You don't always get to choose your roommates, so when a stranger ends up shacking up with you, you've entered the lottery on how they're gonna be personality wise. This can lead to some people getting roommates that are bizarre or downright destructive.
Below, people share stories of the horrible roommates they had during freshman year, as told on AskReddit. Check them out!
(Content has been edited for clarity)
Scams And Cat Hair
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“I was friends with a girl a year behind me. In her freshman year, she was randomly matched with a girl was convinced she was in a relationship with the lead singer of Tokyo Hotel and had been for several years, but it was obviously some catfisher on the internet. They would Skype where only he could see her because his video would be blank for ‘security reasons’ and he told her they could never meet in person because of the media. And since he was always ‘on tour’ she would Skype with him at all hours of the night to make up for the time zone differences. It was actually kinda sad and scary, several people I know tried to explain to her that she was being taken advantage of, but she would not listen and I’m pretty sure she did stuff on camera for him and sent him money.
She also brought multiple bags from home stuffed full of her cat’s hair and knitted tiny clothes/figurines/whatever out of it. My friend was, of course, very allergic to cat hair.”
World Of Warcraft, The Ruiner Of Lives
“I was in a small triple freshman year. Early on my roommate was extremely studious and would accept nothing lower than pretty much an ‘A’ on everything. He would beat himself up of it wasn’t good enough and we would try to get him to relax a bit.
The second half of freshman year, he bought a new computer and World of Warcraft. He refused to go to class and played WoW nonstop all night and would sleep through the whole day. It was disrupting me and my other roommate. He eventually ended up pretty much dropping out of school. I’ve never seen such a change around.
He has actually gotten back on track though and has been doing pretty well for himself.”
Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover…All The Time
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“I had a roommate in college that was LOVELY at first. Basically, I had a cute little sister, we hung out a lot. We didn’t have a lot in common though and had very clashing schedules, so I assumed she’d be like any normal person and accept that we could only really hang out on weekends.
She was not a normal person.
Stuff went missing from the shared kitchen. Not just my stuff, mind you. She became super passive-aggressive, started binge drinking and blaming me for not being there to stop her. I dismissed it, more stuff vanished, this time from bedrooms. My lock was broken too. She tried to blame me and get me kicked out.
Luckily, we had a fire drill, during which she left the door open and loads of stolen goods were found – wallets, spoons, underwear. You name it, she stole it. She was there for less than two weeks and had to pay rent for the whole year for breaking the contract.
The Legend Of Nasty Tom
“I lived in a triple; let’s call one of my roommates Tom. Tom was a disgusting man, and I’d venture one of the worst roommates anyone has ever had. Here are just a few examples:
Tom pleasured himself several times a day, just under his sheets, not subtly. Being a triple and the largest room on the floor, we had people in and out of our room regularly. This didn’t matter to him. After a while, we got him to agree to a rule that if we caught him doing that he would stop, but once he was past a certain point, that just wasn’t going to happen.
Tom had a girlfriend on the floor and would exile us whenever possible (for example, when we were showering). She was a spitter, which made things worse.
Tom was a believer in the ‘poop test.’ Apparently going to the toilet only to find out you didn’t have to go is a big waste of time, so you just stand up and try to go a little bit first, then run to the toilet if needed. Once, while attempting this, he pooped himself right before going out to a party. He asked me if he should shower, but then decided he had no time. Tom did not wear underwear, and when he returned back from the party he just took off his pants and hopped naked into bed. I don’t think those sheets were ever washed.
Tom once had to pee during a poker game in our room. Rather than leave, he used a solo cup under the table, and then a second one that he urgently requested as the first was filling up. When he finished, he put the cups on his desk. Later, someone noticed that one of the cups was on its side and empty, over the side of the desk, having apparently spilled over his clothes on the floor.
Tom got sick of not being able to hook up with his girlfriend whenever he wanted, so he had this great idea to buy a tent from Target so he could hook up while we were in the room. His girlfriend wasn’t having it, so he moved his mattress and the tent to a janitor’s closet. Apparently a cleaning lady walked in on him sleeping naked there and he was forced to move back in.
