apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The art of passive-aggressive note writing:

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

Writing notes never helps. Thats what I've learned

The worst, by far, was when we came home to find the roommate sitting in our computer chair with only a towel on watching porn on the computer. I have not had a roommate since.

My roommates and I have our lifestyle differences, but we make sure to keep house problems very separate from personal problems. Just because I get annoyed at a certain roommate always leaving her stuff on the coffee table doesn't mean I don't want to hang out with her - but I will ask her to get her things off the coffee table. This seems to work pretty well for us, though we still can't agree on a reasonable compromise in decorating styles!

oh dear, i feel like this article was written for me. i have always been a solitary person, but after college, i was forced, financially, to move in with someone who had a vacant room. things were great at first, but about a month and a half in, she started having her niece and nephew spend the weekends with her, after i had told her i did not deal well with children, but she wouldn't warn me they were coming. they would stay up late, watching tv really loud and scream and whine.

that, however, was nothing to the last few weeks i lived there. i guess she thought that since our lease was up in 3 weeks, she didnt have to play nice anymore. she proceeded to go out every other night and come home at 2am on a weeknight with random guys and have loud sex all night.

the last day i had there, her best friend was down from PA and they had brought back 2 strangers (male) to the apartment the night before. i had stayed at my bf's apartment and came home to mostly naked guys asking me if i was their cousin (wtf?). all four of them proceeded to get dirty, together, in her room while i was continuing to pack (in the middle of the day!).

and i know live alone, because of that. /end rant

Wesfs33, I was thinking the same thing.

As for roommates—it is always best to use open communication, be frank, and polite. Passive aggressive notes just make matters worse.

Warning, I have a potentially TMI anecdote to share.

I had a roommate who once decided to shave his curlies over in the bathroom.... then not clean it up. I don't know what kind of forest he had down there, but it was on the toilet, the floor, the wall, everywhere. I sent him an email politely asking him to clean up the next time he decided to shave again (I didn't specify which kind of shaving). It didn't happen again, but then again I did move out into my own place about three months later.

As the above comments say notes get out of control with roommates...my number one rule to any house hold (especially of girl roommates) is NEVER, by any means, buy a white board. EVER.

oh, the note. they always hurt me. I always worked nights and weekends so I guess I never did much around the house--and there would be a note waiting for me.

When I was in college, I used to get lots of notes. Blaming me for everything. You know...

Food that was eaten... (It was her boyfriend.)
Laundry detergent that was used. (Our other roommate.)
Leaving dishes out. (Her boyfriend again.)
Hairballs in the shower. (No idea, but they weren't mine!)

Anything that happened was my fault. And instead of talking to me like an adult, I'd just get nasty messages from her.

OTOH, she never *ever* paid her share of the bills. Somehow, she seemed to have money to pay her boyfriend's, though...

Needless to say, I never had a roommate again after that.

Oh, dear lord. I am so happy to live alone. As God as my witness, I will never share another flat.

I agree with Hollie - writing notes doesn't help. It seems like it would be less awkward than a face-to-face confrontation, but it comes off as passive-aggressive and just makes people mad.

My worst roommate situation was largely my fault - one roomate moved out and a new one moved in. It didn't occur to me that the old roommate never cleaned his room or bathroom the whole time he lived there - it was so dirty, and my poor new roommate, instead of saying something, cleaned it all herself. In hindsight, it was obviously that I should have arranged for maid service. In my defense, I was really young - but I still feel badly about it!

This is so ironic, I was just talking about this today. So, I had a roommate who refused to put her dirty dishes in the dishwasher. It's not hard, is it? No. She would leave them on the counters, on the coffee table, on the breakfast bar, sitting on the futon. Any place that she wanted to. And then...laundry. She REFUSED to do her laundry. Instead, she would throw it on her bedroom floor and buy more when she ran out. If that wasn't enough. I had bought her a hamster (cage and all) for her birthday (btw...her room was clean at this point) which she refused to clean it's cage. Well, because of it's toxic living situation it died. She buried it, but NEVER got rid of the nasty smelly cage. So, she's got dirty moldy dishes, dirty gross clothes, and a nasty hamster cage all in her room (which the door of was always shut). And then...oh it surely does get better...her cat stops using the litter box (my perfect angel cat had no problem with the box, which got COMPLETELY changed every two days) and starts going behind the entertainment center. Note writing does not work. So, I have gotten all in a huff at this point and start putting the cat's messes in her room. I know, it might sound a little harsh, but I just can't take it at this point. And the one night in three years that she decides to do laundry, it's 2 am, I've just put my laundry in the dryer and gone to bed, she goes in the laundry room, takes all of my laundry out and throws it on my bedroom floor. Needless to say she started renting another apartment three months before her lease was up at ours.

