If you think you have it bad, wait until you see what these Redditors have had to deal with. Welcome to the championship tournament for the worst roommates of all time—and boy, are these competitors next-level bad.
1. The Unexperienced Con-Artist
He told me he was selling stuff on Craigslist for rent money. He gave the landline phone number (mine) for callbacks.
I was taking a message for him and asked what it was about when the caller described wanting to buy "the bedazzled sidekick" That’s when I made a disturbing realization.
He was trying to sell my cell phone.
2. Patient Zero
My roommate made us Patient Zero in a campus-wide bedbug infestation.
And this wouldn't have been that bad, everyone makes mistakes—but she made it awful for the most ridiculous reason. She saw three separate doctors over a period of three months, who all said the same thing, and then she ignored medical advice repeatedly before finally checking, at which point, she'd been all over campus.
Then she had the nerve to sit all eight of us down for a roommate meeting where she told us that we all needed to be "serious" about the bedbug protocol and get to the laundromat to clean our clothes and stuff because she just couldn't take any more stress and she needed this situation resolved. After MONTHS.
I'm still really irritated by it because she really presented it as though she was the victim. Like someone had broken in and put bedbugs in her bed. But she has absolutely no sympathy or empathy for anyone else on campus dealing with this, nor for any of us, her roommates, who were forced to grapple and deal with it out of our own pockets. She had no apologies or even kind words for us. She wasn't a great roommate to start with, but she was living in the same room as two girls who were dating, so I gave her some leeway. This just took everything over the edge.
3. The Ice Queen
I had a roommate who I swear was trying to break our AC unit. Thank god she only lived with me for a couple 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. She told me her ex who she was living with was abusive, turns outs she was the abusive, manipulative one and seemed to consider being told the word "no" as the worst thing anyone could do to her. 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. She was just overweight. 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.
Freepik, freepik
4. The Evil Cat Lady
I had a weekend getaway planned and confirmed a couple of weeks in advance that she could take care of my cat while I was gone. Side note: she had a cat too.
Before I left, re-confirmed that she would be around and could take care of them. It wasn't uncommon for me to do all the kitty duties, which I didn't mind at all, but because I was used to being on top of it I wanted to make sure she had it under control.
I got back after three days and clearly, no one had been in the apartment for at least a couple of days. The cats had no water or food and had been clawing at the door enough to chip a bunch of paint off of it.
I texted her and asked if she had watched the cats, and she replied that she decided to stay with her boyfriend for the weekend, completely oblivious to the fact that she had abandoned two helpless animals.
I asked if she realized the cats hadn't had food or water in a few days, and she replied "Oh, they're just cats, they are fine".
I asked her to move out and also if I could keep her cat because I was worried about her ability to take care of another creature, both of which she agreed to.
It really is some next-level evil loser thing to do that to creatures that are dependent upon you to survive.
5. The Creep To Rule All Creeps
Several of us were hanging out, he ran into the room, took a picture of my girlfriend, without explanation then ran back into his room and slammed the door, and did not emerge the rest of the night. But the story doesn’t end there.
I googled him about a year ago: he is now on the offender’s list.
6. Movies And Chill?
He had severe undiagnosed OCD. He had a laundry list of rituals that would consume his entire day and annoy me a lot.
One of his rituals was to play a movie and music at the same time on his laptop and then go take a two-hour shower.
We shared a room so I would close his laptop when he left the room and after his shower, he’d come out and ask me, “Why did you touch my laptop"?
I would tell him because the noise was really distracting and he would tell me to just use headphones. This happened every Tuesday and Thursday night.
7. The Registrar
She was my college roommate in my freshman year in the dorms.
She secretly kept an Excel spreadsheet monitoring my study habits. Like, counting the number of hours she saw my nose in a book. So fast forward to later in the semester, when I return from a party. What she did next was so weird, it’s unforgettable.
She attempts an intervention. "(My name), I'm concerned about your study habits"...then she brings out this spreadsheet from the entire semester, comparing my total number of hours studying to the number of hours that were "recommended by my advisor for the number of credits you're taking".
8. The Reverse Cinderella
This girl would invite people over with no notice even during lockdown or when we were sick—I didn’t have an issue with people coming over I just didn’t want to be surprised by it.
She would meal prep for the week always on the day that I had deep cleaned the kitchen.
She never cleaned any shared spaces and rarely cleaned her room. I found dishes with moldy food in her room often.
She would leave and not come home for days at a time leaving her meal-prepped food in the fridge for us to clean—made even worse by the fact that we were vegetarian and she always cooked with meat.
I once found coffee that had been in the fridge for so long that it actually had moving organisms in it.
She then brought home a fish that she didn’t know how to take care of. It was bloated and we had to nurse it back to health with no help from her. And then a kitten from a stranger at a drive-thru without talking to us about it or taking into account that we already had a cat and a dog that don’t do well with other animals.
