Having a roommate can be a strange experience. Sure, a roommate can be fun if they are a friend you have known for a while. Otherwise, living with a total stranger can be a less-than-desirable situation. If there’s one thing everyone can agree on, sharing a space with someone twenty-four-seven can certainly bring out the worst in people! These people share their strange, sickening, and infuriating roommate experiences that made them want to move out immediately. Be right back, I’m packing my bags! Content has been edited for clarity.
The Strange Stalker
“I once had a roommate who stalked me.
I don’t use the word ‘stalked’ loosely, either. I didn’t know my roommate before we lived together, but I had a friend who did. My friend advised me it would be a decent enough arrangement and promised the other girl was cool and wasn’t weird. Boy, my friend was wrong.
My friend never told me this, but throughout our year of living together, my roommate would ask her about me and my personal life, to the point where I felt it was inappropriate and was upset at the level of information my friend decided to share.
At the time I lived with the roommate, I had a boyfriend. We were very close, and he would often stay at the apartment. This was fine with everyone in the apartment, as he got along with my roommates well, and he even enjoyed having their company. However, one day, things got very weird. I came home from classes and my stalker roommate was wearing one of my boyfriend’s tee shirts. I recognized it was his shirt from the logo.
I immediately noticed the shirt and commented, ‘Where did you get the shirt?’
The roommate claimed, ‘Oh, nowhere. I just found it in the dryer.’
I knew for a fact she didn’t find the shirt in the dryer because I slept in it the night before and it was in my bedroom. This was the first strange red flag.
The next red flag appeared when I came home to my roommate sleeping in my bed after a night out. This was a complete invasion of my privacy and my personal space. After this, I began locking my door from the outside. However, this didn’t stop her from entering.
My roommate started timing me and asking me about my daily schedule. I had given her vague details when we first roomed together because I felt it was the appropriate thing to do. However, if I left the apartment at an abnormal time or even came home early, my roommate would question me and ask where I was or what I was doing. I didn’t think this was any of her business. I specifically recalled one morning when I ran out for coffee and skipped class.
When I came home, my roommate stated, ‘You were only gone for twenty minutes. Aren’t you supposed to be in class?’
My roommate and I were never friends. If I was rooming with my best friend, I would consider this behavior on the slightly strange side, but it wouldn’t bother me. This was coming from someone who was a stranger, though.
Some of the last straws occurred when my roommate would come home completely wasted at least once per weekend, and invited random strangers into our apartment. As a young woman, you could imagine why this would make me uncomfortable. Furthermore, my roommate would stalk me on social media, screenshot my pictures, and talk about me as if she knew my life or business. My roommate was far too much to put up with for what was seemingly no reason at all.
One time, my roommate kept me up until six in the morning because she was partying. All the while, I had a class at eight in the morning and an exam.
Then, after a night of partying, my roommate proceeded to ask, ‘Hey, I missed my ride to the airport. Do you think you could give me one?’
Eventually, I pursued legal action against my roommate. I asked for a cease, but her father was a lawyer and it didn’t help my situation. Things only improved once I finally moved out and was completely rid of the situation.”
“It Was Very Awkward”
“I have only ever had one roommate in my life. It was enough to make me vow never again!
My roommate and I were both young, and we knew each other through work. I desperately wanted to move out of my dad’s house and find more independence from his overbearing parenting style. My roommate desperately needed extra money, so she encouraged me to sublet from her into the house she was already renting.
Everything sounded perfect, and I was over the moon excited to live with my roommate. All until I realized I had traded in one parent for another.
My roommate was a nice enough person. But, everything in the house belonged to her, and she held it over me often.
She would say things like, ‘Um, I would appreciate it if you would remember to turn off the stereo after using it,’ and, ‘This crock-pot was my grandmother’s, so please don’t use it.’
Another time, she asked, ‘Any chance you could stack the bowls and plates in the cabinets the way I do instead?’
One morning, she snidely stated, ‘Hmm. I see the yogurt is all gone. I was hoping to have some with my breakfast.’
But hey, I was cool enough with all of this. I was nothing if not accommodating and a people pleaser.