Oh I could probably write a novel on one roommate situation alone. She really wanted long distance service on the landline and we agreed as long as she paid the difference (I had a cellphone as did the third roommate). Unfortunately she constantly tried to charge us for long distance calls that she made which was bizarre. She tried to charge me for a call made before I moved in.

She paid bills late and ate our food. When I say she ate our food I mean that she would eat all the cereal in a box save one small bowl's worth. She would eat all the chips in a bag save the crumbs and broken chips at the bottom. She never paid for the food or bought food to replace it because she didn't eat the last bite. Worse was that she would use the bathroom, not wash her hands, and then dig through our food. I thought about her urine soaked hands pulling apart my slices of bread.

She used the other roommate's razor regularly rather than buy a new one. She would go into our rooms looking for our snack foods and eat a good portion of it or she would borrow books without notice and without returning them.

Finally, when she moved out she left a closet full of items there and said that they were 'to be taken' to our new apartment (our=my place & the 3rd roommate's place, we decided not to live with this girl) and held until she returned to the state. Basically, she left all those items there and expected us to find storage for it in our new, smaller place.

We'd confronted her a few times about the food and she swore up and down that she did not eat it but she often ate the other roommate's beef & pork, neither of which I eat. It was hard to pin that on me. She also said that she would buy food if she had the money to do so - I found out she was saving to go vacation in Paris which is why she did not have money for food and ate ours instead.

Our solution: She wouldn't own up to it so we waited until the end of the lease and the 3rd roommate & I got our own place together.

Where to begin?

I'll just give you the worst-the bounced cheques and "borrowing" my underwear and swimwear. Like I wanted to wear it again!

She also brought random guys home. We had a house meeting and told her it was a safety issue. None of us girls wanted to wake up to a strange man in our house.

A word to the wise: DON'T EVER live with a hard-partying heavy drinker.

If you do, expect the following: scrambling to take empties to the Dumpster before your visiting parents arrive (while Party Girl sleeps off her hangover, possibly with a new friend), frequently coming home from work to a noisy apartment full of people you don't really know, discovering a relatively well-known musician checking his Myspace account on your computer in his underwear (a true, and awkward, story), having to buy cat litter at 1 a.m. because P.G. forgot it was her turn for cat-box duty before going out, and the pets lapping up spilled whiskey.

I'll never have roommates again.

I had a roommate whose dad was an endocrinologist, and I swear he tested medication out on her. She had a whole box full of pills and was constantly jittery and on edge. She kept a plexiglas box in the refrigerator and locked her food in it with a padlock (plexiglas so she could see what she had). NO JOKE. She had her own cabinet space in the kitchen, and she took a chain and another padlock and chained her cabinets together so no one could get in her food there either. She had a boyfriend her parents didn't know about, so she constantly had us lie to them when they called and she was out.

So glad I live alone!!

The worst situation: roommate 1 drank and partied a lot. One day, she got so annihilated, she went to the bathroom on roommate 2's bed. Roommate 2 had a bedroom right next to the bathroom, and in roommate 1's stupor, she had mistaken roommate 2's bed for the toilet. How does this even happen? Even worse: she left her jeans in a crumpled heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. My opinion was that roommate 1 should be asked to leave, but roommate 2 thought that was too harsh. I moved out instead. Ew.

Oh goodness, the horrors of bad roommates.

My current roommate and I (both of us guys) decided to try and live with more roommates a few years back and it didn't go so well. The two girls were friends of ours, but things didn't end so pleasantly. The biggest issues were cleanliness, most notably the refusal to clean dishes (aka put them in the dishwasher) in a timely manner.

We tried the passive aggressive note route... which eventually led to a big blow-up that proved that it probably wasn't the best idea.