We had two men’s bathrooms on our floor, each with three showers. One shower belonged exclusively to Tom and his girlfriend. He kept a lawn chair in there, because ‘sitting is the luxurious way to shower’. You can imagine what else went on in there, and why nobody else used it.
At the end of the year, we did a survey. Over half of the people on the floor had seen his dong at least once.
I know this sounds unbelievable, but this is all 100% true.”
A Thief With A Kind Heart
“One of my freshman roommates was a self-professed kleptomaniac. She got a huge thrill from stealing clothes from department stores, usually Nordstrom. In the first week or so of school, she went through her closest and showed us all of the clothing she had stolen, plus she knew how much each item cost and how she’d swiped it. We’re talking thousands of dollars worth of nice clothing. She had so much that half of it still had tags on and she never wore it, but she took it because she knew she could.
Usually, this theft involved carrying a really big purse, taking way too many items into a dressing room, and then emerging with one item in the purse, one to buy, and the rest to put back. Then if an alarm went off, they would assume it was just the item she had purchased and let her leave. Half the time, she returned the item she paid for soon after too. It got to the point where girls in the dorm would go to the mall with her, and they’d all pick out clothes they liked and she’d go back on her own later and steal them for them. It was crazy.
To my knowledge, she’s still doing this and hasn’t been caught. She never seemed to steal from anywhere other than department stores, and none of my stuff ever went missing, so I guess she wasn’t too bad of a roommate, just a person of questionable morals.”
Double Trouble
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“I was fortunate to have lived with TWO awful roommates during my freshman year.
The first roommate was Eddie. After the typical freshman e-mail exchanges, we had the opportunity to meet on move-in day. At first, Eddie was a great roommate; fun to hang out with, good to grab a bite with, all that good stuff. But then Eddie found out how hard engineering is. You see, he was a mechanical engineering major and found that it was just too difficult.
Instead of switching majors, he decided to just give up. He stopped going to class, didn’t go out on the weekend. He just stayed there. All the time. I kid you not, he only left to eat at the cafe on the first floor. Lucky for me, Eddie failed all of his classes and didn’t come back, leaving me with a room all to myself!
I started my second semester with my own room/bachelor pad. I moved the beds together to set up a nice queen bed. The room was huge without a second person!
Cue the second roommate. His name was John. John and his roommate had a ‘disagreement,’ so they moved him to my room. John was weird. I have a really high tolerance for weird, and John exceeded them all.
He loved Hillary Duff so much that he watched her movies on repeat. All the time. Whenever he was home. Which was all the time, because he didn’t have many friends.
He used my toothbrush! I had no idea at the time, until I walked out one day, to see him with my toothbrush dangling out of his mouth like it’s totally normal.
He showered every two to three days. Not horrible, but definitely not often enough.
He would stand over my shoulder and watch what I was doing on my computer. As in, he would read every word. When I would confront him about it, he acted like it was totally normal.
He wasn’t unsafe or unstable, he was just odd. Thankfully I only had to deal with him for like seven weeks or so, before the year came to a close.”
You Plug The Shower One Time And…
“I was the horrible freshman roommate because of one event.
I was super tired all the time, so I would often sit on the floor in the shower and just let the water wash my sorrows away. Well, I accidentally fell asleep, and I happened to fall asleep with my butt right on top of the drain. It plugged the drain and caused the entire bathroom, dorm room, and the floor below us to flood.”
Febreeze To The Nads
“I had a roommate come back to our dorm room from one of the many rush week frat parties he attended, wasted out of his mind. He stripped down to his stained white briefs and passed out on his bed.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to find him standing, totally nude, inches from my bed, his butt literally right in my face. He proceeded to fart in my face and then start peeing in the trash can next to my bed.
After he was done peeing in the trash can, and all over the floor, he promptly went back to his bed and passed out on his bed, face up, with no covers.
I got up, got a bottle of Febreeze, and sprayed the heck out of my trash can and the rug. I then realized why he pissed in my trash can; it’s because he had puked in his. So, I sprayed his trash can too.
Then, for good measure and because I was furious, I spent about 30 seconds spraying his privates with Febreeze while he snored and drooled.
