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Everyone we’ve ever asked has a bad roommate story or knows someone else’s bad roommate story. (Hint: We built RoomZoom to prevent this from happening in the future!) So we decided to reach out and ask a few RoomZoom users about their worst roommate experiences. We were blown away by the responses. While some of the worst ones included material that we literally can’t reprint here, or anywhere in public, here are two REAL stories submitted by RoomZoom users. We wish we were joking. Happy (early) Halloween everyone!
Broker-Backed Roomies
By Emily Singer
I found these roommates through the building’s broker (a “room share”, as they call it) and met with both of them for no more than 15 minutes. They both seemed fine (of course).
One is a freelance photographer and the other moved without first having a job, (she soon found an internship to occupy her for 5 hours a day, 4 days a week). In essence, my other two roommates not only spent a lot of time together, but also in our apartment.
I would receive text messages on a near daily basis from one or the other, alerting me about some issue with the building while it was still under construction (the front door didn’t lock properly, the steps of the stairs had been temporarily removed, the hallway floors were slick with water, etc., etc.) and telling me that they had called our landlord about it. Everything was a five alarm fire in which everyone’s lives were at risk. In their eyes, nothing was a minor issue, and everything had to be taken care of instantly. At the end of our first month in the building, our landlord demanded to meet with us to outline channels of communication, more or less accusing us (“us” meaning my two roommates) of harassment.
Building-related issues died down after that, but social issues between my two roommates picked up. Spending so much time together in our apartment while I was at work, they became very friendly, went out clubbing together, and vented about boyfriend issues to each other. Things started to deteriorate (I’m still not sure why), and one of my roommates began to vent to me about the other, accusing her of being bipolar, psychotic, manic depressive, etc. I had seen glimpses of her moodiness and found it weird (namely getting angry at me, stomping into her room, slamming the door, and blasting music after I asked if she smoked weed every day; laughing in my face and calling me a privileged brat after I called her out for eating my food — she’s 27, going on 15, if you catch my drift), but didn’t think much of it.
Five months into our lease, the roommate who accused the other of being mentally ill asked that we all sit down to “chat” and “check in”. This “check-in” turned into her criticizing the other roommate while I sat there in silence, too stunned to react. Accusations of mental illness were voiced, as were social incompetencies, financial issues, and more. The roommate under attack fought back (verbally, fortunately), and accused me of siding against her while I sat in silence. Nothing “real” was accomplished, other than the fact that the three of us no longer speak.
The roommate who is maybe mentally unstable spends most of the day in our apartment smoking weed and blasting music, refusing to turn it down or open a window to air the place out. She slams doors at all hours of the day and refuses to help clean the apartment.
I’m well aware of the fact that my living situation could be worse, but it could also be infinitely better. It’s an unnecessary source of stress in my life, I get home from work and take a deep breath before walking into my apartment because I never know what I’ll find.
The Cheater Thief
By Jackie Covarrubias
I met my roommate through mutual friends at the gym. She was a teacher, sweet person, very bright and a ball full of positive energy. It was all good in the beginning, it always is, until slowly the nagging started.
“I can’t find the right man, why does every guy I sleep with turns into an asshole, I hate my job, I hate my life, I have no friends.” Followed by many unknown men in my house, every weekend there would be someone new. We had more man traffic in our house than a McDonalds drive through. It didn’t help that some of these men had a history of convicted felons, bank robbers, etc. I was beginning to worry.
All of this was annoying when she would ask, “How come every guy I sleep with is an asshole?” *Ahem* “You have to get to know them first,” I would say. The final straw was when she bragged about stealing her bf’s social security number, opened a credit card under his name, maxed it out and then broke up with him because he was cheating on her……when she was cheating on him too. I thought to myself, what makes me think she wouldn’t do that to me? I finally had to kick her out. She wasn’t happy, but eventually somebody had to give her a dose of reality.