However, the best part was showing up unannounced just before the lease ended (it was at school, so the leases ran through June) and taking everything from the common area that we owned... leaving them with no couches, coffee table, utensils, plates, dining table, or kitchen equipment.

I had a roommate who left nasty notes on the thermostat saying that it couldn't be lowered past a certain (too high) point because her plant would die. It didn't matter that the other two of us were baking and having to help pay the bill. Oh, how I don't miss those days...

I've had two roomies. The first was a friend of a coworker. She was really nice and we got along fine. But I soon realized that she was a pathological liar -- she told coworkers, friends and FAMILY that her mother died of cancer about 4 months before she actually passed. I stayed up with her one night as she cried and cried about how she mourned her mother and listened as friends of her mother called her with their condolences. The list can go on and on about how disturbed she was. I was ecstatic when she told me that she had to put her house up for sale and that I had to move out.

My second roomie was my ex best friend; we lived together for 1.5 years. Our relationship deteriorated when she started to have an affair with a married man. It was the classic girl dumps her friends and changes for her new beau. She didn't realize it until months after I moved out and she moved in with him after his divorce (and when their relationship started floundering).

What's ironic was that they were both GREAT roommates. They both were completely absorbed in their boyfriend's lives and I was left to myself most of the time.

Needless to say, I now live on my own and will not live with another roommate unless I'm in dire straits. The drama both of them brought home was too much for me to deal with.

Wow. There are days when I am so glad I am old now and don't have to have a room-mate. This is one of them.

Bad room-mates; are there good ones? Actually, I have met a few really dear people through room-mate situations. Henry, if you're out there, I mean you.

The worst room-mate situations I had were when people were going through coming-out experiences. Meeting and maintaining a smile when inappropriate new partners visited, inescapably awkward sexual situations, ghastly long talks.

I'm actually considering allowing a close relative to live in my house now that she is having some problems. Problems? An inability to live without multiple pets. An inability to take care of said pets. Horrible hypochondria. A life-long dislike of and avoidance of domestic chores. A chronic manic spending problem. A belief that showering every other day is enough for a normal person. A monologuist who speaks in well-worn cliches and dwells on past experiences. And still, she is basically a sweet person who I can't help but love ...

I am in the process of trying to evict the lady who is living in my house. Financially, I have to have a roommate, but I don't think craigslist is the place to find them. This one passive aggressively emails me everything instead of talking to me. The second she moves out, all those emails are going up on a blog to tell the tale of A.O.

The worst for me was a roommate who used to go into my room and steal my clothes when I was at work, and then deny it when I came home and saw her wearing them (she started wearing her coat INSIDE the house to avoid my asking about my clothes that she was wearing. I installed a keylock doorknob on my bedroom door which prompted her to ask me why I didn't trust her anymore?

My roommate and I agreed to let one of my closest (former) friends visit with us after her return from Australia. What was supposed to be a 5 day visit, promptly turned into what was supposed to be a 2 week stay after she got a job in town on her second day of the visit. That 2 week stay then turned into 4 months of her sleeping in my bed with me, eating our food, and lying on our couch watching movies all day while my roommate and I were at work.

After many very calm and civil discussions about this not being acceptable by either of us and nothing changing, we convinced our landlord to sublet the suite upstairs; a beautiful 2 bedroom furnished suite for $300 a month because she was a friend of ours. She saw this as my roommate and I kicking her out and unpleasantness ensued.

All of a sudden I was no longer "allowed" to use our front door as I would be entering into "her space" to do so (my roommate still had this privilege though) and when I ignored this petty request (partly my fault, I'll admit), I came home to find all of our belongings that resided in that shared front door space, in our hall with the in between door locked. After months of this type of behaviour continuing, she moved out, but not before stealing several CD's and DVD's and one of her friends' sewing machines (this friend then knocked on my door a week later asking me where it was). She also left a bong with a post-it note on it saying "(roomates name's) bong" and an old computer moniter that she taped printed out pictures of hardcore porn to with a post-it note saying "(my name)'s monitor" for our landlord to find.

Needless to say, we no longer talk.

Writing any sort of note is bad because it demonstrates that you fear confrontation and gives the other party power over you by simply ignoring your concerns. They also tend to breed animosity because tone is absent so by the time you address issues face-to-face, there's a lot more tension.

