Living with roommates is always a dice roll—but when you get a roommate this bad, the odds have truly been stacked against you. From the loud to the messy to the completely bizarre, these terrible roommates make even the most uncomfortable living situation seem heavenly.
1. No Lessons Learned
In college, I rented a room in a house from a slumlord. My roommates were addicts and twin brothers who would constantly take my food. Fed up, I decided to get some good old petty revenge.
I baked a batch of brownies with a whole pack of Ex-Lax in them, figuring they'd take one or two, get the squirts, and I'd tell them not to mess with my stuff anymore. NOPE.
One brother ate the WHOLE PAN. Overnight I heard puking, followed by dry heaving. It went on for a while. He told me the next day he had food poisoning and everything came out the other end.
I never told him.
2. Roger That
In my last two years of school, I rented a house split between five guys, one of whom was a last-minute addition that I begged them not to let live with us. I even offered to pay the rent for his room while I looked for a new one. But I got outvoted, and so we had this guy, who I'll call Roger because he looked like Roger from American Dad.
Roger did not seem physically able to walk without stamping his feet, multiple guests commented on how loud he was. Oh, and he wore his winter boots inside. Roger said our Wi-Fi was too slow, he wanted to play Xbox Live while watching Netflix. So he ran an ethernet cable from our kitchen, through the front hall and up the stairs into his bedroom.
He didn’t tape it down nearly either, it hung low in several spots giving our house the appearance of a spaceship in disrepair. He loudly proclaimed how brilliant he was and how much faster the internet was now, not realizing someone had already cut the ethernet cable.
Roger frequently fell asleep with loud music or tv playing on his tower speakers, and would not turn it off unless his favorite roommate asked him to. Yes, he would tell the other three of us to leave him alone and then act all apologetic if Juan would tell him to be quiet.
One night it came to a head. He fell asleep during exams with some loud music playing and it woke the whole house up, all of us (his man-crush Juan included) knocked on his door for almost an hour trying to get him to turn it down. When he wouldn’t answer, we decided to jimmy his lock and turn it down ourselves. That’s when we discovered the disturbing truth.
He was fast asleep with noise-canceling headphones on. All this time he was falling asleep to music and TV, it was just to antagonize us.
3. But An Elephant Never Forgets?
Right after college, I lived in a house that rented out rooms on an individual basis. Most people were completely fine but you'd get the occasional bad roommate. Then there was Doug. Doug was about our age, unemployed, and an alcoholic who would drink himself to blackout almost every day.
He was also a total slob and would make huge messes in the kitchen before going back to his room to drink some more and blast loud music. The next day, he wouldn't remember anything, see the big mess in the kitchen, and whine about "people being gross”.
Of course, when any of us pointed out that it was his mess, he'd always say he didn't remember doing it and that it couldn't be his mess. Yeah Doug, I can't imagine why you don't remember. I'm sure the handle you drank last night had nothing to do with that.
He was eventually kicked out because his parents refused to pay his rent anymore. I genuinely hope he got some help because the amount he drank every day would kill an elephant.
4. Shifting The Blame
Senior year of boarding school my roommate stole my prescription of Adderall, Oxys from getting my wisdom teeth out, and a bottle I had hidden in a chest under my bed while I was away for the weekend. She ended up overdosing and then told the school I gave it all to her. The consequences were devastating.
I got suspended, lost my scholarship for the remainder of the semester, and almost had my college acceptances rescinded. They eventually let me back on conduct probation to finish my last semester. Almost failed physics because of labs I missed during the three-week suspension.
The roommate was a year younger and got a slap on the wrist, plenty of sympathy, and a couple of weeks in an inpatient program. This all happened back in 2014 but last I heard she dropped out of college and lives with her parents. She was a huge kleptomaniac from an extremely wealthy family and just a pathological liar so I never felt bad for her.
5. A Drop In The Bucket
I was in college living in a suite-style apartment with four bedrooms, a private bath, shared living, and a shared kitchen. My friend rented a room, I had a room, and we got two randos assigned to us. After a few months, our places started to increasingly smell worse and we couldn't figure out what was going on.
We deep-cleaned, bleached everything, but could not find the source. The only thing we didn't do was go through the two randos' rooms. One day one of the randoms went home for the weekend. My buddy and I broke into his room and made a seriously disturbing discovery.
This dude was using a plastic bin as a toilet and keeping it under his bed. After a big what the heck moment, we disposed of it and confronted him. He of course denied it all and claimed he never did such a thing. After several days the smell went away and never came back. The best part? He is now a cop.
6. Stuck In The Middle With You
I was dating a girl during Covid. She ended up being nuts so I dumped her, but she started talking to my roommate to try to get information about me. She manipulated him into thinking I mistreated her so they colluded and contacted all my dating apps and got banned on pretty much every dating app.
When I found out, my roommate filed a false restraining order and made up some story that I cornered him, shoved him, etc. I had to hire a lawyer which cost me $5,000. When we went to court, I had so much evidence that he was lying that he didn’t go through with the case and we both signed a mutual settlement agreement.
I lost my TSA Pre and Global Entry and had to go back and forth with TSA for eight months to get that back. The worst thing is that I still lived with the guy for a good five months because of financial reasons and because of the agreement, I could never speak to him about it.
7. No Deal Is Worth Living Like That
I moved into a house with my three friends. One was my best friend, and he was cool. The other was his girlfriend and our mutual friend, who was also another girl. We were the luckiest people alive because we were renting a three-bedroom house for $500 a month.
My buddy grew up poor, and I was homeless for a year. We both knew how lucky we were. We fought hard for everything we had, but the two girls we lived with were spoiled—and it ruined everything. They messed everything up for us.
They would do everything from inviting strangers over to party without asking us on work nights to skipping the rent. They would take our food and never go grocery shopping. They would turn the AC down to 63° in the middle of 100° heatwaves, causing our utility bill to be higher than our rent.
They'd break stuff in the house and start arguments with each other. One girl even brought in two friends to live in her bedroom with her for six months without even asking us. I worked a seriously demanding job at the time. I woke up at 4 am every morning and got to work by 5 am. I wouldn't be home until anywhere from 8 pm to 1 am most nights. It was incredibly stressful.
