Most of us, at some point in our lives, will share a place with roommates. Although these times can lead to some of our best memories and new friendships, they can also create a lot of tension and stress, especially when that person is a complete stranger who you may have nothing in common with.
There is an art to living with others, and some people seemed to have failed to get the memo that personal space, boundaries, respect, and courtesy are a thing.
Just ask these AskReddit users who share their worst roommate stories and experiences.
[She] put a line of masking tape down the middle of our room [and] said I was only allowed to cross the line to enter and leave the room.
As I was walking back to the dorm from class, I noticed my stuff in the middle of the quad. I go to my room to confront her, and I see a sock taped to my door with a note saying: “Does THIS look familiar?”
Turns out, when I took my laundry down to the laundry room, a sock fell out of my basket and landed on her side of the room. Apparently, the appropriate reaction was to move all of my belongings outside where they could be stolen/ransacked.
annoymous
I was on a sports team freshman year and rooming with another guy on the team. Random meetup as I moved from out of town to go to school.
On the weekends I was gone a lot visiting my girlfriend during a particular month. At the end of the month, the roommate is suspiciously not around much, but I don’t pay too much attention. His parents lived nearby, so he would often go stay there for the free food.
The phone bill comes [in] (yes, this is before cell phones were super common) and it turns out on the weekends I would leave he would call up phone sex lines and ran up a bill equal to a months rent. Not his half of the rent, but the entire rent. From the call logs, it looked like he would be on the phone most of the weekend!
He had “moved out” without telling me when he knew the bill was coming soon so that was [why] I hadn’t seen him.
He refused to admit to doing it, just completely flat out refused. I was [on him] for a long time about the money, and he eventually quit the team and dropped out of school.
fungalitch
I lived with eight to nine people (it varied depending on the month) for eight months. That alone was horrible. I knew two of them before I moved in.
I lived with three other girls for a summer (didn’t know them before either) and they were ridiculous. One girl let her boyfriend live at our place. He would use up the internet, eat all of our food without repaying the other roommates or be replacing what he ate, leave his nasty boxers everywhere, and would invite his friends over while his girlfriend was at work etc. and both of them had a habit of leaving dishes with leftover food still on it in her room for weeks at a time. We had a fly problem.
anonymous
Had a roommate, he was a pretty chill guy. Didn’t bother anyone much except he always ate everyone’s food. Didn’t try to hide it, would just chomp away. One day, I left a bar of chocolate infused with bacon out, half eaten (broken, not bitten), and he came into my room munching on a piece asking [me] why it tasted so weird. He freaked out when I told him it had bacon in it, saying I should have told him blah blah blah. He kept eating our food though.
fallinouttadabox
I had a roommate last year who literally would not stop talking. He told me I should start watching Dexter this one time. “Yeah, I’ll check it out,” [I said]. He then proceeded to give [me] a synopsis of every season of it. Forty-five minutes later, there is no way I wanted to hear the name Dexter, let alone watch the show.
DetGordon
I still live with my unemployed ex-wife.
vanaprastha
I’m sure it’s not the worst, but my roommate from years ago informed me via Star Wars Galaxies in game chat that I was being kicked out. We were both home, and he was in the other room.
roflhaus
Suddenly my roommates letting their friend use our dining room as her own personal storage unit for three months doesn’t sound half as ridiculous after all.
taybless
I had classes starting at 8 AM every day, and my roommate liked to play Modern Warfare 3 until at least 2 AM every night. The T.V. he played on pointed directly at me while I slept and he refused to turn it off earlier. He got pissed at me for turning the T.V. off at 2:30 AM on a Monday night. Apparently, I was [terrible] for wanting to stay awake in class.
anonymous
One of my best friends in college was looking on Craigslist for a place to stay. He ended up finding a sweet deal with a man and his son. The house was relatively large, the rent was cheap, and the roommates were nice. At least they seemed to be. Then, one day, he comes home to a police car surrounding his house. They took him down to the police station for questioning. Apparently, the man was a pedophile and had kidnapped the boy a few years ago. Eventually, the boy told a neighbor.
i-am-not-a-zucchini
[My roommate] came into my room when I was asleep in bed with my girlfriend and started hitting us repeatedly with a samurai sword.