The best thing to do is address issues right away, in person, and in a polite, but matter of fact manner. Treat people with respect, as adults, and as an adult. This may not work, but it is better than any other approach.

Of course, you have to be flexible about other people's rights to enjoy the home, but they have to respect your reasonable wishes.

Ohhhh, boy. Reading all these makes me feel better about my own experiences.

I've lived with a variety of roommates - some great, some not so great, some downright awful - but I think the key is just to respect and communicate with one another. Notes are retarded. If you don't have enough balls/respect to bring up issues in person, then you aren't worth listening to in the first place. If there are issues, just try to work them out as best as possible. Tolerance is key.

And, of course, eventually you'll move out into your own place, and all will be well. That's where I'm at now, thank goodness!

Gawd. I'm glad to know it's not just me- I was beginning to think that I somehow attracted all the weirdos!

- The roommate who had a different male visitor in her bed every night. Too bad we lived in a tiny dorm room and her bed was a mere 4 feet from mine. Too bad I was a college freshman in a strange city: not too many couches to crash on, and she completely ignore my complaints.

- The roommate whose parents owned the house we lived in. When it turned out that we didn't get along, the landlords started "getting involved."

- Ohhh, and my current situation. As far as roommates go, my boyfriend is the best. But we share the house with a much older couple who have rented the apartment downstairs for over 10 years, which make them think they own the house. They vent their garlicky cooking smells into our apartment... they run the washer at 6 am (leading to cold showers), but shuts my laundry off if it runs past 8:00 pm... they use the washer for business purposes, and we pay half. Best of all, the man is OCD, and he enjoys "rearranging" our garbage. I also found out recently, through a google search of his name, that HE'S IN A CULT.

My freshman year roommate got wasted the night before Parent's Weekend started and got sick all along our dorm's hallway and in our room. The entire hall was so ticked that we woke her up only a couple hours after she stumbled into the dorm and made her scrub the entire place with bleach and 409 - all of our parents were going to be coming in a matter of hours and we didn't want the place reeking like that. She cranked the partying down a notch after that debacle.

Another reason why I'm glad I have a home all to myself (except for the dog and cat). I never have to worry about my pets leaving me notes! hee!

Thanks for the link, Wes, it's really amusing to read.

I haven't had a roommate since sophomore year of college (and what a psycho/thief/alcoholic/CK One-reeking ** one of them was), but I cohabited with someone who eventually had an actual psychotic break with reality and that was just different. His mother takes care of him now. Have also lived with my parents at a few junctures briefly over the years, another can of such and such, but I think I've already spoken of how much I love living alone. Having just myself to consider, I can slack off things I'd be expected to keep up, or it won't get done, and whatever the consequences, I'll know it wasn't someone else's job, and have to get angry at them for failing to be great.

I think there are basically two kinds of roommates, from what I understand from reading. The ones who make and obey rules, and the ones who do what they want. For some reason, the one who does what they want not only isn't conscious of how much more than their share they are taking, once this annoys the one who makes and obeys the rules, it makes that person "the offender" for attempting to apply boundaries to the situation, and the one who does what they want then feels, passive-aggressively, to escalate matters by "fighting back" on their oppressor by being an even bigger taker.

Sometimes rule-makers-and-obeyers can be rigid, overly fussy, and a big drip to live with. They aren't always; sometimes, maybe even mostly, they are reasonable. It's a two-way passive-aggressive street, is what I'm saying though. A lot of the responses here are on the rules side, and while I don't doubt a lot of these stories are true and some of these roommates are so awful, I think it's an effect of liking a certain standard. Just like with neighbors, it's difficult to approach someone with any piece of your mind. A note, a calm suggestion, an offhand sarcastic sidestep, an ultimatum, lots of fighting and eye-rolling. I don't have a solution, I just don't know how you do it. This dynamic of interaction is evident in all sorts of public situations involving grown adults.

I have to believe the "roommate" thing works for most people, enough to cooperate amicably, or nobody would head into that mess. Being a guest as opposed to a roommate, people have certain expectations and behaviors and even then would become unbearable to one another. Acting as though a host or a guest to your roommate, while expecting like behavior (and getting much worse in return), would impose on everyone's comfort, but I think that's how it tends to be, and causes friction. Compromise fails because the taker doesn't make rules for everyone, such as: I get to drink all your soda. They just do it. It's just like writing a note to the effect: 'It would be nice if you left some for other people' on the bottle of soda. While they may not have realized that soda doesn't magically appear just for them, and feel some shame and correct their behavior, more than likely they know they were drinking all your soda, and now they think you're a twerp and will eat all your cookies too. You're not going to repair this relationship with another note.