This was very difficult when the girls kept inviting anywhere from ten to thirty people to party at our house EVERY night. I even came home at 1 am once to find a stranger passed out in my bed covered in vomit. They also played music so loud every night that it would shake my bedroom wall.
The girls didn't give a hoot because they just called out constantly and eventually quit their jobs. Did I also mention that half of these strangers were teenagers who were drinking at our house and then driving home But it all culminated in a horrifying incident.
One night, my friend’s girlfriend got plastered and started stabbing the bedroom door. This isn't even our property! My buddy went to stop her, and she hit him three times. I had to go pin her against the wall and have some random stranger come grab her. It was insane.
I had to beg the landlord not to kick us out and replaced the door. One time, somebody in the house ripped the shower head off in the shower during one of their parties. The threads were ruined, and I had to replace the entire pipe. They also raided our fridge and went through my month’s worth of food I had just bought in a single night. This was a reoccurring event.
I eventually bought a mini fridge and a lock for my door. That worked for a while until someone fell through my door in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. One of the girls' friends hated me because I'd always come out and ask people to leave.
See, my roommate was a small girl who would tell me she'd stop doing this stuff, but then do it the next day anyways. She ended up befriending this huge girl who would talk about me constantly in my own house. The girl would constantly disrespect me in front of people and tell them to keep partying.
She didn't even live there. She just came over to backtalk and get inebriated. Then they had the party to end all parties. They had so many people in the house that a floor joist broke. My buddy and I had to fix it to keep us all from getting kicked out.
It cost us a ton of money and an entire weekend that I should have spent relaxing. It's just another thing to add to the list I had to fix there. I fixed lights and windows that were shattered, punched drywall, toilets, holes in the yard from cars parking in the yard, outlets that were ripped out, paint that was scratched or drawn on, our mailbox after being hit by a woozy teen, countertops that had been burned, busted water pipes from idiots crawling under the sink...I could go on all day.
I spent thousands on this house to avoid losing the only place I could afford to rent. One day, I came home from work to a complete nightmare. They broke half the drywall in the living room. Somebody had scratched up the hardwood floor so badly that half of it would need to be replaced.
The curtain rods on two of the windows had been ripped off the wall. The kitchen sink had been pulled off the wall and had leaked into the floor all night. Our refrigerator had been turned over entirely. This was when the table I bought was snapped in two.
There was vomit all over the house. People were passed out on the ground everywhere. My bookshelf had been knocked over, and half of them were burnt in the yard from what I heard my buddy tell me. I just quit that day. I recorded it all, met up with the landlord, and showed them the video later that day. She was understandably furious.
I admitted to her that I had been repairing things for about a year now to hide it from her. She wasn't even angry at me surprisingly. She was just happy one of her tenants was being honest. I sent her all the video evidence and told her that the people were all still there when I left, just passed out on the floor.
I told her I had found another living arrangement and had to leave. She thanked me and I left. I had packed all my stuff that night and left without saying a word. About the time I got done talking to the landlord, my roommate was texting me how she needed help cleaning and fixing the house.
I just ignored her and took all my stuff to my girlfriend’s house. She later messaged me, saying the authorities were there. She had an entire court case about it and was evicted. She had to pay the last month's rent and utilities alone, as well as all the damages. I haven't talked to her since then.
8. They Can Dish It Out But They Can’t Wash It
Early in college, I stayed in the house with three roommates. In the eight months that I was there, they washed the dishes about three or four times. They would do the thing of letting dishes soak—for days, weeks on end—sometimes in bleach water, in lieu of actually washing them.
It even got so bad that they would replace their pots and pans instead of washing them. I had limited myself to a single cup, plate, bowl, etc, that I had brought with me and kept in my room, to keep from adding to the horde. Even kept my groceries in my dorm mini fridge that I kept in my room.
A couple of times, I spent a couple of hours washing all of their dishes just so I could have enough room to wash my own. Also with the naive hope that maybe once they had a clean slate, they would keep up with it. It didn't take, of course.
Eventually, I just got fed up with that and washed my dishes in the bathroom. I ended up leaving and getting my place shortly thereafter. While I'm still friends with most of them nearly 25 years later, I never had roommates again.
9. When 3 Become 2
I lived with two other of my really good friends at one point. One was fine and dandy—minus the fact that he would cook for himself, not do the dishes, then complain that there were no dishes for him to cook with because we stopped cleaning up after him. The other I am no longer friends with—and our living situation was the reason.
He was a bartender and he loved to party. He would routinely bring groups of people back to our place after work, often around 3 am. One time, I had to be up for work at 6. He brought a bunch of his coworkers back to our place, inebriated, and they started playing Rockband at 3:30 am, then got upset when I told them to get out.
Next, due to the fact that he partied so much, he would sleep in. He also had an alarm clock that would go off until he turned it off. You could hear his alarm clock throughout the apartment. For some reason it wouldn't wake him up, you could sit there and listen to it go off for like, 30 minutes.
But the second you opened his door, it would wake him up and he would be like "oh sorry" and then turn it off. This happened almost every day. I would pound on the walls shouting at him to turn it off but he wouldn’t until you actually went in the room.
He would get mad if you came in to turn it off for him. Despite the fact that he worked nights, his alarm was set for early in the morning for some weird reason. Finally, our lease was coming up. We all agreed to sign again. We needed all three of us to afford it. We kept asking him over and over if he was going to resign and he was always like yes, yes, yes.
The day we had to resign I left for work, and my other buddy left for work. We planned to meet later to go resign. A couple of hours later I'm at work and my other roommate calls me and says: “Yo man, I just got home, and all of our other roommate’s stuff is gone”.
I was like “What”? He was like: “Yeah, all his stuff is gone, and there's a letter just saying sorry, not resigning”. He then proceeded to ghost us for weeks. We eventually ended up confronting him at his work. What he said was infuriating.
He eventually admitted to us that he had never planned on resigning and that he felt the best way was to just wait till we left for work, and then move all his stuff out so he didn't have to deal with the confrontation.
This same guy had a crippling substance and drinking problem that we helped him beat, and then he proceeded to treat us, and tell us, that we were enablers despite the fact that we weren't the ones doing any of that stuff, he was. We don't talk anymore.
