Terrible Roommate Stories

Are you sure you really want to know? I don't want to scare you into going away.

Honestly, my freshman year of college was pretty okay. I was in the same situation as you, with 2 roommates. It wasn't too bad. They were nice, but went home a lot on the weekends.

Now, my sophomore and junior year roommate I thought was going to be okay, but I ended up being wrong. She was nice, but lots of issues. I ended up finding out that I was her first roommate who stuck around for more than a semester. I believe in 5 semesters, I was roommate #6. She just needed attention all the time, and would do rude things to get it. Me and some friends also believe she would fake how sick she was sometimes to get attention. It was suspicious because she always wanted to go to class or be around friends. Most people I know want to be left alone.

She also lied to me about spending the night with a guy a few times. She thought I would get mad because of my morals, but I honestly don't care what others do. Thank goodness nothing bad ever happened.

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Oh dear...oh dear.

My first roommate wasn't a nightmare but she wasn't great either. She was rather bossy and would order me to take out the trash when it was full. We, initially, had an arrangement were we would go back and forth on who did it. But she grew tired of it and decided I should do it all the time. She would also change the channel from whatever I was watching if I dared to go to the bathroom during a commercial. She actually asked for a room switch on our second day of school. She said I was mean. Her rationale? I didn't cry when my mom left on our first day. I had a new roommate before Halloween.

The next roommate. Man, what a peach. She actually tattled on me to my mom when I decided to skip class one day. And no...I'm not kidding. I was out of the room when my mom called and she told her I hadn't gone to class. Later my mom called back to say the school had called (seriously..what college does that). All I had to do was look at my roommate and she confessed.

The one after that was just kinda weird. I mostly ignored her. I found out from a friend that she didn't like me because she hated my accent (she was from California and I'm from NJ). Weird reason to dislike someone but whatever. She would wear a SF Giants hat backwards but would be wearing a dress so she just looked silly. She told a friend of mine (who of course told me) that she just wore the hat to upset me (I'm a Phillies). Not that I cared. She would attempt to make me mad but she pretty much failed all the time. Though this one was a tattler too. She told my mom I didn't come back the room one night.

A few years down the road I had a roommate who was obsessed with the Backstreet Boys. Now I don't mind BSB and it's fine being a fan. But this chick couldn't have a conversation that didn't involve them and her entire side of the room was wallpapered in posters. And she had a little respect problem. If I was in the room watching TV or listening to music she would turn her cd player on louder to drown out whatever I was listening to/watching. What else...oh, she didn't have an alarm clock so her mommy had to call her every morning to make sure she was up. Since the phone was on my side of the room she would drag it across the room. That left the cord right where anyone could trip over it. Which I did...frequently. Once I tripped over it and pulled the jack from the phone. The next morning it didn't ring because it wasn't hooked up. Her mom called security who pounded on our door at 7 am to make sure we were up. What else....oh and she would always invite her friends to watch movies in the room while I was sleeping. Her friends were roommates with each other so their room was sitting empty. Thankfully she lived ten minutes from campus and went home every weekend (hard to get the "college experience" that way). I later found out that this was something she did just to drive people out of the room so she could have a double room to herself. And it worked. Every year that she was a student she had a double single.

I've also had roommates that I got along with so don't let these stories scare you. I was really good friends with one of my roommates and we would hang out together all the time. We'd go off to the 24/7 diners at 3 in the morning, go shopping, go to baseball games, etc. It's not all bad.

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Updated On: 7/15/10 at 12:43 PM

Marianne2 - I consider that a D+ bad roommate situation.

I had a friend whose roommate during his freshman year, after both he and my friend being asleep for about 4 hours, awoke in the middle of the night, screamed at the top of his lungs, ran into the hall and pulled the fire alarm, banged on people's door to "GET OUT!!" and caused a large panick. After being interviewed by Security, it turns out he had a nightmare and thought it was reality.

Or so he thought.

Three weeks later, during the middle of the night the roommate awoke again, screamed, used a nail to cut his arm, ran into the hall and smeared his arm across the walls and dorm room doors causing blood to get EVERYWHERE, pulled the fire alarm, screamed obscenities, stripped down naked, and as other students tried to exit the building, he was trying to grab girls with his t-shirt saying "I'll protect you! I'll save you!"

Some football players tackled him and held him down. An ambulance was called as it was suspected he was on drugs. Turns out he wasn't, but as a precaution he was not allowed back into dormitory living. He was later apparently diagnosed with a psychological disorder. Never had any symptoms until he went to college. Scary.