One roommate who, during the hot (100 degrees ) summer months, would walk around the house soaking wet in her bathing suit after her life guard gig and yell at us for having the AC on. Cause didn't we realize it made her arthritis flare up?

Another who left milk in fridge, went out of town for a month, then lost it when said milk wasn't in the fridge when she returned. Also left ugly note when we experienced a rendezvous mix up saying she hoped we'd died because there was not other excuse for not showing up (we'd almost gotten in a car accident on the way).

A father of a roommate who would walk into our house unannounced, sans knocking. Same roommate would store full trash bags in her room and then take them out periodically.

Another who would come into my room at night when she got home from work to "talk" (read talk at me) about all the people she worked with that I didn't know at all. For hours and hours every night. I took to quickly shutting off the light when I heard the door open. It didn't work.

Worst of the worst: NEVER flushed the toilet. Ate all my food all the time. Her fiancee would come over when she wasn't there to use our other roommate's computer to look at porn. Same fiancee stole my and the other roommate's swimsuits (really there is NO OTHER explanation- we've tried to come up with some). They ended up calling off the engagement but that didn't prompt her to start flushing the toilet.

I've had a few.
The roommate's dad who would spew racist hate as he passed out drunk under our coffee table bi-weekly. He assumed since he paid her rent (1/5), he could use our home as he pleased. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my own home as when he visited. She usually stayed at her boyfriend's house to avoid her dad. Same boyfriend used to sit in his truck and watch our house each night when they had broken up for a couple weeks. I seriously thought he may hurt us.

The roommate who traded "visits" for men to pose for her photography hobby. That was endlessly awkward... most especially the time one of them jumped out of his 45$ cab ride home after leaving our place and we were called multiple times daily from the cab company demanding payment on the guy's behalf.

And then there was the one who didn't shower. EVER. Or do her laundry. Yet managed to use 5 cans of hair mousse between September and December. I can't even get into that drama. I'm queasy just thinking about it.

I feel so, SO lucky for my last roommate situation. My first one (dorms) was 9 women in a 4 bedroom suite. I'm sure you can guess how that went. Sophmore year was 5 women in a 3 bedroom. It got unpleasant as well, although nothing compared to some of the previous stories.

I moved out with one girl from that house and the brother of a mutual friend. That worked out great until they started dating and then broke up (Oh god, the drama!). I'd come home occasionally to screaming fights or, once, a broken nut grinder (she threw it at him). But he moved out and another guy moved in, a "No sex with roommates" rule was instituted and it was low key, calm and happy for the next two years. It was a disaster area (except finals week) most of the time, but we all just dealt with it and I did dishes when I had time since they were mostly mine.

Now, I live alone and I find myself missing the last two roomies but I'd idealy live in the same building as them, not the same house.

Oh my god, Liz, you live upstairs from us? Don't you WANT more orderly trash???

I kid!

1. Some of these posts writers might want to become room mates, because they suffered similar misfortunes and appear to understand the basics of human dignity.

2. I'm wondering how these dysfunctional people were brought up. Were they not taught cleanliness, respect for others and their property, consideration.

3. Should potential room mates fill out a questionnaire that will reveal their level of commitment to cooperation and social correctness?

4. Most of my life, I've lived alone or with a partner. Only once I had a room mate and she was fine, except that I could not tolerate sharing with some one my living space.
Eventually, I moved to a space I could afford on my own. Peace of mind is premium. Without it you're miserable. I share the pain of these writers who went through hell.

oh my. I am currently living with four roommates. for the most part, we get along very well and they are really nice people. but one of them.... I really want to like her, I do, but she's making it difficult.

admittedly, we found two of our roommates on craigslist. however, we talked a lot before selecting anyone and I *thought* we made it clear that we were looking for responsible adults and specifically brought up being clean and not leaving dirty dishes around. everyone agreed on this.

but this roommate does dishes at most once a week. and she cooks a lot. she's one of those people who will use every pan to cook one meal. what's worse is that she not just leaving rinsed dishes in the sink, oh no. she's leaving food encrusted dishes around, sometimes not even bothering to move them from the stove. and when she does do dishes, she won't wash silverware. right now, every single piece of silverware we own is in the sink.

