h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just thinking about those people makes me want to kill something. My best friend Kirsten and I were roommates for 4 years and we liked it that way. We have our own places now, but we're still best friends. I have the greatest pictures and stories from when we used to live together. We were more like siblings than roommates. Plus it helped that we agreed that she would do the dishes (as long as I rinsed everything clean once I was done cooking. I HATE dishes) and clean the bathroom every now and again as long as I did everything else.

It was fabulous. She's a great person. One of my favorites ever.

We were roommates in college. Our second year we lived in the dorm called Sanctuary. It was total luck that we got that dorm. It's the dorm where they put the star atheletes and the rhodes scholars. There were 4 of us and we had a full-sized kitchen with microwave dishwasher etc... a living/dining room with cathedral ceilings, a master bedroom, a spiral staircase and a large loft space, and 3 full bathrooms. So two girls slept in the master bedroom and shared the master bath, and two of us slept in the loft room, one taking the bathroom up there and one using the main bathroom downstairs. We lived there for two years.

The first year I slept in the loft with Dawn the 1980's Material Girl. (she left school 3 months before the end of the year having racked up a fortune in credit card bills) and Kirsten and Becca lived downstairs. Well...I don't mind telling you that Becca is a FREAK so the next year Kirsten and I lived in the loft and Becca and Becky lived downstairs.

Becky was a nice enough kid, except I think she had been abused as a child or something. She couldn't look anybody in the eye and her speach was very stuttered. She really didn't know what to make of me and all my crazy actor friends. Her parents used to like to come into town at 7am on a Saturday and bang around the house. The loft was half open, so if someone was up in the kitchen or the livingroom you heard everything.

I had told Kirsten the first year that Becca drove me nuts because she was incapable of doing anything quietly. You know, the kind of people that were never taught that at 3am if you TURN the doorknob instead of just yanking the door shug it doesn't bang? She had to get up early on weekends for work and she used to wake me up eating her cornflakes. I am not joking or exaggerating. Kirsten used to think I was crazy until the second year when we were both in the loft. We're lying there one Saturday morning and I'm doing my weekly "listen to Becca eat at 7am" you know CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH SPOON SCRAPES AGAINST BOWL CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH and suddenly I hear this whisper from across the room, "Oh ... My ... God... you are right. I thought you were insane!" and then we both laughed till we cried.

Becca also did something once that almost made me actually kill her. Kirsten told me that she thought I was a bigot because I didn't like her friend Alberto. Alberto was also a man that she didn't take calls from because he "scared" her and the fact that I didn't like him made me a bigot. Kirsten told me this when we were FAR away from the room, which was smart because I started screaming and throwing things.

I still hate Becca and she'd probably run if she saw me.


My first year roommate didn't believe in washing anything ever. But she was never at the room, so she'd pop in, eat some cereal and then leave the milk to rot. YAY!

I also had a guy roommate for a little after Kirsten got her own place and he was a horrible pig-man that stuck me with a month and a half due on the rent. I hope he dies.

Hee hee...I wasn't going to talk about it. Ah well.

Hi Amanda. bubster sent me over, because I'm in the middle of a "bad roomie" debacle at the moment. I don't think he knows how long it's been since things were attended to here, though - perhaps this will get them moving again...? He suggested I might have something to say here, but once I found this heading I thought it more appropriate merely to add an ending:

"it's already been done much better, and more comprehensively, than I could ever do it!".

This applies to Krissy's story, but it also applies to what I consider to be the "bible" of bad roommates - "He died with a felafel in his hand", by John Birmingham (look it up at Amazon - I think they list it there. If not, check out the Dymocks bookstore in Australia: it'll give you the details, if nothing else). None of the stories I could tell about bad roomies are anywhere near as entertaining as Mr. Birmingham can make them, and none of the situations I have faced are anything like that bad, either.

My problems with bad roomies are mostly just lapses of tolerance on my part, and although my tolerance is great it isn't infinite. I just have to step back, readjust and reorient, most of the time. I never lose my head unless I'm sure noone is listening, and I try very hard not to object to things which I know will infuriate me if they're done: I prefer to see people come to their senses, and that can only be done with gentle persuasion, as well as or in lieu of a lot of time. The cleaning and washing up type problems I get around by cleaning what I want to see clean, and leaving as many dishes in the sink as others have put there - if I need something for myself, I just wash it up and put it back when I'm finished! Eventually, fitfully, people realise that there's no way they're going to have a clean glass to drink out of unless they wash it themselves. If I had the time, though, I'd probably wash up twice a day, it's just that with so much of the mess being made when I'm not even in the house, I don't want to be bothered doing the washing up.

