conceive that you would not intuitively understand this.
Good luck with this attitude in all your future personal business. :rolleyes:
This.
I didn’t think I’d say this, but now people are being too hard on rachelellogram.
She sounds young, and innocent, and tbh I wouldn’t have understood how offensive what she did was until I was about 22.
Some people mature at different stages - there’s no need to start all dumping on her, once she gets why she was wrong.
A matter of opinion, I guess.
And I would have understood when I was nineteen. So what?
Where has she admitted she was wrong? I must have missed that.
I seriously doubt that rachel is ever going to admit that she’s wrong here.
The OP handled the situation in a more mature fashion than 99% of the adults I know ever would have. Just the other day, my grandpa got into a verbal fight with grandma about where the phonebook was located. And this guy’s more mature than nine Methuselahs.
Bravo on being 100% level headed IRL, which is the only place it matters.
I was under the impression that she’s older than me by a bit and I’m 24. Maybe I’m wrong?
My image of her was a (slightly ditzy) 18-year-old blonde, who has just left a very sheltered home.
That’s just the image that I have constructed in my head from what she has said - I could be sooooooo far off.
Maybe she can pop in and clear it up, but I know she has gone to and dropped out of college, so she has to at least be in her mid 20s.
that’s really sad. nothing wrong with playing WoW, but for it to be the only thing making your life worth living is pitiful.
i may have missed it, but was there ever any kind of confirmation that the landlord is a bigot, or is that just a conclusion the OP jumped to?
I’d be interested to know about that too. As it is now, my guess is that she volunteered the information to her landlord in order to feel her out on the subject and got less than a ringing endorsement as a response. So she decided to put up a photo of her sister and her girlfriend in order to make a statement and her landlord didn’t like it.
No arguments. No confrontations. Just put the damn picture back up. And repeat, every day til she gives, or April comes around. Anything else would just be letting her know she’s getting to you.
That’s right - you stick it to her. You show her she’s not the boss in her own house.
Ain’t nobody gonna make me flush the toilet after I poop, neither!
Yeah!
If she wanted Rachel to flush after pooping, it would have been in the lease.
Yeah! And you can’t make me pay you money to live here!!
Oh, wait…