I really just can't understand it. not only is it just disgusting (at least scrape your food scraps into the trash!), but does she really think that no one else wants to use the dishes? the worst is when I will wash one of her dirty pans (which takes forever because the food has been crusted on for days) in order to use it, then I will wash it after I use it like a normal person and leave it on the drying rack, and the next time I walk into the kitchen, she will have used it and left it dirty in the sink again! she also doesn't wipe up any mess she makes on the stove and has never once cleaned it.

is she not concerned for her own health? how can she not see anything wrong with this? she's a clean person, her room is clean. I know recent college grads aren't known for being great housekeepers, but most recognize some need to grow up a little...

adding to this, she's a loud phone talker and has recently decided to conduct her whiney, lengthy conversations to her parents and friends in the living room while other roommates are eating dinner or talking or watching tv. she's really pushing me...

I also find it hilarious that this subject has prompted so many long comments from readers....

I'm glad to have my own place, after having both positive and unfortunate experiences with roommates. In my opinion emails are more passive aggressive than handwritten notes.

I only have had roommates when in college dorms, and then only because the housing office assigned them to me -- I sure never picked them. One of them insisted that I sleep in the bed nearest the door so when the vandals broke in (second floor girls dorm, middle of the hall not near a door, locked at night, no male guests in those days...) they would kill me first while she escaped! Really! (There was more but it's not worth going into.)

I decided that I'd live in any cheap, crappy, tiny studio apartment I could find -- and I did -- to avoid having roommates in future.

However, if I had to deal with them now (and in a way I do, my "domestic partner" is a roommate after all...) I would IMMEDIATELY address any situation that bothered me face to face, and expect the same to happen in reverse. Conversations and even arguments fade away, but the written word lasts forever! NEVER leave notes if they can be avoided! (Think of the poster above who plans to blog their roommates stupid emails...)

Also, whatever happened to having a contract between renters? BEFORE a lease is signed. If not in writing, at the VERY least a serious discussion of "house rules"... especially involving bills, property rights, and privacy. If someone is on a very different wavelength, it can't be worth it to agree to live with them.

I haven't had a true roommate since I was 19. That said, I went through a phase in my 20's and early 30's where I would let friends who were inbetween apartments or moving back to NYC crash with me. The last one had broken up with her boyfriend in Europe, called me collect hysterically crying and like a sucker I lent her the money to fly back to the US and ship all her crap. She became so nuts that I began going to bed at night with a chair wedged under my doorknob. Several of our mutual friends thought she was a tad obsessed with me and I became fearful for my boyfriend. After 2 months I gave her 2 weeks notice that she had to go elsewhere. That was several years ago, we haven't spoken since and she never paid me back.

Roommates: never again. It's just not worth it. I can barely deal with my noisy neighbors.

I had a experience many years ago that I will never forget. Without getting into details, my roommate was schizophrenic. I had no idea of this at the time, and was not told by the person moving out that there was a problem.
After this experience I never lived with another roomie again. Years later I moved in with my boyfriend. When the dirty dishes pile up or the trash doesn't get taken out I don't sweat it.

A close friend of my sister's roomed with her for a couple of years. During a brief period of unemployment, the friend painted parts of my sister's house without permission. And the color combos were horrendous.

My first roommate out of college was a friend from school. He'd let dishes stack up in the sink. I could go maybe 3 days before I couldn't stand it anymore. Every now and then, he'd say, "Boy, we sure have let the kitchen go!" to which I'd say, "Whattaya mean we?!" One weekend, he went to visit his parents, and left his usual three days worth in the sink. 15 minutes after he left, I took all of his pots, pans, dishes and utensils out of the sink and put them on his bed. When he returned two days later, he was dumbfounded. He had no clue why I'd do that, despite the fact that we'd talked about several times in 6 months. He never let them pile up again.

I am in one of these situations right now...I cannot wait to live alone. My current living situation is very close to unbearable. It's my first apartment (I'm in college) and I live with my two roommates from last year. We all got on well enough before, but this year one of the roommates has transformed herself into the roommate from hell.