Then, after I told her that a kitten requires a lot of attention and she actually needed to be home at the very least 60% of the week, she followed that advice for approximately one week before deciding that she could go back to her old habits of not coming home for 4-5 days at a time.
Consequently, that cat became horrible. It constantly fought the other cat and dog, ripped up the carpet in our apartment that I had paid a deposit for by myself when we moved in, and caused me to lose that deposit—though she did eventually pay me back for that so I guess that earned her some points.
And then when we moved out, she left a ton of her stuff in the apartment for us to get rid of. Also told me that she cleaned her room before moving out when she clearly hadn’t. I spent three hours cleaning her room after so we wouldn’t get charged a cleaning fee.
She also complained multiple times that the apartment didn’t feel like her home and blamed me for that. I tried multiple times to get to know her better and hang out with her and she was never interested. When we moved in she refused to put any of her decor in any shared space even though I asked multiple times if she was sure. And when we were actually home she shut herself in her room and wouldn’t come out.
9. People Can Change After All…
I lived with a couple of friends and one of them was a giant slob.
When we first moved in he set up his gaming setup temporarily in the living room instead of his room so it sat in the living room and accumulated trash and especially a mountain of cans and even constant hounding about him was insufficient to get him to clean up.
So one day, totally sick of looking at his mess, I convinced the other friend to help out and we told him that we would help him clean it up if he would then move it into his room so we didn't have to look at it anymore and he was cool with that. It was so much more disgusting than I thought.
It added up to four lawn bags full of Mountain Dew cans and Funyun bags and pizza boxes later it was gone and I was so relieved; his room was, of course, a disaster but I told him as long as he took care of food waste so we didn't get bugs then whatever.
Of course, that didn't work. So I took the approach of every time I saw anything with more than two legs moving around the entire house got fogged, it was the apocalypse of roaches and spiders and whatever else was living in his dump on an almost monthly basis and he paid for it just to keep from not having to clean it up. I was nearing the end of my rope, as was the other roommate, but booting him would make rent kind of rough on us so we held out as long as we could. Which turned out to be about the time I went on vacation.
I was gone for three weeks and our other roommate wasn't super on top of stuff so I worried the house would be a jungle when I got back. But I was pleasantly surprised that the house was pretty clean and didn't smell weird at all even after having not set foot in it for almost a month.
But also I was suspicious because there's no way this guy kept the place clean of his own accord so I figured something was up. It wasn't until I got to my bedroom and my bathroom door was closed (I was paying a little more for the master suite) that suspicion turned into dread.
I thought for sure that this guy had decided to start using my bathroom as his own instead of sharing the second with the other roommate and had left it a disaster, but it was so, so much worse.
When I went to open my bathroom door it was stuck, which was a very not good sign, and I quickly realized it was because “someone” had clearly tried to pull a towel through the gap between the bottom of the door and the carpet.
After a fair bit of messing around, I finally got the door open and was practically bowled over by the wall of heat pouring out of the furnace that was once my bathroom. It must've been at least 140F in there. This was at the height of summer in New Mexico and my bathroom had a skylight in it.
Worse still, every single inch of available flat surface—counters, back and lid of the toilet, in the tub and on the edges around it, on the cabinets, everywhere—was covered in these little blue ice trays, each cube hole filled with a bit of potting soil that had a little green shoot poking out of it.
The complete idiot had decided that my bathroom would make a perfect hothouse for his nascent growing operation.
To this day I could not tell you what was running through his head, whether he forgot about it, sincerely didn't know that it takes longer than three weeks to grow anything, or expected me to be cool with it, but what was running through his rear in the moments that followed was my boot.
He went from having a pretty sweet living situation to being homeless in the space of five hours, and it was only that long because I insisted that he carry every bit of trash in his room out before I would let him touch his stuff.
10. A Treasure… Gone
When I was 21, I got a bottle of Macallan 18-Year Sherry Oak Scotch (he came from a very well-off family) from my best friend of almost 15 years who was battling cancer.
My friend and I made a pact when we were teens, that whenever either of us got married, we'd be each other's best man. My friend had gotten married to a wonderful guy that he had met in college, and the two were my closest friends that helped me get through a lot of bad things in my life.
When he gave me that bottle, he gave it to me not as a birthday present, but as a promise to be around to be my best man when I got married, like I was when he got married to his husband.
Sadly, the cancer spread and got out of control, and lost his life a few months after my birthday. After he passed, I planned to never open the bottle. I tried to give the bottle to his husband, but he refused to take it and told me that my friend meant the bottle to be for me, not him.
I kept the bottle tucked away in a steamer trunk in my closet.
I tell you that, to tell you this…
One day, I come home to find my roommate passed out in his recliner. The bottle of Macallan next to him was on the table, completely empty! I thought that maybe he bought himself a bottle. But with a gut feeling, I checked my room. The trunk in my closet was wide open, the box the bottle came in was open, and the bottle missing. As was the envelope of cash hidden inside the trunk. About $2,500 that I had saved up over the year from working a side bartender job on the weekends.