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Eris, My roommate was famous for turning her music on when I was already listening to it. She would play "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" like 5 times in a row. Me and my friends, who were also friends with my roommate would give her logical advice, but she always have to call her parents to make sure we were right. She would yell at them in person and even had a fight on speaker phone with her mother once. And still in college, her parents grounded her at home and gave her a really early bedtime. She complained about it, and I told her to have a respectful conversation with them, but she said she would get grounded for disrespecting their rules.

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JerseyGirl2 your "You own it!" story is priceless. I don't understand couples who are able to have sex when there is another person in the room.

Updated On: 7/15/10 at 01:13 PM

It happens. My freshman year, we ended up with a set of bunk beds, and my other roommate lofting her bed on 2 dressers. One roommate went home over the weekend, and other roommate invited some friends to spend the weekend. Two of them were in the lofted bed, and I was on the top bunk, and they woke me up from having sex. Thank goodness I drank too much and was partially hungover.

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where do I begin?

this guy I roomed with was a doozie. I lived on the third floor, and he on the second. He had NO personal boundary issues whatsoever. He would come into my room without my knowing, take my nice dress clothes because he wanted to wear them, and then never return them. The problem was that he was about 12 inches taller than me and 50 lbs. heavier, so all my clothes would be stretched out. And I would find my clothes discarded on his floor along with his dirty clothes. He couldn't even have the common decency to return them to me. Everything smelled like B.O because he also had some cleanliness issues. He would steal my dvds, cds, anything of mine that he wanted, he just took. Never cleaned up after himself, he was a complete mess.

I would confront him about it, but he never cared, and just continued doing it. He was a delusional type, bordering on a psychological disorder. He was convinced he was the smartest, the most attractive, the wittiest, and the best person in the room at all times. Unfortunately, it was usually the opposite.

So finally, I was so fed up that I told him when the lease was up I was moving out, and He would too because he couldn't find a new roomate. so the last night we were there, he decided to have a party with some of his friends, who enjoyed doing a few hard drugs. i don't have a problem with it, but these people did not know how to handle them. I was not at or aware of the party because I was at work for the night. When I got home, I was exhausted and not in the mood for partying, so I just went to bed. I had been repainting the walls white for the landlord, and during the party, everyone thought it would be a great idea to do some drugs and dip thier bare feet in the white paint, and walk around the hardwood floors, being little artists. So I wake up the next morning, a little dehydrated, I go down to the kitchen for some water. There are white footprints all over the floor, some of the furniture, and no one is in the house. They had all already left. To add insult to injury, I went to get the water from by brita filter, and my roomate, I guess for lack of a pitcher, used my brita to hold his margarita mix. I broke down crying, I was so furious.

And the Landlord was coming at noon that day to view the house and get the keys from me, so It was up to me alone to get down on my knees and meticulously scrape off all the white footprints from the floor, and have the house in a somewhat presentable shape by the time he got there. It took HOURS. to clean.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg of problems this guy gave me.

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Updated On: 7/15/10 at 01:39 PM

I am pretty sure I've told this story on the board before, but I suppose I can tell it again.

This was my freshman year of college. I was only 17 when I went off to college and for some reason was placed with a 22 year old senior. This could have had potential for awesomeness (liquor hook-up!) but I should have realized something was amiss. as NOBODY at my school lived on-campus past sophomore year.

To sum her up she was a smelly, friendless, psycho-christian. She belonged to one of those ridiculous mega-churches that are broadcast on TV on Sunday mornings. I am fairly open-minded girl, and at that point was still a practicing Catholic, but she took her "religion" to absurd levels.

She had never kissed or even dated a guy. She believed her first kiss would be on her wedding day (seriously). She wouldn't even allow boys into the room. I can understand not wanting boys sleeping over (which sucked because I did have a boyfriend back home that would come to visit and we'd always have to get a hotel room) but she wouldn't even let completely platonic male friends that I had known since grade school come in to the room to hang out.

As our time together wore on I discovered she was racist, homophobic (of course) and just plain CRAZY. She was also very obese and would only shower twice a week. She never went to class and instead laid on the futon ALL DAY eating cheese puffs and watching television.

One day I was in our room working on a paper and I overheard her talking to her sister on the phone. Her sister was a teacher looking for a job and had submitted a job application to a district in Anoka County, Minnesota. Somewhere along the line my roommate had heard that Anoka was full of witches (yes, witches) and she was literally screaming in to the phone at her sister that she could not possibly work in Anoka because they would eat her good Christian heart (seriously).

At that point I knew I could not stand another semester in the same room as her. However, because she was a senior and had gotten first pick on dorm rooms we had THE biggest suite on-campus. I didn't want to give it up.