10. The Smell Test
It was my college roommate, junior year. seven years ago. We had an on-campus townhouse. I found a dingleberry of his in the shower. He had a smell that followed him. Luckily, it was a cyst, so he went home and got it treated and the smell was gone after that. Unluckily, there was an instance of blood spatter on the wall right by our toilet.
He visited his parents one weekend and left his door open. You could detect a stench from down the hall. Me and another roommate poked our heads in to see what was smelling. My roommate said: "Don't look down”. I looked down, and there was browned underwear. We closed the door. The stench was gone.
The dude also used bar soap that stayed in the shower. That's fine. The problem was that we knew he wasn't using it enough because it stayed the same size. He also cooked and never cleaned. He was pleasant in conversation and literally in nothing else. Not fun to play games with. Not fun to do homework with.
11. Act Your Age
I was in college and lived with random girls because I had gotten into a car accident and had to wait until the last minute to find housing. All the girls were friends, and one was pregnant and moved out because she was due. A random girl moved in who was never there.
She got a kitten when we weren’t allowed to have kittens, and would leave it locked in her room all day with no attention, so we would break in and try to give it some. In hindsight, I should have reported her. She ended up making bacon one day when her boyfriend was visiting and left it unattended.
It splattered all over and caught the kitchen on fire and refused to admit it was her. It was wild. We all had to pay to remodel the kitchen because she didn’t want to take responsibility. She ended up moving out and brought her aunt and cousins with her because she knew she messed up.
The other roommates were getting into it with her fam and they all started throwing hands. I went to record them and the one was coming after me like, "Oh you trying to record us?" I ran upstairs and called the authorities. It was absolutely ridiculous how 35-year-olds or 40-year-olds would really fight college girls because their niece is a liar. It was unreal.
12. I Want To Break Free
I had three at the same time. One was a heavy drinker and a creep that would often pass out on the floor of the kitchen and quite frequently left the stove on. I fed his poor cat a lot. When he was plastered I was careful not to be alone with him. The other roommate was filthy.
He never washed clothes and just bought new ones. Whenever we ran out of dishes I would have to go collect the hordes of moldy plates and cups from his room. He never ever cleaned his bong and it had that awful smell. He'd get offended when he offered to smoke me out and I declined because of the bong water.
Worst of all, he left his personal “pleasure” toys in the shower that we all shared. When I asked him to please be considerate, his answer was mind-boggling. He said, "I thought we were sex-positive in this house”. Dude, I don’t how to explain that leaving your toys in the common shower is just gross.
In the midst of all this, my boyfriend whom I shared a room with developed a video game addiction and started peeing in jugs. I was so miserable that year and when I finally saved enough to move out and dump the boyfriend, my cat and I went on to live our best single lives.
I do not miss my early twenties.
13. Hope The Third Time Was The Charm
I had one roommate who I found out was dealing random pills. Then one day he came home with a massive chemical burn on his arm, and a few days later a mysterious man who didn't speak much English came knocking on our door with a huge aloe leaf. We think he was into some real Breaking Bad stuff. Nice guy though!
The next roommate after that place was a woman with a 10-year-old daughter. She was insane. She told me it would be just the three of us, then as soon as I moved in, her baby daddy was full-time living on her couch, in the house 24/7. Two months later she told me she was going to raise the rent because "We're using more water than three people should be”. Yeah, I wonder why.
I told her I was going to find my own place because the rent was the same at that point. It was raining horribly on moving day so we had to reschedule. I told her this and she seemed fine but then she changed her mind randomly and KICKED DOWN MY DOOR. She started pushing me around trying to start a fight and screaming at me.
I gently shoved her back and she screamed, "Don't touch me!" I just looked her in the eyes and said, "Do you really want to fight me?" She got confused and said, "Uhh…no”. So I kicked her out of the room and continued packing. When I went downstairs to get more stuff she went into this crazy conspiracy theory.
She said I was a dancer sleeping with married men and doing illicit substances. When I asked where she got that info she said, "I know you've been working at the club. You lied to me! I should have you thrown behind bars”. See, I did actually work at a club, though.
I said, "I put my job on the application with the number of the club”. She said, "...Oh. Well, I didn't read it!" Hmm.
14. Overexposed
One of my roommates in college would leave her used menstrual pads face up on top of the trash can in the bathroom. For those of you who don’t have experience with menstruation, you don’t do this for a few reasons: It’s unsanitary, it’s distressing, and it reeks.
Uterine lining + blood + air = a strong, distinct odor many people find unpleasant. So you minimize that by rolling them up and putting them toward the bottom of the bin. The rest of the roommates tried to address it with her, but she never grasped the concept that we (and our guests) didn’t want to see her innards when we went to pee.
15. Playing Chicken
My college roommate was from another country. He was rich and had servants his whole life. So I had to teach him the basics of being independent, especially cooking. So he's thawing this whole chicken in the sink and after like a week, I tell him to throw it away.
Two weeks later I smelled something funky...So I asked him what he did with the chicken. His answer was so gross, it’s unforgettable. He told me he stored it in the drawer under the oven. It was putrid.
16. TV Wars
I lived with the cheapest, most selfish person in existence. The one TV at our apartment was owned by him and it was at least 10 years old and on the verge of going out. One night, before bed, I switched it off because I seriously feared it was a fire hazard.
I'm awoken at past midnight with him returning home, furious that "I broke his TV" because it would not turn on. He demanded restitution and became really aggressive. I went out to call 9-1-1—this was the early 90s, so no cell phones. When I got back, he'd totally switched personalities and was calm and rational.
My mom bought a new TV, but it was mine, and this was one I let him use. One night I was watching Star Trek and he comes and switches the channel mid-episode. I tell him that's not cool and to turn it back. He flips out, becomes aggressive, and we have a physical fight.
I move out and take the TV with me. Then, he has no TV at all. Last I heard, he was threatening to file charges against me. This was 1993 and no charge ever came. Jerk.
17. Hide & Seek
My freshman-year college roommate was up until all hours of the night with her bright desk lamp on. I had 8 am classes my first semester—as did most other freshman—so I was in bed before midnight and she didn't go to sleep most nights until 2 or 3.