I woke my roommate up, asked him if he took the bottle of out my trunk, and he said "No, I got this from the gas station". He sat there, staring at me, expecting me to believe him.
I was furious. I told him that I was moving out. He didn't understand why. I confronted him about the missing money and the bottle of Scotch he clearly took from me. He said, "Bro, relax, it's not like you can't buy another bottle. You clearly have the money for it".
I left the apartment, went to the rental office, and informed them of the situation. They helped to get me off of the lease and even helped me find my own townhouse in one of the other property neighborhoods they had. I returned to the apartment, packed up my belongings, and moved out the next day while he was at work.
11. A 10-Year-Old’s Dream
It was 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 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 the 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 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.
12. The Ultimate Liar
I lived with a thief who told the oddest lies.
Cash in my wallet would vanish for a few weeks. One day I marked my bills and found them in his wallet. I went to campus security before talking to him. They got him to confess—I don't know the details there.
But the reason why he did it was the weird part. When he was young, he protected a girl on the school bus. A day or two later, he heard these guys coming up behind him. He could see their shadow in the early sunrise. As one started a punch, he ducked it and knocked the guy out.
This guy was the son of Russian mobsters. And for all these years, he's had to pay money to these mobsters to keep him and his family safe.
But don't worry! They said they were cool now and he won't have to take anybody’s money anymore. Coincidental timing…
He was permanently removed from campus housing.
13. This Sucky Guy
He would stay up till 3 am screaming at kids on his video games. His favorite phrase was "I'm gonna screw your mom". This was most nights.
He would smoke in the house. He never did it when I was home after the first time. But he would continue to do it when I wasn't home. It still made everything in the house reek.
He would smoke in the house. He didn't care if people noticed or knew. He would sometimes do it outside in broad daylight.
He once fired a pistol in the house. Put a hole in the wall. No reason, he just felt like it.
He threw an M80 into our washing machine and destroyed it.
Oh, and he never once did the dishes. He’d take dishes and food to his room.
The dirty dishes accumulated at the foot of his bed. When our other roommate and I were out of dishes we finally braved the room and it was literally a pile of mold with some dishes under it.
He accidentally poisoned our other roommate's dog more than once by leaving chocolate bars on the floor. That one is kind of on the dog. But still.
When we all moved in we agreed to split the cost of communal furniture for the living room. Then he started a fistfight when I refused to split the cost of furniture going in his room.
He would come home completely out of it and throw up somewhere in the house. Never in the toilet. This was a weekly, sometimes twice weekly occurrence. One time he even kicked in my bedroom door just to puke on my floor.
My bedroom was right by the front door, it got to the point that I set up a small kitchenette in my bedroom and never went into the communal spaces of our house.
14. The Mild-Mannered Addict
It was a combination of things. Zero initiative to clean up after himself. His dog had a skin condition that he wouldn't pay to get taken care of and the whole place smelled horrible. Indoor smoker, drinker, and a bad substance habit, and had a sense of entitlement that led to some almost-hilarious hypocrisy, if not for his hair-trigger of a temper.
I've seen this man wake up angry because he forgot to set his alarm, proceed to yell at his dog for wanting to love him, look at me in the living room, and go, "What"?! before disgustedly scoffing and going into the bathroom, whereafter he would be chipper.
Once he came home after I'd cleaned the kitchen, and he was livid. "What the?! I can't keep a good enough house for you? Why don't you just move"?
And then 20 minutes later: "Hey, man, I'm sorry, you did a really good job on the kitchen, here".
When he asked me why I was moving, I laughed and made eye contact, but did not use words.
15. Playing Shrink
We were the same age at the time (22), but she was very immature. She came from a very dysfunctional family situation, and probably should not have been living in the dorms.
I was supposed to be her personal therapist. Now, mind you, I am working tirelessly trying to get into grad school, and she wanted to be able to wake me at 3 am because she couldn't sleep to tell me about what was bothering her. It was so deranged.
For example, once she had had something to eat she bought at a convenience store, and after she ate it, she dug the wrapper out of the trash and verified that it contained something that was not on her diet.
How was she supposed to lose weight if she ate the forbidden food? Like, either read the label before you stick it in your mouth (and therefore don't gain weight) or don't read the label.
Now let me get back to sleep.
What a neurotic mess. And get a real therapist. Student housing does not assign therapists.
16. Evil Raccoon
My roommate peed on my futon…and blamed it on a raccoon. That was a problem—but the next thing they did was the final straw.
Then called me at a friend’s house and told me that my father had died. He hadn’t and was perfectly healthy.
I'd kind of realized that they were unstable and was doing my best to keep my life/self separate from them and just “split the bills”. They didn't like that, I was like a lifeline for them and they kept thinking of ways to keep me at home or get me to come home.