Neuro_Prime
The first month living on my own in a new city. One of my roommates didn’t have a car. One night we were drinking and having a small get together with some friends. Roommate comes up to me [and] tells me he’s sober and asks to borrow my car to go pick up a couple of friends who were too drunk to drive at the bar. Being a little tipsy, at this point, [and] trusting this individual, I give him my keys. Woke up the next morning to find out that instead of picking up my friends, he went to the strip club with them [instead], got wasted, attempted to drive home, totaled my car, got a DWI, and went to jail. He never paid me a damn cent for the damages. The car was unrecoverable.
dearkitteh
[My roommate] didn’t shower for a whole semester. I finally told the RA about it because it got to the point where I couldn’t even go anywhere near my room, and even then, he didn’t shower. After many more confrontations, he finally decided to shower, twice a week, with no shampoo or towel.
Ryooster
My roommate was terrible at doing dishes. She would wait until I gave up and did them. Well, I was just not going to do it this time. She was supposed to bring her date home that night, so I thought, sweet, she’ll wash the dishes. I get home and there are no dishes in the sink. Great, I think. Well nope, she just put all the dirty dishes in the cupboards.
We got into a fist fight in the hall a week later. When the neighbor tried to intervene, she attacked him and her shirt ripped in the process. I walked away laughing.
Creepella_the_second
My roommate believes she’s watched by demons. She also believes I’m possessed by them.
zenietree
Knew him. Same university. Ad on Facebook.
The day he moved in, he nailed a sign above the sink that in six sentences described the dish washing rules of the house. It only got worse from there.
BShears
Hopefully, I’m not too late for this, but here goes. Not my story, but a friend of mine. It was her freshman year of college, with random roommate arrangements. My friend would wake up early for classes, and her roommate absolutely hated being woken up by her alarm. So, her roommate took it upon herself to steal my friend’s phone at night, take the battery out, and hide the phone so she wouldn’t wake up early for classes. My friend moved out [that] semester.
heh88
My roommate was mad because the Dallas Cowboys lost [to] the Detroit Lions. He was drinking on our second story patio and threw the table and chairs over the balcony onto the sidewalk. He may have gotten away with it, but while he was throwing it over the railing, he barely missed the apartment management walking by. I pleaded my case to the manager, but we were promptly given an eviction notice within 24 hours.
FranklyAsh
In my first term of Uni, I roomed with a guy from high school. We didn’t get along very well, maybe because we were fairly different. I was an early riser who maintained a clean room, and he [was] a messy late nighter. After the winter break, he brought his Xbox, I bought Halo 2, and we became best of friends.
jausel1990
I had a roommate who liked to get drunk at parties and start fights so people would call me to come pick him up so I would [have to] pay for the taxi instead of him.
He also thought random choke holds were funny.
warriorscall
I had a roommate that refused to handle conflict face to face. I am very much a “let’s get this out of the way” kind of person, so it [irritated] me. I kid you not, she would not speak to me when I confronted her and then would go back to her room and Facebook me a long message explaining everything she couldn’t say in person. I was at work when she moved out, but she trashed the place. She threw a ton of cardboard boxes in the driveway, my clothing on the floor, and here’s the kicker – she emptied a bag of beef jerky in my bed, which I didn’t find until I was getting into it.
Mildly inconvenient, but so weird.
anonymous
I found a roommate on Craigslist who ended up locking himself out one day and instead of waiting for me to get home, he kicked the door in, ruining the door and splitting the doorframe in half. When I got mad and asked him to pay for it, he [agreed] and then decided to move out when I wasn’t home. On the first of the month. Rent day.
haleyhurricane
My college roommate dated a total D-bag that would constantly break up with her and then get back together with her. Well, many times they would have screaming yelling fights over the phone really late at night (or really early in the morning) and then she would continue to sob the rest of the night. Not what I want to hear when I want to sleep.
melis_snow
[I had] a roommate that would meow at me and ask me to pet her.
groostnaya_panda