When I asked her to turn it off or go to one of the many lounges in our building, she said that she had a right to the room. She also had a boyfriend who was at least three years older than her and who would visit every weekend and stay in our dorm.
She didn't buy a full dining plan and instead ate more than her share of any food I brought into the dorm. I'd buy snacks and place them in a bin on my side of the room, but come home to just crumbs in the bags. Not only that, but if I brought back food my mom made from home, she would eat directly out of the containers instead of taking some and putting it on a plate or in a bowl.
For example, I once opened a container that contained two pieces of cake from a family birthday party, and both pieces were half eaten with the fork she used sitting in the container. But the creepiest part of all? She would hide underneath her bed.
Now I lofted my bed so I had a good five feet underneath my bed, but her bed was at the normal height about a foot off the ground, so it wasn't easy to notice she was there. Multiple times I came back into the room and started going about my business for at least 10 minutes before realizing she was under the bed.
Not sure why she did it or why she didn't at least say "hey" when I came back in to alert me that she was present, but it freaked me out. She would also slam everything in the room when she had to get up before me. It was rare, but when she had to be up before me if my class was canceled or something she slammed everything she could possibly slam in our room.
She would always say to me "You're so quiet I never even hear you get up!" but then would be ridiculously loud when it was my turn to sleep in. Thank god she decided she wanted to pay the extra for a single room and moved out right before winter break.
18. The Blame Game
My neighbor and her boyfriend whom I had only known for about a month talked me into moving in with them saying I could “save money”. I was emotionally wrecked and in a weak state at the moment. I had gone to them for emotional support and someone to talk to, and they saw me coming a mile away.
They were lazy, narcissistic hillbilly trash who refused to work. He—we will call him Walter—was working on trying to get disability for a supposed “back injury” that only became apparent if he was going to court, going to the doctor, or refusing to do housework.
She—we will call her JoLynn—was on SSI for a learning disability, but her check went almost entirely toward movies and entertainment when it would arrive. The one paying the bills was Walter’s elderly father who had earned his social security. They had a baby who was JoLynn’s crutch for getting her way on EVERYTHING.
Every time life hit her hard, her argument would start with, “I have an xx-month-old baby…” The fear of CPS visiting the home would almost always be thrown in, as well as numerous threats toward anyone who might dare to call them.
The house needed to be cleaned? My job. Unexpected bill? My rent went up to where I was paying these loons over $400/month by the time I moved out. Privacy? Not allowed, because JoLynn was afraid I would spread dirt on her family and, of course, get CPS called.
My room was busted into at any time of day or night, or whenever she felt like ranting. I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep, and I had to be at work at 6 AM with a 45-minute commute. The funniest thing? I was the one doing THEM wrong.
When I finally got out of there, they demanded money for ALL the food I had eaten, accused me of hurting the baby (absolutely not true), said my family had called them making threats, and that I had cussed her out (also not true), and tried to hold all my stuff until I paid up.
I did end up getting most of my stuff out by threatening to bring the authorities with me to get it, and that was my one victory in the end. I left after four months and never looked back. This all happened almost 15 years ago and I still have some residual PTSD from some of my experiences living with these people.
19. Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness
I had one dorm roommate who was too lazy to go to the bathroom to change her pads, so she would crawl under her covers and change them with me in the room. She did this every single time she was on her period. She would set alarms for like 5 am and then just leave...with the alarm going off. She would come in at like 3 am and loudly eat cereal. And then there was my other roommate.
She was immunocompromised but went to parties every night while COVID was at its peak. She caught COVID and as far as I know, she still hasn't recovered. It's been about a year. She still parties every day. She also liked to make up stories about how good of a hacker she is. I later found out she was just changing HTML in Chrome.
20. Bad Track Record
In my second college year, I was located to a residency with the two messiest people I’ve ever met in my life. They weren’t terrible people mind you, but they had zero consideration for basic cleanliness. It was the kind of messy you see of the stereotypical messy friend on a sitcom.
I opened the fridge to move in my food and I swear it nearly knocked me out. I quickly requested to be moved to another unit and was told by the residence association that they weren’t shocked. Apparently, these two already had a history with the residency.
21. Sympathy Pains
I had a roommate in college who found out she had a tumor in her throat a few months after going into remission after her thyroid cancer was treated. After she broke the news to all of us, my other roommate’s reaction was twisted.
She decided to make up a story about she had had cancer as a child and almost died. The entire story was FAKE.
22. Dinner For One
I was in a house of three guys, and I was the only one who liked things clean and organized, while the other two didn't care.
Regularly all the dishes, cups, and silverware would be in their rooms with dried-up chocolate milk cemented to the inside of the glasses. Plates and silverware were so encrusted with week old food that everything had to be soaked in hot water before it could actually be cleaned.
I bought my own silverware, cups, and plates. I just took what I needed out of the sets and boxed the rest up. I cleaned my dishes after each use and stored them in a container in my room just so I knew I had dishes I could use when I wanted to eat.
23. Sleepscrolling
In my first year at University, I was randomly matched with my roommate. We were friends for the first three months. I went home one weekend and usually before I leave, I clean my side of the room as well as any weekly chores. When I walked in the room, I was shocked. My side of the dorm was completely messed up.
My bed was ruined, there were crumbs over my desk, and my bins had been tampered with. I was confused because I knew I cleaned it. I asked my roommate at the time if she had people over and messed up my room. She denied it. That night I texted my mom saying that I’m pretty sure she used my side, which is fine, as long as it’s cleaned after.
I was ranting to my mom about how it’s wrong and she should be a better roommate and own up to it. I then clean up the mess—because she refused to clean a mess she “didn’t” make—and went to bed. For the next few weeks she stopped talking to me completely.
Throughout the weeks I would text my mom and friends about the whole situation and how it’s weird. A mutual friend of mine and the roommate had asked me if we (my roommate and I) were still not talking. I had said no, she stopped talking to me after I went home that weekend. He then told me the truth.
My roommate for months had been waiting until I fall asleep to take my thumb and use it to open my iPhone and read all my messages. He told me that she stopped talking to me because of the messages I would send to my mom/friends.