It was AWFUL to get that call. I should have known that it was a lie, but this person was a master manipulator. I kicked them out the next day and told them to get help.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I once watched them eat 48 slices of Kraft singles—gotta love Costco—in one sitting.
They were on a couch and would unwrap, eat and then throw the wrapper on the floor.
By the time it was over the living room was like an art Installation.
17. WFH Dealers
They were dealers and they liked to work from home.
Weird stuff constantly showed up in my apartment, not to mention the weird people who showed up with it at 2 am.
If I was lucky they rang the doorbell. If I was unlucky they tried to break in.
I really hated that place. There's no winning when you live with dealers.
18. “He’s Just Dirty… Right"?
My ex-roommate seemed like a decent guy at first. When my then-girlfriend and I met him—I always took a friend or partner with me when vetting a new housing situation—he seemed pretty together.
He was a pretty big dude, probably around 6'4” tall. He held down a job at the nearby Safeway and was decently conversational. The place was freaking spotless when we checked it out.
My girlfriend and I chat about it, she doesn't see any red flags, and I signed the lease. Done.
Then I moved in. That’s when the problems began.
After about six months of being the only person cleaning the bathroom, I gave up. It was always filthier than I left it the week prior. I would clean the shower, and tidy up after myself. And I guess I blacked out the rest of the room.
Same again for the kitchen. His Brita pitcher was sitting in a corner growing mold. There was no dishwasher, so his dishes would pile up until he didn't have any to use. Then he'd clean them. Because of this, I basically just cleaned my dishes and put them away immediately. I ended up leaving his stuff in the sink and having to repeatedly ask him to clean up after himself.
He would do it, occasionally. But there was always mold growing on something in there and it was...deeply unsettling.
Same again in the living room. He'd eat his meals in front of the TV, would drop a whole lot of crumbs and pieces on the floor...and just leave it?
So when I vacuumed Saturday morning, it would just be really crunchy sounding for like five minutes before it went back to normal. I never walked around barefoot because of this, and I love being barefoot.
Okay, but he's just dirty, you say? Nope.
I remember hearing him occasionally having phone conversations. It mostly sounded like he was mumbling into a phone. I thought it was whatever.
But I started to notice that these calls always ended with him getting upset with whoever was on the other end, culminating in him yelling at full volume into the phone. Or so I thought.
One day, I had come home from work early, and I guess he didn't realize that I was there. My door was cracked open about an inch or two, and he started having one of his calls. I got really curious and looked through the crack. What I saw was seriously disturbing.
He was not on the phone. He was pacing excitedly around the living room talking to someone I could not see. And it sounded like he was in an argument about whether to hurt someone or not. I distinctly remember hearing my name. This went on for a solid 15-20 minutes, at which point he eventually got in the shower, and the conversation sort of ended.
I was shook.
And suddenly everything made sense. The disorganization. The lack of cleanliness. The conversations. All of it. He had a serious mental health issue that was either untreated or not being treated well enough. It was at that moment I decided to break my lease and move because based on what I had heard, I no longer felt safe around him.
Freepik, stockking
19. All Around Creepy
Oh boy, where do I even start? I'll just make a list. I shared a 12x12 dorm room with her, for reference.
She would free-bleed and leave trails of her blood from our room to the bathroom and not clean it up.
She would leave crusty underwear on the floor on my side of the room, next to my bed, while at the same time, she insisted we divide the room with tape and freaked out if anything of mine crossed that border for two seconds.
She was 18 and had a creepy 31-year-old fiancé she had been with for six years (you can do the math) that stayed over every weekend, and watched her sleep over Skype every weeknight, with me in view of the camera.
She smelled so bad that other students in our hall started making complaints about the stench coming from our room.
The first thing she said to me when I met her was, "I'm bi, but you need to know that I don't find you attractive". As if I was going to be disappointed by that news.
And, on top of everything else, she had a bunch of plants in the room that I was allergic to that were making me miserable, and she refused to get rid of them.
20. Dish Fights
A roommate I had would come home from work with a 12-pack, sit on the couch with the pack beside him (no cooler) and drink the entire thing. Every night.
One night I came home late and the front door wouldn't open because something was blocking it. I pushed harder until I could squeeze in, and there was Andy passed out in front of the door. The reason I couldn't open it was his head was literally pressed against it. I have no idea how he ended up in that position.
Andy also not only refused to wash dishes, he thought he could just say "I did them last time" and I'd just say "Oh, sorry...I must have been mistaken about doing them every night for a week".
I eventually started just keeping one set of dishes in my room and washing them each time. when he inevitably said "Dude, you gotta do these dishes, it's your turn". I showed him the ones I was keeping clean and said he had 100% ownership of everything else with my compliments.
21. Stanley The Slob
My old roommate was moving in with his girlfriend so I needed a place to stay. My only choice was Stanley.