The real kicker came when I was laid off from my job. Guess who they gave my old position to the same day?
Yep, my roommate. It was very awkward.
Again, other than a bruised ego, I didn’t have a problem with it. She hadn’t campaigned for my old job. It wasn’t her fault they gave it to her. I showed no resentment. However, one would expect a hint of empathy and tact from a friend who just got your job. This wasn’t the case with my roommate.
I immediately started to collect unemployment benefits while I scoured for new work. She was still getting my rent money and other expenses. I never lapsed, and I made sure she received her payments in full and on time. After a while though, my roommate started to turn rather smug. She’d come home from work every day complaining about how I hadn’t found a new job yet.
Eventually, I thought ‘Hmm, what’s the issue here? I’m still paying my share of rent and bills, so why are you complaining?’
I thought about it and realized I’d rather give my money to someone more empathetic and deserving.
So, I moved in with my ex-boyfriend’s family temporarily.
They were the sweetest, kindest people alive and they became like parents to me. I loved them so much. And on top of paying them rent for my room, I helped in every way I could. I cleaned the house, walked their dog, and cooked them meals.
Eventually, I found an even better job and rented a studio apartment of my own.
I finally felt real freedom and independence. I slathered yogurt all over myself every day and left the stereo on all night.
Pure bliss.”
“I Never Understood What Prompted His Behavior”
“I got a roommate off of the internet, ‘Craig,’ and broke my lease with him. Craig and I seemed like we would be a good fit on paper. He had recently moved into the state, and my old roommate had recently left. Both Craig and I claimed to be direct communicators, but the reality turned out to be exactly the opposite.
Craig ignored my research and requests on how to acclimate cats to the same living space, and he forced the issue after living together for only two days. My cat was timid, and Craig let his cat walk all over him, even going as far as to steal my cat’s food. When I tried to talk to Craig about it, the situation somehow became my fault for not letting him move in more quickly and for using a different cat food brand.
Craig was one of those people who made unkind jokes, and I was the ‘problem’ if I tried putting down boundaries or requesting he quit being so mean.
A quick, ‘Could you do this instead?’ turned into a thirty-minute exhausting conversation which always somehow came back around to me being at fault.
Craig was always home. He didn’t have friends or social life, and he truly had no interest in getting one. He listened to loud music twenty-four-seven, and while I liked music, I also treasured silence and me-time. Suddenly, me-time was going as if it never existed.
Craig and I shared a bathroom, and I didn’t care when he used it. However, during the interview process, I explained how I showered at night. Due to my work and sleep schedule, I needed to shower between the times of eight and nine in the evening. He agreed, but gradually, his shower schedule shifted to exactly cover mine.
When I tried to talk to Craig about it, it became another exhausting thirty-minute conversation straying away from the topic with nothing getting solved. Somehow, I was the bad guy for having a specific need in terms of schedule.
There were always a ton of weird, small, passive-aggressive situations with Craig to the point where I felt like I was walking on eggshells. I began staying out more and more, almost every single night, to avoid conflict with him.
I would arrive home around nine in the evening and Craig would be in the shower saying, ‘I’ll be another thirty minutes, stop being so selfish,’ despite having four hours alone to bathe while I was gone.
Eventually, Craig started a fight because I asked him to turn his music down when I was trying to watch something on the television in the living room.
He thought he didn’t need to turn his music down, and it culminated in him shouting, ‘You always go out of your way to antagonize me!’
Antagonize him? I spent the majority of my paycheck trying to stay away from him!
After six months, the fighting over the bathroom situation grew extremely bitter. Craig started spending almost two hours in the bathroom between eight and ten in the evening, and he would use all of the hot water. I finally lost my temper and turned off the power in the house. He stormed downstairs and we had a standoff over it.
Craig began using his six-foot-something height to loom over me, and it made me feel distinctly unsafe.
I told him, ‘Back off, or I will call the police!’
He tried to grab me, and after the cops told us to give one another space, my family and friends moved me out the next day.