Yeah…I hated that guy.”
Deception Everywhere In This House
“I had two roommates: one was new, named Jane, and one I had been rooming with for a while, named Brittany.
One night, I went to a party with my boyfriend, I spent the night at his place, and came back the next day. Brittany asked me if I’d seen her gold necklace. I had not.
Later that night, Brittany slams her closet closed, uses the lock, and walks outside the room to make a call. I can hear her saying, ‘We’re not friends, I wouldn’t let her borrow anything.’
When she comes back in, I confront her. She says she ‘found’ the necklace in her drawer but she knows she didn’t put it there and she knows I’m lying about ‘borrowing’ it. I’m flabbergasted. She expounds upon this further by stating she has a ‘witness’ who saw me wearing her necklace at the party last night.
I go to my closet, pull out my own gold necklace, show it to her. No way is she believing me though. Her belief is that I’m a thief, or at the very least a liar, and although what she’s saying makes no sense in light of the new evidence, she’s gonna stick to it.
So she requests to move out. I’m sure she spread bad rumors about me with the housing people in the process, and among our mutual acquaintances since she couldn’t keep her big mouth shut.
However, before she moved out, she and I had to go on a school-sponsored, overnight trip with a few dozen other people. About a week after we got back, we were at the same party and I hear her tell this story:
‘When we got back from the trip my socks were missing! I asked Jane about them but she said she hadn’t seen them. I turn around and there they are, in the bottom of her closet!’
Brittany never apologized to me – even though she knew who took her stuff – and moved out shortly thereafter. I have no idea why she assumed I, the roommate she’d had since day one with no problems, had taken her stuff when Jane was the new person, except that she truly was a jerk.”
Top Notch Chef
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“I lived in an apartment-style dorm with a kitchen, living room, and two double bedrooms. One of the guys in the other bedroom fancied himself a chef so he would cook all the time in the apartment. He had this habit of hanging a plastic shopping bag from the oven door handle and just tossing cut scraps, egg shells, and all that stuff into that bag. The problem is, he never actually threw that bag away. I was never around while he was cooking so I didn’t pay that bag much mind nor realize it was always the same bag.
After a couple of weeks, we started to notice a foul smell and the presence of fruit flies in the apartment. I was deep cleaning the kitchen and I brushed up against that bag and no less than a hundred fruit flies burst up from inside it. Needless to say, I freaked out.
A visit from the head of residence and the maintenance team to spray and he was required to clean up after every meal and take the trash out twice a week, on penalty of being kicked out of the dorms.”
The Mystery Of Noodle Alan
“Basically I had this flatmate – let’s call him Alan – who was very reclusive and quiet. Now, this in itself isn’t that odd as from my experience lots of students tend to stick to themselves and don’t necessarily mix with everyone, but whatever. So the one unique characteristic of Alan is that he used to ALWAYS order Chinese takeaway. He would order it frequently, and he would order a LOT of it, like boxes stacked on boxes. It was a load of food for one person, but Alan was skinny as the dickens, so I did wonder what was going on. This was pretty much the only time you would see him, and he would take his food straight back to his room and that was that.
Now this pattern continued for the first couple of months, but then we stopped seeing Alan. No more takeaway, nothing. Now, this didn’t raise much suspicion as he was always an enigma, but coming to the end of the semester a really RANCID smell started to engulf the flat hallway. Like this putrid, overwhelming smell. The kind that made you gag just getting a whiff of it. It was really unbearable. And, surprise, the smell was coming from Alan’s room. We hoped the smell would eventually clear up but it just got worse. At first, me and my buddies were hesitant to knock on his door as it’s pretty awkward to say, ‘Hey Alan, you room stinks, please stop’ but honestly it got to the point when it was unbearable to even walk into our flat. So we tried knocking a number of times but never got any reply. Eventually we called campus security and complained, and they came with us to open up his door and see what was going on.
Campus security opened his door, and Alan was nowhere to be found. No belongings, laptop or anything. However, the room was a tip. There were boxes and boxes of takeaway stacked up in the room. That explains the smell. There was also a load of women’s tights stuffed with noodles on the floor, rotting away with flies all over them.