Stanley and I were good friends but we should never have been roommates. Personally, I don't think he should be allowed to live with anybody. We moved into a two-bed, one-bath, top floor of an apartment complex. At first, things were okay for a week or so, he complained to me one time for coming home inebriated and leaving the bag of bagels open to the air.
Now before I continue, I must say I would not consider myself a particularly clean person, I do my bit but clutter and dust have never bothered me.
But this man was a slob.
The only time he would do dishes is if he needed a clean one for himself, overcooked food usually encrusted itself onto pans and pots, and the bottom of the oven was plastered in filth.
Now, I had known I had not caused this, so I didn't clean it. Until it got so bad I had no choice.
The first time I cleaned it, he walked in and complimented me for what a good job I had done. I remember making a comment that he should have done it himself but he brushed it off.
The second time I had to clean it, he just said nothing at all, and when the third time rolled around I just gave up and let the place stay messy.
He would turn on the washing machine late at night, he once used a whole packet of my interdental brushes to clean the gunk out of his bong's bowl, and he would slam the door every time he left that apartment.
What made it worse was that he had to delay paying bills, probably because he is terrible at managing his money, but he was at work at this point. If I must describe him, imagine somebody who likes cute anime girls but looks as though his mid-life crisis had long since torn off his hairline.
He ended up telling me one day he was losing his job because they were closing the company and he had ample time to get a new job. He had two months' notice and I sent him applications for a couple of places to give him a push but as far as I know, he had done nothing. He couldn't pay bills—though he could manage rent—and being a good friend I said I would be patient as I already had been.
It was six months after he lost his job that I got a call from our landlord, he told me that we were missing six months of rent. I'd paid my end and realized that Stanley had just decided to not pay. We pretty much would have been kicked out, but the landlord hadn't checked the balance going into his account himself, but it would have to be paid back.
Meanwhile, my kitchen is a mess, my bathroom gets worse and there are stains on the bowl because he fails to use a toilet brush, and flies infested our home. I was furious. He is not my friend anymore. If anybody treats you this way they are not your friend, negligent or not.
He took advantage of my kindness and my patience but I am happy to say I'm out of there now.
My kitchen is clean and money worry is a thing of the past. He still owes me 2k+ for bills and rent, but if it cost me 2k for me to drop a leech I think it was worth it.
Never move in with a friend, and if you do get ready to drop them. If they can’t treat you well, they're not your friend.
22. The Fork Thief
She took a fork with her, with her lunch, to work every day. The forks never returned.
We mentioned it because before she moved in it had never been a problem. We bought a box of more forks...just forks. They started to disappear also.
She denied it until we busted her one day taking her lunch and we asked to see her bag. She apologized and bought us a box of PLASTIC FORKS.
We asked her to move out shortly after, as she was just weird and not a good match anyway. Strangely enough...never had the fork problem again.
23. The Hoarder
She was a neurodivergent hoarder. Kept around 147 pairs of thrifted, foul-smelling supersize stripper shoes in our small hallway.
She was not acquainted with detergent, and her clothes wafted like an old dog, as she hung her clothes in the communal bathroom to dry. She twirled around her pole with a loud Star Wars saber at 4 am making TikToks, then passed out on Ambien while her super loud alarm woke up the whole house at the most random times.
That is just the summary. She was weird.
24. Always Looking For The Next High
I still can’t explain this one. He drank my contact lens solution because he thought he could get high off it.
The whole bottle. A big bottle.
Not only did he not figure it out while being remotely halfway through a pint of lens solution, but if it had been what we was looking for, he would've died.
Bonus idiocy: He also claimed he invented lettuce wraps.
25. The Underwear Thief
She took, wore, stained, and destroyed my fancy frilly underwear and then returned the stained tattered underwear to my drawer and played stupid about it.
I discovered this by finding my underwear stained, in her laundry basket, when I was tearing apart the room going "What is that SMELL"?!
I was allowed to change rooms after I told the school.
26. “If Hemorrhoids Were A Person”
It was like living with a 13-year-old who could not be reasoned with.
He never cleaned, unless his girlfriend promised she’d sleep with him for it.
He constantly worked on his car in the driveway and left oil stains everywhere. He had a perpetual athlete's foot infection but refused to see a doctor, so he would stand in diluted bleach when he showered instead.
He would spend two hours in the kitchen “meal prepping” then walk away from the mess, leaving dishes in the sink for days and grease stains everywhere.
If you tried to confront him, about anything, it would result in him shouting and stomping about till he was blue in the face.
He would retaliate by slamming doors and blasting music every night for weeks. It took me recording him threatening me with bodily harm for him to be evicted.
The man is the physical embodiment of a hemorrhoid…
27. At-Home Sauna
In the middle of a 100F heatwave in August, she not only turned off the AC but turned the heat on to 90F.
Even on the coldest days of winter, no one turned the heat to freaking 90.
I came home to a sauna, and she didn't even stay after she did that.