When your housemate's got a big, smelly dog that sheds everywhere and keeps lying on the floors of the bathroom and the kitchen, and you agreed to let the guy move in on condition that you accepted the dog, you're in a bit of a bind, though...! I'm not sure what to do about this one, except maybe poison the dog...

LOL! Wow, guys...wow.

Well I guess the one thing to be said about having a roommate (or mates) is that if you had a low tolerance before the whole experience, it's sure to get higher! I mean, you couldn't pole-vault over my tolerance right now, not even if you tried. Some people are certainly cut out for living on their own. I know Krissy LOVES her situation right now: independance and space! (Always a good thing. ) But I think most people I know have also grown to appreciate what you gain from living with someone. If anything, you'll never take having a clean bathroom for granted again. I honestly feel sorry for people who've never been graced with dirty socks in the kitchen sink or a stack of old newspapers in the living room four feet high or the fact that there never seems to be any toilet paper in the house, no matter how many times you visit the grocery store.

Those are the things that truly build one's character.

Anyway, thanks for the great stories guys! I was begining to give up on this little idea... And Hypoman, good luck with the dog situation. It is kinda rough, since you agreed on having him there in the first place, but you are allowed to put your foot down when necessary. At the very least, slip a doggy brush in your roomie's bed and maybe he'll get the hint.

And I'd wish Krissy luck, but we all know she doesn't need any more. S'true.

s'really true.

*nods emphatically*

holly shit

Reading this bad roomie story might make you feel better...dogs, bloody mirrors, the works. It is from http://whostolemymilk.com

Psycho Surfer

My worst roommate (and I've had some bad ones) was on my semester at Tel-Aviv University. It started on the group flight there, with this obnoxious surfer looking guy who was seated next to me (I was on an aisle, he was in the middle). On the ten hour flight, he had me put something in or take something out of the overhead for him at least fifteen or twenty times. He just wouldn't leave me alone, and was constantly begging me to change seats with him, and grab a pen, and put this card in his bag... When we got to the dorms and had our orientation meeting, it turned out that I was in the same apartment as him, though thank god not the same room (each apt was 2 double rooms with a common kitchen and bath).

This guy was unreal. He was a bleach-blond surfer, rowed crew, was well over 6' and very muscular (I'm 5'7" and thin), and just a total jerk. He constantly ate the food belonging to the rest of us, claiming that he had no money, nevermind the $100 packages full of crap he'd send back to his girlfriend in CA. After two weeks or so of his constantly disrespecting the other three of us, things got a bit tense. The first turning point was when he used an entire pack of my roommate's razors to shave part of his head, and from then on he seemed to be in ever-lessening contact with reality.

About a month into his stay, he decided to adopt a stray dog that he found near the beach while surfing. This, of course, couldn't happen, because you can't have dogs in the dorms, and the rest of us weren't too keen on having a stray dog around. Jason, the psycho, completely lost it when he was told he couldn't keep the dog ("if he goes, I go, because he's the only one who understands me"). He got right in my face and threatened to kill me if I turned him in (remember our size and strength disparities...), since I was the only one who was home when he came charging in with this poor mutt. Later that day, after the security guards and the program people told him the dog had to go, he took off, and wasn't heard from for a couple of days.

A few days later, he showed up and was hanging out in a room down the hall, when someone called security, as we had been instructed to do should he return. From what I'm told of the incident, he went out onto the balcony (4th floor) and threatened to jump when the police arrived on the scene. After a tense confrontation, they charged him and were able to subdue him after he punched at least one officer. He was then carried - literally kicking and screaming - off the University's property and was taken into custody. He spent about a month or so in a mental facility in Israel before he was deported back to America.

When my roommate got back to the apartment, he discovered that Jason had left us a final message. Using a razor, he had cut open his finger and painted a message in his own blood on our bathroom mirror ("you all lied to me, blah, blah, blah"), then tied the bloody razor to a rose and left it on the kitchen table.

Now that is a roommate from hell.

http://whostolemymilk.com