So, where did Alan go? The university searched for him on their student database but they couldn’t find him. They then searched for him by his flat room number and it transpired that room should not have been occupied at all. Apparently, some student was meant to come but turned down their offer last minute. So in the end, we had no idea who Alan was. After this complete mess, the university moved all of my flats out to a hotel for a week whilst they got some people in to cleanse the whole place.”
Oops, My Bad!
“On the very first day of moving in, she had arrived first and set up her belongings which ended up taking over half the already tiny dorm room. She would constantly shave her legs In our shared sink and not clean it up and on too many occasions would have loud phone calls with her boyfriend. But the moment that just made every fiber of my being loathe her was the Easy Mac Incident. She went by Kiki.
It is a Sunday afternoon and I was on my bed reading and she was at her desk. She got up and went to her cabinet to get out a thing of easy mac. She put it in the microwave and sat back at her desk. Within seconds, I started to smell something burning and I look down and see the microwave is billowing with what looked like a miniature mushroom cloud of black smoke filling up the inside. Kiki was oblivious, so I had to yell for her to stop the microwave. She got up and immediately opened the microwave door. The black smoke escapee, filling our entire dorm with this putrid black smoke, sending the fire alarms off and bringing about 15 people banging on the door.
After the smoke cleared and the situation settled, I started getting fans out and opening windows to start clearing out the smell of burnt noodles and plastic. I turned to Kiki and asked what happened and how she made it burn so fast and she stated that she has no clue. So I asked, ‘Well, did you put water in it?’
She turned to me and started doing a heinous cackle like laughter and said, ‘Oh, I forgot! That is so funny’
She was the worst.”
Nope. Nope. Nope.
“I went to boarding school and I had an awful roommate during my first year there.
During our first couple weeks, everyone made tons of new friends. No one seemed to like my roommate very much, so she clung to me and my friends. She creeped the boys out by asking if they wanted to hook up. She creeped out another couple by asking if she could watch them hook up. She got upset with my friends when she saw them talking to boys I was interested in. She ate most of my food without asking. She didn’t have a cell phone, so she borrowed mine sometimes.
On more than one occasion, she used it past lights out and woke me up because she was singing loudly over the phone to her boyfriend. She would hit snooze on her alarm clock until she was late for class. Eventually, she was put on in-dorm restriction because she was late to class so often, which meant instead of asking me to ask my friends for rides into town, she sat in our room all day and played on my computer.
She was not invited back to the school for her senior year. Not that it would have affected me either way because my best friend and I requested to live together.”
That’ll Show ‘Em
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“I lived in Halls of Residence in the United Kingdom, which were four separate single bedrooms and a shared kitchen on each floor with several floors.
In the kitchen there was an oven/hob and a microwave, it was easy to heat cold food.
Late one night, a girl on my floor ordered pizza and paid with her debit card. The delivery guy came shortly after 11 and the flatmate got very angry that the pizza was cold. She demanded he take it back and bring her back another. He tried to phone them but told her that the kitchen was closed and he couldn’t get another pizza.
She demanded a refund and he said he could do this but as she paid by card it had to be refunded to her card and that could take a couple of days. At this point, she lost it.
She positioned herself in front of the entrance to the building, feet apart, one arm on each side of the door, dressed in nothing but a bright pink dressing gown, fluffy pink slippers and a towel on her head. She said he wasn’t allowed to leave until he gave her money back. He tried to walk past her but there was no way out. She started screaming, ‘Just try and push me, go on, touch me, just try and touch me, I dare you.’
This went on for about five minutes before the poor guy managed to duck under her arm and run for it.
Now, this whole time I was sitting in another room with some other flatmates and we ventured out into the hallway. She said it was about morals and that could have been her last few pounds and that it wasn’t ,but he didn’t know that.
She then starts gloating about how he left the pizza and, in his effort to get away, had accidentally dropped the money he’d been given for the night so, in her mind, she won free pizza.
A few minutes later, the police came but they went upstairs by mistake and, as she was still in the hallway. We didn’t dare tell them where she was.”