28. The Troubled Addict
He was an addict who would spontaneously begin shouting regardless of the time of day or night, though 3 am, 8 am, 5 pm, and 11 pm seemed to be his favorite times to do so.
He would shout things like "Just cut her head off and be done with it", "I was the one inside her stomach who knifed her heart" and "I'll rip their arms off and turn their house into a house of horrors".
His shouting wasn't limited to inside the house. Especially at 3 am and 11 pm, he'd stand outside the front of the house and shout things at the top of his lungs. Sometimes he'd be standing outside and shouting things like that while people are dropping their kids off at the elementary school across the road.
He also believed that he was some sort of super genius messiah and that his religious views were the ultimate religious views and that everyone else is an idiot for not sharing his views. He'd break out into spontaneous fits of anger.
Called himself a musician and would constantly drum against the bathroom wall which is connected directly to my room, with no rhythm at all. He'd blast music all the time in his room. He wouldn't listen to anyone's complaints and lastly brought a horrible bedbug infestation into the house.
29. When A Narcissist Gets Jealous…
I'm a woman and lived for a year and a half-ish with three straight guy roommates: Roommate 1, the worst one; Roommate 2, with whom I had tension; and Roommate 3, the nice, unassuming one. I got along well with them all…at first.
I'm pretty sure this guy is a narcissist. Somehow he was manipulating me so I did everything he wanted, in the way he wanted it, in terms of cleaning and house dynamics. I'm a people pleaser, so if he said he hated fingerprints on the microwave? I'd clean them.
He complained about nobody else buying dishwashing sponges? I'd buy them regularly.
The other two didn't sweep the kitchen floor? I'd do it every night.
Instead of saying what bothered him, he thought everyone was out to get him if they didn't do what he wanted—three months into living with him, he unhinged the shared bathroom door (he had an en suite) to make a point to me, because I'd forget he hated when we left that door open.
The door almost fell on me because I didn't realize it was unhinged, but he didn't own up to it until Roommate 2 talked with him and told him I was almost crying because I didn't understand how the door would get unhinged by itself if Roommate 1 had sworn he didn't do it.
Another time, he got mad because a friend, who was visiting for lunch, left the bathroom door open. He sent me a very rude message in the apartment text group. I was so anxious that I started a verbal argument, face to face, but we eventually calmed down. All over my friend leaving a bathroom door open.
This guy was very charismatic around my friends. He almost seemed to want to befriend them.
He was also very jealous and competitive. He hated my dynamics with Roommate 2 and made me feel guilty for how he acted around me. Roommate 2 was the typical guy who wants to show off when he was flirting.
He got mad at me for "not waiting for him and Roommate 3" because I watched a movie alone with Roommate 2, even though he was the one who suggested it when it was only us both. He'd tell me I was like a puppy after Roommate 2 who, according to him, clearly didn't like me and only was stringing me along so I would be his ally whenever there were issues in the house.
He'd talk trash about Roommate 2 constantly behind his back, even though they were "buddies". He'd throw fits because I didn't give him "the same attention" and I "played favorites".
A year and some months into living together, one night, I came back from partying at the same time as Roommate 2. We both stayed up until dawn, talking and flirting. I'm pretty sure Roommate 2 said SOMETHING to Roommate 1, because he gave me the cold shoulder for two weeks. Then, when we were alone at home, Roommate 1 decided to send a rude text directed to me on the apartment group, over my condiments falling onto his dish rack.
It was all to start an argument.
I already knew how to deal with that, so I didn't give in, and that enraged him so much that he told me that he wanted me to move out because I was causing trouble with everyone. He said he knew how women of my ethnicity acted and that my "doesn't break a plate" attitude was fake and that if I had any self-respect, I'd leave. But that hey, when I moved out, we could grab a coffee and he'd tell me all the things he was maybe misinterpreting!
Up to that point, I hadn't realized how he'd been treating me all those months was pure manipulation, and this was him lashing out because the one thing I wouldn't change, no matter how hard he tried, was my good living relationship with Roommate 2.
So Roommate 1 started sowing discord and talking trash about me when I wasn't there.
Roommate 3 had moved out two months before and the new roommate was another girl who didn't know us well, so he turned her against me. It got to the point where I stopped using the common areas and avoided everyone but Roommate 2 because they caused me anxiety attacks.
I didn't go back to the house for a month because my mom was visiting, except to clean my designated area, and Roommate 1 still recorded a video of the balcony on the same day I cleaned it, even though that day had rained, to say I cleaned poorly and I "cleaned badly to make him mad". He tried to berate me after I told him I still hadn't found a new place, but I called the new roommate so she'd witness the conversation: I didn't trust anything he said in private.
Even in front of her, with me never raising my voice, he still screamed at me and tried to make me look bad. After that, he acted as if nothing had happened.
I left the next month. Coincidentally, Roommate 2 and the new girl also left two weeks before me. Before I left, Roommate 1 knocked on my door because he wanted to hug me goodbye and let me know we could totally grab a coffee together any day.