After three months of upset emails to my landlord, I broke my lease with six months left on it and paid twenty-five hundred bucks to do so.
I legitimately never figured out what prompted Craig’s nasty behavior.”
“She Was One Of The Most Awful People I Ever Met”
“When I lived with my roommate, she did a lot of things to make me want to move out.
She would loudly watch television until four in the morning, often vacuumed at two in the morning, had her family sleeping in our living room, didn’t wash her dishes, and had her dog go to the bathroom on our carpet instead of outside. My roommate even left her laundry all over the house so there was never a place to sit, and decided to shave a guy’s head at one in the morning in our living room and leave his hair all over the carpet.
I didn’t know what made my roommate think these things were a good idea, but the night of the head shaving was my last straw. We lived in a college dorm, and it wasn’t her house. She wasn’t the only person who lived in the dorm.
When I confronted my roommate, she began swearing and getting loud, and said, ‘I can sleep wherever I want and do whatever I want!’
I eventually became sick of my roommate and took all of my things to my room, which was just about everything in the dorm. Since I owned all of the cooking utensils, silverware, and home decor, my roommate had nothing to cook with. Plus, she didn’t have a college meal plan. In a fit of revenge, my roommate contacted the college resident assistant and tried to get them to force me to return my belongings.
I simply stated, ‘I’m not returning my belongings, and I’m not mending our relationship. In fact, I’m moving out and reporting her for all of the stupid things she has been doing. I hope she enjoys the fines at the end of the school year.’
What made me angry about the entire situation was how my roommate claimed she was a ‘clean freak.’ Right after she moved in, she wanted us to all pay for a maid but would leave dishes unwashed in the sink for a week and leave a mess until I cleaned it up. I’ve had a roommate yell at me when I have been sick, yet, this roommate managed to be the most terrible of them all.
The nail in the coffin was when I was moving out, and my roommate dared to say, ‘Hope you get along better with your next roommate, girl,’ in a passive-aggressive tone.
I made a vow to never live with people again, my roommate was one of the most awful people I ever met in my life.”
“I Was Less Than Pleased”
“When I started college, I had never once lived with a roommate. I didn’t even have a sibling. I was an only child who happened to enjoy every second of privacy I could get.
So, imagine my little sheltered only-child self walking into my dorm a somewhat mean roommate, but finding out I had to sleep in a bunk bed. To put it lightly, I was less than pleased. I couldn’t figure out why someone would want to sleep over or under a stranger.
However, I wasn’t getting out of the situation any time soon, so I claimed the top bunk and tried to cope with my new reality.
But, this wasn’t even the worst part.
Around one week after my classes started, my awesome new roommate decided to get a job. I was excited at first because I thought it would mean I would have more time to myself in the dorm.
I told my roommate, ‘Good for you, congratulations!’ until I realized she had taken up a paper route. This was years ago when this was a job people had before the internet. Newspapers didn’t just fling themselves onto doorsteps.
So, my somewhat mean roommate woke up every single day at four in the morning. She wasn’t quiet or careful to not wake me up, either. I almost thought she made it a point to shake the bed and turn on all of the lights just to make me angry.
My roommate dropped out of school after the first semester, and I got the whole room to myself. I had never been so happy in my life as I was when I found out she was gone.”
“He Was A Filthy Slob”
“My best friend had a roommate, and the roommate caused her to move out within the first month of living together.
My friend’s roommate was a filthy slob. No joke. She thought having a guy roommate instead of a girl would serve a dual purpose. One, having a guy roommate would be good protection. Two, she thought a guy roommate wouldn’t steal her clothes or hit on her boyfriend, like her last female roommate.
Everything was going great until it wasn’t. The guy was disgusting. He always trashed the bathroom, never did his dishes and didn’t clean his smelly room. The roommate’s friends were over all the time until the late hours of the night, and my friend was always being approached by neighbors with noise complaints.
My friend said after three weeks of living with the guy, she needed to leave. She cut her losses of one week’s rent plus half of the security deposit. She couldn’t take getting yelled at by her boss for showing up late from a lack of sleep the night before, and the constant complaints and lack of respect the roommate showed her.