She is constantly drunk and embarrassing, she brings home a different guy every night, she plays her (really bad) music at top volume so that we all have to listen to it...at 3am in the morning, and, oddly, on top of all this, she is the most obnoxiously OCD clean freak I have ever encountered. I am clean, but I tend to clutter. However, I keep all my clutter to my own room, and keep the shared spaces tidy. When I was on vacation, she came into my room and cleaned and reorganized EVERYTHING. I am pretty sure that is not OK.

If we try to confront her about things she becomes belligerent and just yells. I pretty much just keep my head down and put up with it, because I have refused to sign the lease again for next year. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!!

I lived in a not so good neighborhood and my roommate refused to lock the front door because he said that the world needed to be more trusting. the guy was a total, complete idiot. i moved out shortly after. that was the worst.

i had a roommate who would often have sex in her cheap, fragile ikea bed so i could hear the whole thing. it would wake me up. and she would call different people early in the morning and sob hysterically and yell after she broke up with her boyfriend but it went on for months. then she would fall asleep with the phone in her bedding, so i would have no phone to use. when i could finally get it out of her room, it would be dead and needing to be charged. she would also smoke in her room, right next to mine and it would come into my room.

these are just the worst of the problems. i won't even bring up all the little stuff. it's rough to live in a major city where it's nearly impossible to afford one's own place. now i live with my boyfriend and that is great, except our neighbors are even worse than the bad roommates i have had as far as noise and immaturity. i think i need to live in the country!

I should have left notes.

My first roommate I saw her maybe once a month (though i know she was home more often than that but she'd come in really really late) and it was usually on the way out or in so talking to her face to face was not a possibility.

She left plates of half finished food in the hallway closet cuz she was too lazy to take them a whole 10 steps and to the kitchen. She left a bag with several plates of food in the middle of the living room....i didn't know it was food till it went really really bad...since it wasn't mine i didn't touch it but after a month of being there i eventually threw it out. She used her fingers to eat my peanutbutter and left it in the hallway for me. (Like stick her finger in and suck it off then put it back in) She'd set her alarm for 3-4 am i guess to wake up to do homework or something i don't know but wasn't home to turn it off and her door was locked so it left me listening to her alarm for hours. Didn't pay the utilities because she claimed to be paying utilities at her friend's place she was crashing at. I found out she wasn't paying her friend either...because she told them she was paying me.

I've had 1 roommate since....who was even worse....I don't live with roommates anymore, that's my big luxury...so everything else is on an extremely tight budget.

On a side note...my sister's old roommate would have sex in the living room with his girlfriend. He also threw a party and she didn't know about it till she got a fwd of the invitation...apparently he started off as a really good roommate...

My downstairs neighbors had to sublet their tiniest room to a stranger from Craigslist. After many interviews they settled on a slightly odd girl and agreed for her to pay a measly $300 a month (in Boston). Regardless, she lost her job and couldn't afford the last month. Surprisingly enough she managed to come up with money... and even more surprising... she confided in me (while drunk) that she had sold herself to do so (in the subleted room!). She said it wasn't such a big deal as it was something that she had done before.

*shudder - I would never have roommates again.

I am so happy I am living now by myself! No more roommates!

I've had some great roommates, some of whom became/were my friends. Some... I guess the worst was the guy who was "an artist", and slowly became aggressive and screaming on us. I think he was bi-polar, that would explain a lot... We asked him to leave when he screamed on me because our washing machine broke (and I guess that was my fault?) and I seriously was afraid for my life.

The other one... she was a lovely girl... but very, very loud. She was coming back from work around 11pm, and was beginning to call the whole world, screaming all the time in very high pitched girly "OMG IT"S SO EXCITING!!!" just when I and my roommate were getting ready to sleep...
She also was very sloppy and obviously didn't know how to wash floors, clean properly. She was doing her dishes.... flooding whole kitchen same time (the fact that most of the time she was attached to a phone could explain that one).

Anyway, I didn't have that bad, no one had sex in the room next to me, was getting drunk or robbing me (as some other people were saying). But my introvert soul is happy to live alone...

I've always lived in very expensive cities, either as a student or grad student, or working at a series of woefully underpaid jobs -- so I spent most of my 20's and 30's in shared houses or apartments.