I'm slowly getting over the trauma, but I genuinely felt dehumanized when I realized I had considered this person an almost-friend at some point. When someone tells you how they are, believe them! He told me he felt identified with Joe from You.
At the time, I laughed it off.
Now, I'm just thankful he's not in my life and that I never liked him beyond friendship, because wow.
30. Just A Casual Flood
I was away on holiday. When I got home I walked in and the carpet was soaked.
My roommates were just sitting there watching TV. It turns out the hot water heater exploded and ruined the carpet and flooded my room which was right next to the heater. But that’s not even the craziest part.
It had exploded three days prior to my return and they just ignored it.
31. The Craigslist Satanist
This was probably the worst time of my life as I was getting pressured by stress because I had to juggle being poor in college, a bad work-study job, and a 21-credit semester load so I could certify into a pretty competitive major.
On top of that, my roommate that I lived with initially straight up just dropped out of school and moved out without informing me a week before bills were due. I only made enough money to cover my portion and so I had to get a random roommate on Craigslist to come in. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
My parents come from a very spiritual background so I've been raised not to mess with weird stuff. Well, my roommate was into some weird, cult-y stuff and she sacrificed my pet rabbit. I'm not even going to look into whether or not this crazy thing even worked and I never want to see her again. Although if I did see her again she'd be getting a roundhouse to the face because my rabbit was awesome.
I didn't even confront her, the next night when I knew she was working late at McDonald's I got a friend with a truck and got all of my stuff out of there. Probably the most stressful time of my college years. Moral of the story: Don't use Craigslist for roommates.
32. Classic Tinder Bro
God…I get so mad thinking about him. We were friends from another neighborhood we lived in during high school, but this was years later in our early 20s. He got dumped a year or two before and had to be bailed out of his apartment by his parents. They had property around the city so they let him live in one of their houses rent-free while he just sat around and smoked all day.
This idiot was afraid to be alone. He and his big husky would sit in the living room all day, where he would sell weed and have dudes over in what felt like shifts so he wouldn't have to be alone with his thoughts.
He would randomly walk into my room and say, "Where the girls at"? while expecting a genuine reply about why I didn't have girls coming over to talk to him. He would throw me in Tinder groups (remember that?) with him, and when the 24-hour period would pass and the group dissolved, he'd put me in again.
I hate this dude. The consequences were horrifying. Our friendship was completely ruined. I never left my room, not even to eat. I was like 20 pounds underweight when I moved out.
I don't hope he's dead or anything but my god I hope he has a painful STI or something.
33. Koob
She had a room with her own bathroom and would constantly clog her toilet by using napkins as toilet paper since she didn't want to buy toilet paper. After she clogged it she would resort to using everyone else's bathroom in the hallway with no intention of fixing her own.
One day she clogged OUR toilet as well. So while she was out, my other roomies and I went into her room to see what was up with her bathroom and there was month-old waste still in the toilet, along with piles of clothes all over the floor.
She also had two dogs that she neglected and she always tried to take our community recycling and keep the money for herself.
She was the absolute worst, so we turned her last name into a thing you don't want to be.
Don't be a Koob.
Freepik,benzoix
34. College Stories
My roommate in college was tripping when I was sleeping before a midterm.
He threw up all over his bed. He had a bad trip because he didn't want to wake me up, so he just sat there silently for hours freaking out.
I woke up to him gone and an apology written in crayon—not sure where he found a crayon.
Great dude, but a bad roommate.
We live a few blocks from each other now and our kids play together.
35. Respect The Butter, Man!
Not only did he use my butter, but he scraped it lengthwise so he marred the whole stick AND left crumbs all over the whole thing.
Pretty good roommate…butter aside.
36. Adjusting Time Zones
My good friends’ third roommate in college was a foreign kid who I suspect wanted to stay in his home time zone.
He’d sleep during the day, and post passive-aggressive signs all over the floor telling people not to make noise. It would be all sorts of things like “No noise before 6:00 PM! Talking is noise"!
And he had his bed set up so the headboard was right next to his door. It was psychotic.
37. Secret Surveillance
I found out the dude I lived with was keeping his webcam running when he was out. Being secretly filmed was kinda messed up.
38. A Two-For-One Deal
His girlfriend basically moved in immediately after he did. She was nice enough but adding another person to a tiny two-bedroom apartment sucks.
39. An Obnoxious Leech
He was incredibly obnoxious. He had people over at all hours of the night, smoked in our shared living space, ate my food, and drank my drinks.
All of that was just whatever—but then it got more infuriating. Then he got himself fired from his job and stopped paying his half of the rent.
Thank goodness our landlord was cool. He let me pay my half for the last two months of the lease and tried to collect the rest from the roommate. One day my roommate was just gone.