My friend went down to the apartment office and told the manager why she was moving out. Because she wasn’t the sole person on the lease, she didn’t have to worry about one thing. My friend moved out while the roommate was at work. She made the manager come down and look at the room she rented so they could check the condition before she moved out.
My friend moved in with her parents for a few months until she could get a security deposit and the first month’s rent together so she could move out on her own.
She vowed to never have a roommate again, and I couldn’t blame her.”
Phone Call Problems
“When I lived with roommates, most of them were great people. However, I had one roommate who was not so great. We were only roommates for a couple of months, maybe three.
My roommate and I never did anything together. The both of us pretty much just stayed to ourselves. We had mutual friends, but rarely if ever, did anything together.
We both went to the same college, and we both studied in the same field. Despite this, we were never in the same classes. However, we did share the same interests in this regard, and sometimes we would talk about it. Other than this, we had very little interaction.
One evening, I was using the apartment phone, which was a landline. I happened to look up and into the hall, and there was a full-length mirror at the end of the hall. When I glanced in the mirror, I spotted my roommate standing in the next room with the other apartment phone to his ear. He was listening to my conversation! I had no idea why he was so interested in spying on me and snooping around my life. I thought it was because he had a crush on me, but I couldn’t be too sure.
My roommate’s back was to me, so I started saying things about him on the phone to see how he would react. He turned around, glared at my door, then looked in the mirror right into my eyes. Busted!
He hung up the phone and ran into his room, slamming the door behind him.
The next morning, my roommate went to class as normal. I packed up all of my belongings and moved out. I left him a note saying I wouldn’t return.
The situation was creepy, and I didn’t want to stay with him anymore.”
“It Wasn’t A Healthy Environment”
“My college roommate was an only child who wasn’t used to considering other people. Some days she didn’t feel like speaking to me, for no other reason than she didn’t feel like speaking to me. I would ask her questions, and she would ignore me.
This ‘ignoring me’ spell would last as long as she wanted it to. Sometimes hours, sometimes days, other times, weeks. Then, she would talk to me as if everything was fine, all on her terms of course. It was a power and control tactic I hated.
I always felt as though I was walking on shifting sands all of the time. It wasn’t a healthy environment.
I also had another roommate who dried her soaking-wet clothes on an electric heater in the kitchen. Yep, seriously. I never understood why she thought this was a good idea.
Luckily, I had a good nose, and I smelled something burning in the middle of the night. I rushed into the kitchen to remove her still-wet clothes from the heater just in time.
She never learned. I was convinced she would have burned the place down had she lived alone.
Another time, the same roommate made frozen drinks but forgot to put the lid on the blender. This meant I found strawberries in the oddest places for weeks on end. Strawberries were all over the walls, too.
What roommates I had.”
“I Couldn’t Be Friends With Her Anymore”
“I had a female friend stay with me during her divorce. She decided my home should be more like a sorority house, and less like a home where two thirty-five-year-old women lived.
One night, I woke up to find her in my living room with two unknown men and her soon-to-be ex-husband. As it turned out, she drank way too much. Like, way over the legal limit, wasted. All the while, she called ten people while she was incoherent. Three of them cared enough to show up and check on her. She told each of these men she had ‘locked me in a closet,’ and her ex-husband thought she had harmed me.
Up until this point, I thought her ex-husband was the ‘bad guy.’ It turned out my friend was the threat. I didn’t know how I could have been so blind.
I couldn’t be friends with her anymore and she moved out the next month.”
The Silverware Thief
“I had one roommate who was a total slob.
This roommate would take dishes into her room, ‘forget’ them, and keep them in there forever. We never went into her room, but I knew the dishes were in there. It wasn’t just a few dishes, either. There were a ton. My other roommates and I had to buy three sets of silverware during the year she lived there. Yet, there were still only five pieces of silverware left.
This wasn’t the worst thing, though.
This roommate would get wasted and freak out on everyone. She was a terrible driver, and she would regularly run into parked cars on our block. Eventually, she got caught for it and moved out.
The day she left was one of the best days ever.”