I found shared houses to be the worst: 5 to 6 people means more room for conflict and much more room for alliances and internecine warfare. I usually got along with most of the people I shared two-bedrooms with -- male or female-- and some of my closest friendships grew out of them.

I agree with Offtza -- the worst were those with mental health issues, or the dishonest. But if you actually like each other and are willing to compromise and talk, it can work and usually does. It's a little like a marriage, without the love. You do need to like each other.

i had a roommate that was a serious alcoholic. One night he drank quite a bit and had hallucinations. He was having conversations with non existent people in the bathroom and bedroom. In fact, he got into a terrible fight with a non existent person in his room. We could hear him yelling. I was so scared that I got one of my other housemates and we took the dog and went to a friend's house to sleep.

In the same apartment, later, we got a roommate who had a dog that attacked my dog and caused me to pay out over $100. in vet bills. He was broke and wouldn't pay. He also wouldn't pay the rent. Fortunately we all paid our individual shares directly to the landlord and it didn't affect us beyond the fact that he was tragic to live with. He started chaining his dog to his bedframe when he left the house for the day and would leave a space heater running. I was terrified the dog would knock it over and we'd have a fire. I also felt terrible for the conditions he left the dog in. I called the SPCA and lodged a complaint.

Then there have been those that just didn't help out, or ate our food, or stole money, or had invited home weirdos, or whatever.

People are messed up.

Agreed regarding the contract. No matter who the roommates are (even if it's your brother or your cousin or your best friend), insist on the contract. You can tell them it's because of past bad experiences, or just for your own neuroticism or whatever.

That way, if you do get stuck with the missed rent payments, unpaid bills, damaged property, etc., you have an easy time collecting in small claims court.

In an apartment with 2-3 people and 2 feline flatmates, Frisky and Fluffy, you need a tray for each cat and one extra all in different parts of the flat so no one tray is visible from any other. The cat who is messing would tell you "Fluffy says the tray is his and I can't use it". Fluffy is relieving his boredom by watching the tray and springing on Frisky with all claws out if he goes near it. It's a fantastic new game he's made up! Or maybe it's a territorial thing. Frisky holds on for as long as he can and then just has to go. The third tray if correctly placed is there because Fluffy can't watch three trays at once, especially if they are all in different places. Make sure your pets have things to climb on other than the furniture and plenty of mental stimulation.

if you don't know who the deadbeat room mate is...it's you.

My goodness! It actually makes me feel a lot better to see all this (sorry for everyone who had to go through it, though!). For a while I thought I had terrible luck, but it turns out bad roommates just happen. I won't even go into the horrors of my first roommate (ex best friend) and instead talk about the last one. The woman was ALWAYS angry. It amazed me! She constantly stuck her nose in the air and looked like she was smelling something bad and made nasty little comments. No matter what I did (ie CLEANING) she would find some way to take it as offensive. She was by far the angriest and most difficult person I have ever encountered. I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells. She came out of her room one night to yell at me for coughing (excuse the details but I was sick and coughing so hard I vomited). She never cleaned up after herself and got super defensive when I brought it up (which was always gently). I cleaned my stuff and hers, I cooked often for both of us, baked, left her nice notes when she had tough stuff coming up (ie job interviews), stayed up late with her when she was upset.. Nice things. Lots of them. My mistake for wasting it on someone who was super mean and never appreciated it. Admittedly, I moved out on a terrible note. We were out for a girls' night out and she wouldn't stop complaining and whining and I had more and more drinks to tune her out (totally my own fault) and by the end of the night I was drunk enough to tell her "I love you even though you leave your toe nail clippings on the coffee table (TRUE)." This offended her beyond reconciliation and for the next few days I got the silent treatment. By the next weekend, I had moved out.

Now I live happily alone but with a good friend a few doors down. So it's like having the fun parts of having a roommate (not being lonely) minus all the stupid drama.

Hey neutopian... do we know each other?

Nah, but it would be pretty hilarious.. :)

I would have never left my parents´place to get roommates (from hell or heaven). I have never shared with anyother than my husband and now kids. It is impossible to reconcile the differences in lifestyles when there is no love (partner) or responsibilites (chidren) to assist. I could not even share with my own brothers, no way!