I heard later that he moved back home one weekend I was away. He left his stuff in the apartment until the night before our lease ended. Presumably, he got his stuff out—who knows?
My landlord let me get my stuff out and clean the apartment to get the deposit back. I think his mom ended up writing a check to cover missed months of rent and the cleaning fees.
40. Never Trust Shared Duties
All three of us had a shared kitchen, and 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. The consequences were awful. Three weeks later, there was rotten food and mold 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 the bill on 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, they got kicked out a week later.
It was a win for me eventually but a horrible time before that.
41. Revenge Served Hot
In college, I had a horrible roommate who did all the bad things. Didn't wash dishes, kept multiple bags of fast food trash in his room, smoked in the apartment, ate my special brownies without asking, and so on. But one incident was so much worse than anything else he did.
My girlfriend and I were in a long-distance relationship at the time, so I invested in a pocket toy. Nothing fancy, but it got me through a couple of long months. After using it, I always made sure to wash it and powder it with cornstarch, which keeps the silicon from degrading and makes it more skin-like.
One day I noticed that the powder coating was gone as if it had been washed and not powdered. In addition, it didn't exactly smell right. Mind you, I kept this thing hidden in a drawer and not exactly out in the open, so he had been going through my things to find it.
I ended up doing what any reasonable person would do. Right before I was about to leave for a week (and I let him know I'd be gone), I bought some extra strength Icy Hot, washed out the toy and powdered it so it would be absolutely irresistible, and slathered as much Icy Hot inside of it as I could.
Anyway, we don't talk much anymore.
42. Princess On A Scholarship
My first ever roommate I had was "random".
We both had scholarships to play ball at a community college and the coach thought we would be a good fit for roommates. There were no dorms, so we lived in off-campus apartments.
My roommate had been brought up with a lot of money. Her first car was brought in on a boat because they didn't have that type of BMW in the US yet. Basically, everything was done for her. This made for a terrible roommate situation.
She ate ALL of my food and quite literally never went to the grocery store until I had to keep all of my non-perishable food in my room.
Then, I kindly asked her if we could go to the grocery store together and buy things we both use (condiments, paper towels, etc) and while we both had our own shopping carts, she delightfully put everything in my cart. Did I mention she was rich?
She would constantly lie to our teammates saying she went to work out at 6 am that morning; when in reality, I was in our living room studying for an 8 am test and she never, ever worked out or got out of bed.
But, remember when I said I had to put all my food in my room? Well, then she started eating out for literally every meal and got fat. The last straw was opening the car to her door and at least 20 fast food bags come spilling out, like EVERYWHERE when she confidently says, "Oh, I stop on the side of the road and pick up trash"
That was over 10 years ago & I still get fired up about it to this day.
43. The Heartless Pet Owner
I once rented a room from a neighbor who let me live there cheaply when I had nowhere else to go. Big mistake. Her house was pretty dirty due to her physical limitations from being very obese, but I tried to keep the common areas clean. Her adult son lived there—he was very judgmental, but luckily didn’t bother me much.
The worse roommate though was her 25-year-old daughter, who was immature, entitled, and thought she was God’s gift. She’d leave hair and blood all over the bathroom, she’d fool around with men with her bedroom door open, and she was always arguing with or disrespecting her mom.
But the worst part was how she treated her pets. She loved to rave about her “zoo”, but her mom had to take care of her dog, cat, and several birds. The dog was untrained and it peed on my bed and barked when I was trying to sleep. The mom would go out of town sometimes to a family beach house. One time she was gone awhile I noticed the dog’s water bowl was always empty. So I kept filling it back up.
Then I realized that the house was pretty quiet—she had cockatiels, so the house was never quiet. I went to check them.
The bowls were bone dry and the seeds were empty. And two of the birds were gone. I was so happy to finally get out of there.
Wikimedia Commons, Meepdasheep
44. One Terrific Black-Out
He was so out of it one morning, making a gigantic mess in the kitchen in his underwear rambling to me while grabbing a cup of coffee on my way out the door. He then peed on himself and didn't notice until he slipped on it. But that wasn’t the worst part.
Fast forward a couple of months and he bailed out with two months left on the lease and never paid anything for those months and changed his number. Fortunately, the landlord worked with me and my other roommate.
I never had a roommate after that.
45. An Indoor Rave
I used to work the afternoon shift, which meant that I'd usually get home around 1 am.
My new roommate had just moved in a few days ago. One Friday night I get home, walk in the door and there are 50-odd people in our tiny apartment. But that’s not the worst part.
There are people punching holes in the walls, my TV is smashed on the ground, there are a few people ruining my couch, and the place is a mess.
Not really knowing how to handle the situation I go into my room to try to think and when I open the door I get hit with a stink that will outlast religion.
My new roommate is hooking up with another guy on my bed.
There's a mess alllll over my bed.
So I grabbed a drink, went outside, called the authorities, and watched the show.
Wikimedia Commons, David Shankbone
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