Instead I hatched a plan with some friends that I would pretend to be Wiccan. While she was away at home for the weekend I decorated my half of the room with Wiccan prayers. Nothing offensive or scary, mostly poetry about nature. On Monday morning I left for class and left my web came running to catch the reaction.

HOLY CRAP. Within moments of checking out the new additions to my decor she began speaking in tongues and (I kid you not) flinging water around the room like it was holy water. She then burst into tears and fled the room. (I am serious folks, it was POETRY ABOUT NATURE. She was ****ing crazy).

She moved out the next day. It worked like a charm.

A few months later I received a scathing e-mail from her. She believed that I had been casting spells on her all semester and that was the cause of all of her maladies. (She had wrecked her car, had the flu, and failed two of her classes which I am SURE had nothing to do with her NEVER GOING TO CLASS).

The roommate who replaced her was a foreign exchange student from Sweden and though she walked around topless EVERYWHERE we had a lovely time.

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I might have to stop reading this thread, it's scaring me too much, haha! I start college in the fall, and from what I've seen of my roommate on Facebook he seems really cool. The biggest thing I was worried about was that he would think I was weird for doing theatre, but it turns out that he does it too! The only thing is that all of his statuses are lyrics from rap songs......and I don't know ANY of them......and you wanna know the funny thing about that? He's white and I'm black! Still, I'm soooooo excited about school!

The roommate who replaced her was a foreign exchange student from Sweden and though she walked around topless EVERYWHERE we had a lovely time.

Heh. I love Swedes.

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Ooooh, once I had a roommate in a single room with a shared bathroom with one shower. When MY alarm would go off for my class, earlier than her first class, she would jump up and RUN to the shower and be in there for a half hour. Even if her class was an hour later, she would always run to beat me to the bathroom and take the longest showers ever. She also wore way too much Vanilla Musk. The smell of it still grosses me out.

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I have a horror story!

I was in a triple... the two moved in early, of course, so they had already "bonded" (none of us knew each other). Anyway the one thought he was the coolest person ever, and the other was just trying to meet people blah blah. I really didnt talk to either of them for the first month unless it was a How are you? What are you doing tonight? type deal. I got the feeling I was unwelcome (and for no apparent reason), they would have religious debates with the frantic religious who was our neighbor (the one was gay) (get ready...every school has it's religious fanatic girl!) when I would come back in til like 2am and I'd kick out whoever was in the room when I got sick of hearing it! I applied to move out but we got a mediation instead! Awkward and annoying! So I was going home every weekend, but going out virtually every night (Haha it's freshman year - have lots of fun!!).

By the next month it had only gotten worse. Luckily the one met his boyfriend on FACEBOOK.com and not from our college, but a high school kid. My other roommate ended up getting in arguments with the other kid as well and started going home. One time we both went home and there were 4 people in our room... with not him. Someone was making my bed when I walked in and someone was sleeping in my other roommates bed (his literal only rule). We had automatically locking doors (like Hotel doors with the card keys & all)... I flipped and applied to move out again, but we had ANOTHER mediation. This kid was very good friends with our RA who was actually insane (for real, but that's another story). So nothing came out.

After Thanksgiving he would go to Jersey to visit his internet boyfriend that he proposed to funny enough (after 1 month and a week or something). He claims I would throw candy canes against his wall (our room was a huge rectangle) and stuff to smush them around his desk LOL never happened! Other dumb stuff.

Then he came back and made frequent doctor visits...he told my really good friend (that was originally his friend but liked me more/we would always go out together! DRAMA LOL) that he had SCABIES. Yes, SCABIES and told her "Don't tell the boys!" Then he told my other roommate's really good friend the same thing!

Turns out my other roommate got it... It got ugly. He thought he did nothing wrong and was shocked I was so mad. He was also so embarassed that we found out (Scabies IS contagious! Like Bed bugs!). Luckily my friend told me, I never got it.

I turned into the devil roommate to him after that, things got ugly on many levels (oops @ Facebook!), I went to the Housing office and demanded to be moved...and I was granted my leave finally. I finally became the horrible roommate he thought I was (which everyone said I was not! He'd take my clothes as well and was dirty!!), I would give him music, buy stuff for the room & everything...

Moving out was the most fun I ever had. Since he didnt want to buy anything for the room and my other roommate already moved out, that room got legitimately TRASHED on my part.

So don't be a sh**ty roommate, and if you get an infectious disease that could danger the welfare of your roommates, just tell them. People tend to overact when they get caught on by surprise.

The housing people actually changed the handbook for the next year to include that if you have a disease like this you have to tell your RA and your RA tells your roommates if you don't want to.

I'm just glad it wasn't an STD or something much worse / I didn't get it!