The mutual friend only told me then because he witnessed it and she said, “It’s fine she’s a heavy sleeper,” and thought it was wrong. I couldn’t believe it! One night after the mutual friend told me, I decided to see if she’d do it again. I had a coffee and “fell” asleep.
When she thought I was sleeping I felt her do it and snoop through my phone for 20 minutes. After that, I went to the residential office and switched rooms. She has denied this ever since. That was the last time I saw her. She ended up dropping out of school the following year.
24. Turning The Tables
I was living with a couple for a while after my ex-boyfriend left me high and dry. They were the worst roommates ever and messy as heck! I found out while they were on vacation that they were almost three months behind in their rent and had lied to the landlord about one of them losing their job.
He was nice enough to work out a payment arrangement, but had lost his patience. When I confronted them about where my share of the rent had gone for the last three months, they blew up on me, accused me of stealing from them and gave me 48 hours to move out.
25. Jekyll & Hyde
She seemed great at first. We became friends and later my need for a place to stay coincided with her needing a roommate. So I moved in. Big mistake. She went from being a nice friend to a total narcissistic nightmare.
I had some things that I couldn't keep in my room because it wasn't big enough. She knew about it before I moved in and told me that I could store it in the shed in the back garden. A week after moving in, she asked me to move it into the dining room that wasn't being used because she wanted the shed as a playroom for her kids.
Then she wanted me to move my boxes to the living room. Then I had to move everything back to the shed. That last time she asked me to move it was right before I went to work. Her full-time nanny decided to help out while the kids were having a nap and started moving the boxes to the shed without my knowledge while I was at work.
She got home before I did and found the nanny moving my things. When I got home she started screaming at me, asking me how dare I ask the nanny to do what she told me to do. The screaming went on for about an hour and every time she seemed to lose steam I'd try and explain my side and she'd start screaming at me again.
She screamed at me for things every single day. Every single time it was either something her kids did or something like only getting takeout for myself instead of feeding the whole household. Once, I did get takeout for everyone and I got screamed at because she wanted something different. Nothing I did was good enough.
She almost never had food in the house so her kids would raid my fridge and eat all my food. She and her kids would use all of my things whenever they wanted to. How can someone use a half bottle of conditioner on their hair at a time? I'd use it once and the next time there wasn't anything left.
Or using my razor to shave. Or using my facecloth to wipe her baby's behind when changing nappies. It was gross and became horribly expensive because I had to keep replacing things. I started locking my bedroom door whenever I wasn't home.
She got upset because she and her kids couldn't get in to take my stuff so she broke the door. That was the last straw. I found another place and moved out a few days later. Thankfully it was an informal arrangement. I wasn't on the lease, hadn't signed a contract and hadn't paid a security deposit either so it didn't cost me anything to leave.
My mental health tanked during my two-month stay and I was on edge by the time I left. I needed a three-week stint in the psychiatric ward soon after leaving. Before moving in, I actually pitied her because her husband had taken his own life a few months before I met her. After being stuck with her screaming for two months…enough said.
26. Think Outside The Box
I had a roommate in college who would never get up when his alarm clock went off. He would automatically hit the “snooze” button. Seven minutes later, the alarm goes off again, and he hits “snooze” again. He would do this at least seven or eight times before he would actually get up.
I suggested he set his alarm for later and get up the first time it went off. He looked at me like I had a third eyeball.
27. A Bird In Hand Is Worth Two In The Busch
I had a roommate in college who was from the country. At first we kind of got along, but as the year progressed we got along much better and became friends. Over the summer, he got into illicit substances and generally lost his mind and dropped out of school.
He came and visited me on my birthday and said he left a little surprise for me in my apartment. He was off so I didn't think anything of it. About a week or two later, I kept smelling something rotten but had no clue what it could be.
After looking everywhere, I saw an empty Busch Light box under my bed. I originally ignored it but came back to it a few days later. When I opened it up, there was a deceased bird in the box. Luckily, I don't think I ever saw him again.
Freepik, azerbaijan_stockers
28. Expensive Mistake
I had a roommate when I was in the forces that ended up having the maturity of a 12-year-old.
The roommate asked if his girlfriend could move in. We'd all agreed—there were three parties living in the house—to split rent evenly. My wife and I were in the master bedroom, but we'd bought the washer and dryer and furnished the whole house, and all three parties had agreed this was fair. The guy's girlfriend moves in and she's completely useless.
The two of them never cleaned ever, their room or any other part of the room. They'd sit on the couch and watch the other three people living with them clean the house every weekend. His girlfriend started to complain that it wasn't fair that rent was split evenly. She had just quit her job and wasn't working.
The roommate decided to not pay his share of the rent one month because he made the sound financial decision to spend $800 on a drone and couldn't afford rent. He then decided to chase my dogs with the drone.
My wife and I had to go out of town for 10 days to go to our wedding ceremony on the other side of the country. We'd set up someone to watch the dogs while we were gone, but roommate's girlfriend "wasn't comfortable having strangers over". We asked her to watch them instead, and she agreed.
It turns out she spent the whole time sitting on the couch, not letting the dogs go out throughout the day. They peed everywhere. She put them alone in my empty bedroom at night, and they destroyed their dog beds. We came home to a house that reeked of puppy pee, and had to spend almost $300 to replace the dog beds and rent a carpet cleaner the day I came home from my honeymoon.
She then asked if we would cover $100 of their rent because she "watched the dogs for us". At this point, I had maxed out a credit card trying to make sure my wife and I weren't evicted. At a house meeting with these buffoons, I was told by this individual, "Sometimes, you just go into debt," and he compared his negligence of paying the rent he agreed to pay to when he loaned his truck to a friend and it was involved in an accident.
They then informed us 10 days before the annual lease was renewed that they were moving out. They screwed us over so hard, but they ended up putting our third roommate in the worst situation out of all of us. I had to take out a consolidated loan to repay the credit card debt, and I just paid it off this month.
This all took place six years ago. I hate that guy.
29. Moving In Absentia
I was in the Navy stationed on a ship at Pearl Harbor. My roommate back home was a jerk.
While on the ship away from port, the roommate decided to move out but he told the moving company to move the ENTIRE APARTMENT, including my stuff. He was moving off island to NY and had already left.
Luckily for me, the moving company the jerk hired employed my then-girlfriend’s brother-in-law, who arrived at the apartment, realized what was happening and then called my girlfriend. That’s when we came up with a plan.
She arrived to the apartment, told the movers exactly what needed to be moved, saving all of my personal belongings. The brother-in-law “joked” that the jerk’s stuff that they were moving would probably be lost in transit.
30. Escape Plan
After getting her own car stolen by leaving it unlocked in a parking lot all summer, she borrowed mine without asking while I was out of town and totaled it—but not before racking up enough toll violations that I got my license suspended.
Her excuse was that she was late for an exam but our mutual friend told me she was coming to buy illicit substances from her. When I confronted her, she moved out the next day leaving me to foot the bill for all the damage her dog caused to our house.
31. Throw The Whole Van Out
My ex and I dated and lived together for about three years. One day, I was looking for plasticware to contain some food but discovered we had none available for use. All of it was missing.
I had asked my ex where all of the plasticware had gone off to, knowing full well that she had it because I didn’t have it and neither did our cupboards, apparently. Instead of saying, “They’re in my van,” she took the long route via complaining and moaning until I finally said, “Forget it,” and went out to collect.
What I found, however, was something out of my worst nightmare. Piles on piles of weeks—maybe months—old plasticware full of hairy, fungal, moldy chicken, rice, steak bites, wraps, sandwiches, etc. I nearly vomited at the collective smell when I opened the containers.
I then let her have it because we had run into that same issue multiple times and I was only repeating myself. We both worked full time and yet it was always me cleaning up after the both of us. Yeah. I lost it on her and it kickstarted a massive fight.
I’ve never even heard of this happening to anyone but then again I was the only person I knew who was foolish enough to throw their early 20s away by moving out with an irresponsible roommate.
32. Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
There was Joe and Zoey. They rented a room from me for six months or so. They broke up after a few months and she moved into a tent in the backyard until I told her to take it down. The yard had just been reseeded. Then she disappeared suddenly and I never saw her again. He stayed for a little longer and took my food.
After he moved out, I found his room trashed. He hadn't been throwing his trash in a trash can. He had been dropping it out his window onto the side of the house. It took forever to clean up. He did not get his deposit back.
33. Vengeance Is Sweet
Isaac was an older guy in his 50s. He spilled soda all over the counters and never cleaned it up. He broke my nice hourglass and left the sand and glass on the floor for someone to step on. He refused to pay rent his last month so I kept his deposit.
He also didn't clean anything and left a bunch of trash. A few months after he moved out there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a process server serving me with paperwork. He was suing me for $5,000 saying I took his cookware and his deposit. I laughed out loud.
I actually prepared for court. He didn't. He lost spectacularly. My counter suit was fully awarded. I knew he would never pay but I was just glad to have him out of my life.
34. Don’t Mix Friends And Living Spaces
I was doing a favor for my best friend at the time. He had broken up with his girlfriend and couldn't cover his rent alone after she left. I told him I didn't mind helping, but just understand even though we are best friends, we're just as much roommates so respect those boundaries. Within a week, I couldn't take it anymore.
He left dishes all over the place, had people over to party constantly (without asking) that would be loud and crazy until the early morning hours. What pushed me over the breaking point was when I got home from work one night and once I got settled in, I reached for the remote for my TV and noticed it wasn't on my nightstand next to the bed, where I usually left it. Nor was my TV on my dresser.
He had a one night stand over and decided to help himself to taking my TV into his room. He also broke that TV by dropping it in the process. But in the following weeks, he was upset at ME for telling him he'd have to find another option. Took a long time to mend that friendship but was a heck of a lesson for not just him, but for me in choosing/helping a living situation.
35. Gone In An Instant
Once my roommate went through my room to find a USB stick he saw in my bedroom for storing stuff for school. When he plugged it in, it asked him to reformat it, and the stoned jerk just clicked, "Okay". The consequences were heartbreaking.
I stored all of my pictures in that USB stick. All my pictures from the ages of 19-27 years old. Just gone. I know I should have stored it better, but my computer had just crashed the week before, and I hadn’t had time to get a new one and make a backup. That USB was the backup.
I found a few on Facebook, but there were pictures of my late brother in there that I’m never going to see again.
36. Putting The “Hidden” In Hidden Valley
I lived with a guy that drove me nuts.
He had ADHD. Not a case of it being over-diagnosed...he had it and he didn't like taking his meds if he wasn't in school. So, living with him often included him demanding that me and our other roommate clean the house because he couldn't stand to live in filth.
The house was dirty, three 20-something guys lived there, but it wasn't terrible. We would agree to help, and start by wiping down counters and things while he moved furniture out of rooms to clean underneath.
Trouble is, he didn't have the attention span for such a big job, so he would ghost shortly after and now my other roomie and I were cleaning an apartment we didn't think needed cleaning and we had to rearrange all the furniture that he moved around. The worst part of this was that he was not a sanitary guy.
During one of these cleaning sprees he found a bottle of ranch behind his bed and came out to announce it to the rest of us. It wasn't a forgotten dropped bottle...no, it was ranch he had hidden there so no one else would use it. He then drank straight from the bottle of ranch that had been "hidden" behind his bed for several months.
I almost vomited right there.
37. Cat Scratch Fever
My last roommate told me that he could never trust me again because I promised like OVER A YEAR before that I wouldn't get a cat since he was getting a cat. At the time, I had two rats and after they passed on, I had no plans on getting any other pets.
Then, one day, a cat showed up on my stoop. He waited and yelled for me every day. It got to the point where I took him to a shelter hoping he'd get adopted, though instead they neutered and released him and he came right back. At this point, I just accepted fate and talked to my roommates about letting me bring in this little guy.
They agreed! My wrong here was bringing him in without making a plan and just bringing him in one day. I made sure introductions were done properly. I spent like a month carefully monitoring them. They were even sleeping/playing together.
There was a day that both cats were playing and my cat scratched his cat. This was apparently my roommate's final straw and he packed his bags and took his cat to his boyfriend's house, and then moved into another apartment with him.
We knew he wanted to move out and be with his partner—no one would have had a problem with that. Instead, he burned his bridges. He sent a series of angry, horrible texts about how selfish I am for adopting a cat after I promised almost TWO YEARS BEFORE that I wouldn't adopt a cat.
No regrets, I would die for this cat.
38. Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number
I had an older roommate (50+) who moved in because his old place was sold. He lived with others at that place. When he moved in, he brought SO many things in that his room was packed and even had to store the rest out on the balcony, which is exposed to weather but only accessible to his room.
The guy lived with me for about a year, but he always kept his door closed, and I didn't want to pry too much. But a few times when he'd go, I could see glimpses of his room as the door opened and closed. It was absolutely disgusting.
We started having rodent problems, and my dog alerted to it, always chasing a scuttling rat too fast for me to see. The other roommate and I decided to try and seal all the cracks in the kitchen between the walls, appliances, etc, with steel wool.
After doing that, the rats were still around the kitchen, and we couldn't figure out why until one day I saw one scuttle back to HIS room under the doors and all. Even though I installed a door draft stopper, the rats could still go through.
Eventually, we decided to kick him out, but I couldn't before the pandemic with the lockdown, so I had to live with it. I confronted him about the rats, and he just looked dejected. That’s when he revealed the dark truth. He's never learned how to vacuum, and eats in his room with crumbs and candy all over the floor.
The carpet had liquid stains on it, and the room smelled so bad. Even the bed and the drapes smelled bad, I had to throw them out, plus I don’t know what else he brought or attracted in terms of pests or rodents.
He had a decent job making money, but boy, imagine growing up never learning how to clean up after yourself or even knowing how to cook, the guy always ate out, ordered in, or what have you. He was reheating pasta and I kid you not, he added a cup of water to his leftover pasta dish before putting it in the microwave.
He got a place a few blocks away, and before he left, he told me he's going to hire someone to clean every week. I haven't spoken to him since. But I will note that the movers he hired told me that "they've never seen anything like this before".
Freepik,freepik
39. Turn Down Service
Due to a super severe housing crisis during my studies, I moved in with my then-boyfriend and one of his friends. I'm usually not a violent person, but after a short while, all I was doing was fantasising about how I'd put a pillow over his face in his sleep. I have a ton of stories about this guy.
A lot of them are just your run of the mill bad roommate stories, like him being a disgusting slob and using the apartment like a hotel. He'd come home every three or four days, trash the entire place, only to leave and come back after we caved and cleaned the mess, just to repeat the cycle. But I also have some more spicy stories, so I'll tell one of those.
It is important to note that he was an absolute player. I'm usually against all sorts of shaming of all genders, but he was just the worst. He thought he was THE hottest thing (he wasn't) and made partying and bringing home girls his entire personality.
So one day he calls me, asks me if I'm home. I say yes. He then proceeds to ask me if I could "do him just a small favor". We needed his part of the rent to keep the apartment, plus he was friends with my then-boyfriend, so I couldn't get into an all-out fight with him. So I tell him, yeah whatever sure I'll do it, just to get rid of him.
He then explained that he is on his way home with a girl, but didn't really have time to tidy up his room and if I could "push some stuff under his bed and put on FRESH SHEETS for him". I, being entirely broken at this point, actually gave in and did it.
I know, I'll forever live with the shame. So I make this jerk’s bed like I'm his freaking mom, just to then lie awake half the night in the room next door, hearing them bang as loudly as possible, keeping me awake and plotting my revenge.
40. 14 Against 1
I had 15 of them while living in a student house. The worst one was the one who was always creeping on the girls. The guy would spy from his own room to see if one of us got out of the shower and walked back to our rooms.
Then suddenly he'd knock for some silly reason before you had time to put any clothes on—and open the door himself if you hadn’t rushed to lock it. Naturally, we quickly learned to lock our doors, but sometimes someone would forget and he'd be like, "But I knocked," even though he still entered straight after, mom-style.
It made so many of us uncomfortable. The worst part? Management wouldn't do anything. Eventually, the other guys took it upon themselves to make sure the creeper was never left alone with one of the girls as best they could. We also regularly checked toilets and showers for hidden cameras because you never know how far someone will go.
Student housing has been a nightmare for decades here, so it wasn't as simple as moving to a different house. We should have filed a report, I know, but being 18 and made to doubt whose fault it was clouded that nice and clear vision you always have in hindsight.
41. Lifehack Gone Wrong
My roommate stopped started buying second-hand clothes instead of doing laundry. He had dirty laundry spilling out of his closet and hidden in common areas like the hall closet and under the couches. When we moved out, he had nine contractor bags of clothes.
42. Let The Trash Take Itself Out
I had a roommate that was... I don't even know, a budding hoarder?
This roommate never cleaned. The house was an absolute travesty of old junk, trash, dirty dishes, and clothes all over the place. They had so much stuff. Too much stuff for everything to have a place within the apartment. There were mounds of unfolded clothes three feet high.
There were shelves that were packed with books, movies, CDs, with the overflow on the floor stacked up in haphazard piles. Random furniture that just had no place with rickety legs. And so much trash just everywhere.
I was always incredibly stressed out as my roommate would consistently never do anything to help with the mess. I felt like I was constantly cleaning. It got so bad that we definitely had roaches. One night, my roommate and their live-in (non-rent paying) boyfriend were eating popcorn on the sofa, and they found roaches IN the popcorn.
They freaked out and put the plastic bowl still filled with popcorn in the oven. But the nightmare didn’t end there. A few days later, they set the oven on fire because they forgot the bowl was in there. It was a huge blazing fire. Thankfully, we have a fire extinguisher, so the fire didn't spread. But my roommate never cleaned up after, and the whole kitchen was a mess.
I was cleaning white dust and burnt exploded popcorn for weeks after. And that's just ONE story from a year of terrible events. When they finally moved out, abruptly, they left the place trashed. Left a ton of stuff. And turned off the electric with no warning.
I've always been a fairly clean person. That whole experience was so incredibly stressful. I was anxious, depressed, and so, so angry. I'm so glad that person isn't in my life anymore.
43. The Spice Must Flow
I had a roommate yell at me, I mean go off, like I just put an immediate family member's life in danger yelling, about using their crushed red pepper on a pizza I made. They said they bought it special in NY—we were several states south. It was McCormick’s from the grocery store.
44. Frozen Out
I had a roommate who I swear was trying to break our AC unit. Thank god she only lived with me for a couple of months. Before she moved in, I told her I tend to set it on the higher side, just because it's hot here and the bills will skyrocket. She said she was okay with that, but also told me she could only pay X amount total for rent and bills.
I agreed since I was in a tight spot and she claimed she was in a tight spot. Well, she moved in and promptly started trying to run the AC at full blast. Like I was freezing in my room, so I'd come out and try to turn it up a little bit so I wouldn't have to be hiding under blankets in the middle of summer in the Southwest.
She'd immediately turn it down again and told me she needed it that cold for a medical condition. I had to beg her to stop, between me being freezing and also because I couldn't afford to pay the massive electric bill she was creating. She suddenly magically had extra money to pay for the AC, ignoring the fact that I was still freezing.
45. Vindication Is Worth The Wait
We had a shared kitchen, the three of us. We had cleaning schedules but they never followed it, they just piled it up until it was my turn. After numerous complaints that I was the only one cleaning, I stopped cleaning.
Three weeks later, there was rotten food and fungi all over the kitchen, and even a cockroach infestation. A cleaning company had to be hired, the costs of which spread over the people living there. I objected on the grounds of my earlier complaints. They didn’t argue, and I did not have to pay.
I even got compensation for eating out every night, and they got kicked out a week later. It was a win for me eventually, but a horrible time before that.
46. Race To The Bottom
I had a roommate build a dirt bike track in our overgrown backyard. It was in a dumpy house alongside a railroad track, so he figured the noise issue of a 2-stroke 125cc bike wouldn't get neighbor complaints and visits from the authorities. Unfortunately, he was correct. It was terrible and wonderful.
47. He Forgot To Ask For ID
This was way back in the pre-cell phone days. My roommate was kind of a jerk who would take any girl to bed that he could talk into it. I wake up one morning and go into the kitchen to make coffee only to be met with a surprise. There’s a girl sitting at the table talking to herself. What she’s saying is seriously freaky.
She's going on like, “My mom is going to end me, dad will end him, etc”. Then she sees me and asks if I could drop her off at her high school. She says she has to be on time for SOPHOMORE orientation. Yep. She was 15. He was not. I moved out that weekend.
48. Thank You For Your Service
There was a total of five of us in a house and rooms were rented out on an individual basis. One guy was pretty awful. He claimed he used to be in the national guard at some point in his life, and had this weird sense of entitlement about it. Like, he genuinely believed he shouldn't have to do any communal chores or clean up his own messes because of that.
He was also the biggest victim I've ever met. Nothing could ever be his fault and he'd deny any wrongdoing, even with evidence literally in front of his face. The entire time he lived in the house, he was supposed to be looking for a job but all he did was light up, cook instant ramen (which again, he never cleaned up), and watch Netflix on his phone.
We'd hear him getting in loud arguments with his parents about why he was still unemployed and it was always some new excuse that they clearly weren't buying. He eventually left because his parents stopped paying his rent. The worst part of it all is that this dude was 41 at the time but had all the maturity of a spoiled rotten 10-year-old.
49. Not His Brother’s Keeper
I moved into a house with two brothers. One seemed to think he was god’s gift to humanity and couldn't do anything wrong. Me and his brother kept the house tidy while he didn't. He left little black hairs on the toilet and in the shower and denied it could possibly be him.
He'd always go into my room to watch my TV and VHS player and denied doing it. Then he complained to his parents that my room was messy—just clothes, books, and magazines on the floor, not food or dirty plates. One day I woke up in the middle of the night—and what I saw was horrifying.
His father was standing over me telling me that "he" wants to move out as the place is never tidy and "your room is a mess," etc. All the while his mother sat downstairs giving his brother and his partner the same speech. Me and the brother moved out within two weeks after that. I never shared a place with another person after that.
50. No Escape
My freshman year was the worst. It was my first time living away from home and from my family. I had done the roommate selection thing and it seemed all three of us would pair well. It went well for the first month. Though the third person ended up not moving in and the two choose someone else that I was just like meh about to move into the dorm.
Then they started drinking, staying up late, blasting music, bringing people over, and not locking the main door so anyone could just come in. They refused to carry their keys with them and instead just left the door unlocked. Many nights we just had people waltz in. This was especially terrifying because it was guys that would come in.
I personally don't care if people stay up late but often asked if they could keep the noise down as I had morning classes and they did not. They did not respect this and would turn the volume up. In regards to drinking, the university had strict policy. And we only had one fridge.
I was not going to get in trouble for having drinks in there, so I would throw them out. I eventually got my own mini fridge. And kept all my stuff in there as well as a basket for dry goods. They also never cleaned the common area and the kitchen area and it smelled horrendous. It was moldy and there were flies.
Now the boys. I was very much not okay with the opposite gender being in our dorm at all times. Especially since you would have to leave your room to go to the bathroom. One particular guy would harass me, bang on my door, and try to get into my room.
He would follow me from the dining hall at night back to my dorm and would wait for me in the common area. The other three female roommates thought this was funny and would laugh at me for being uncomfortable. I stopped showering at night and would hide under my bed when I heard his voice as well as push stuff up against my door.
Many, many times I asked for help from the RAs. Many RAs are terrible. Making sure people have a "fun" freshman year is no reason not to enforce university rules. I used to cry myself to sleep. And I was so scared to leave my room. I would even get up super early to take a shower just to make sure that someone wasn't in the dorm.
I put up with this for a semester before finally filling out a form and meeting in person with the room coordinator to change my living situation. The weekend before changing my living situation, one of the female roommates lost it on me and two upperclassmen I had brought over to help me pack.
They had to physically hold her back. I had to file a report and the authorities came and moved me that night to my new living space. I have PTSD from the semester-long events with the male who stalked and harassed me. People don't take stalking as seriously as they should.
He ended up being a class of mine a year later and I was terrified of going to class. I am very hypervigilant around men. It has taken years for me to even be comfortable having male professors again. I still am very uncomfortable with males entering my living spaces.
Sources: Reddit,
