NationStates Jolt Archive

So, a few years ago, my friend Dano sent me a website with a huge list of horrible flatmate (roommate) stories. I was just discussing it with my sister today and was wondering--what is the worst flatmate experience you've ever had? If you don't have a story of your own, what's the worst you've ever heard?

As for mine: At Bennington College, I had the same roommate for one-and-a-half years. Everything started out pretty peachy, but by the second term we lived together, we wanted to kill each other. At the end of the second term, I went down to NYC to visit my family and when I was gone, she and her f-buddy had sex on my bed. She didn't change the sheets and didn't bother telling me until that summer when we were working together at a Japanese camp.

By fall, she and the f-buddy had broken it off (she wanted more, he just wanted sex--you know, the normal thing) and she was always boo-hooing and so forth. I went back down to NYC for a weekend, and when I was gone, she did the laundry and didn't put it in the dryer because she had something against dryers. She just piled it in a laundry basket, wet, and left it there for the weekend... and the week after. Finally, she decided to hang the clothes to dry and they'd all mildewed. It was truly the most atrocious smell I've ever come across, and I have six cats in my house who occasionally crap on my clothes.

BRING ON THE STORIES :D.

My friend lives campus dorms with 4 other guys. Once a guy got sick in the sink. It looked like shredded beef. Also, the bathroom sink is now turning into a peat bog. Thats just a couple examples...

Also, a guy at school filled a bag with piss and put in another guys locker. then poked the bag with a pencil...

My cousin had a roommate once that is quite possibly the worst. He would come home to him crying for absolutely no reason. Once my cousin left for a weekend with specific instructions not to go into his room. When he came home, he smelled something burning. His roommate was not around but the toaster oven was on fire. After unplugging it and tossing it in the sink, he went into his room. His sheets were off the bed and there was a "wet spot" in the center of the mattress. I told my cousin to stop telling me stories at that point.

My best friend moved cross country and lived with me and my husband for a while, she didn't ever pay rent, she smoked in the house (even though we said not to) she had sex with her boyfriend in my kitchen (yuck) and didn't clean up after (double yuck). I was on bed rest due to a difficult pregnancy and she still messed up the house and I had to clean it, then the day that I went into labor, she announced that she was moving, and asked me to drive her to a town 4 hours away to meet up with her friend who was coming to get her. When I explained that I couldn't drive (BED REST AND IN LABOR WITH A CHILD!!!) she cussed me out and asked my husband (who said Hell NO of course) anyway we went to the hospital and while we were there for 5 days, she moved out (not sure when) stole all my make-up, curling irons, half my clothes, my Gibson, and my computer.

she isn't my friend anymore. (owe and she owes me in addition to replacing the things she stole $1500 in back rent)

My best friend moved cross country and lived with me and my husband for a while, she didn't ever pay rent, she smoked in the house (even though we said not to) she had sex with her boyfriend in my kitchen (yuck) and didn't clean up after (double yuck). I was on bed rest due to a difficult pregnancy and she still messed up the house and I had to clean it, then the day that I went into labor, she announced that she was moving, and asked me to drive her to a town 4 hours away to meet up with her friend who was coming to get her. When I explained that I couldn't drive (BED REST AND IN LABOR WITH A CHILD!!!) she cussed me out and asked my husband (who said Hell NO of course) anyway we went to the hospital and while we were there for 5 days, she moved out (not sure when) stole all my make-up, curling irons, half my clothes, my Gibson, and my computer.

she isn't my friend anymore. (owe and she owes me in addition to replacing the things she stole $1500 in back rent)

Sounds like something I'd hear on one of those afternoon court shows...

snip
I bet she lives in a trailor park, smokes a carton a day, and does "stuff" for money.

*nods*

My latest flatmate-related PITA is nothing as dramatic as the stories above, yet I find it pretty frustrating. Being a student and part-time job guy, I can only afford to share the flat. Now, this dude is *obsessed* with downloading through p2p networks.

We have a 4Mbps DSL connection and still manages to bring it down to its knees single-handed. Believe me, paying half the bill for broadband and "crossing fingers" that the connection does not time out in order to upload a WORK RELATED pdf attachment in e-mail is very, very FRUSTRATING.

Being proficient with Linux (my part-time job is linux/unix sys-administration and occasional training), I offered several times to build a gateway box to ensure a fairer distribution of network resources in a dynamic manner through QoS and fair-queueing techniques (read: when I don't use the network he can download all he pleases, I don't care). He kept refusing, using petty excuses up to the point that I managed to build a completely transparent to him bridging firewall (spending an entire weekend - nights included). I was so happy! Web browsing was again a joy, e-mail traffic was fluid and the impact on his download was no more than an average 10-20 kb/s overall.

A week after the gateway installation, I come home late at night only to find the box sitting dead. Now there was probably a power shortage earlier in the evening since my desktop pc was also down, but the firewall box never recovered. An entire weekend of work thrown out of the window... I can't make any allegations of foul play since nothing can be proved, but it's definately fishy. Now I'm back at cherishing a few extra kbs of bandwith everytime I have the chance. Since I hope to graduate really soon and therefore leave this place, getting off the shared broadband to get my own line is not worth the trouble or the money so I try to be as patient as I can.

Afterthought: I 've reached the point to rather seriously consider ARP-poisoning the bloody DSL router to create a man-in-the-middle attack only to traffic-shape his connections!

My latest flatmate-related PITA is nothing as dramatic as the stories above, yet I find it pretty frustrating. Being a student and part-time job guy, I can only afford to share the flat. Now, this dude is *obsessed* with downloading through p2p networks.

We have a 4Mbps DSL connection and still manages to bring it down to its knees single-handed. Believe me, paying half the bill for broadband and "crossing fingers" that the connection does not time out in order to upload a WORK RELATED pdf attachment in e-mail is very, very FRUSTRATING.

Being proficient with Linux (my part-time job is linux/unix sys-administration and occasional training), I offered several times to build a gateway box to ensure a fairer distribution of network resources in a dynamic manner through QoS and fair-queueing techniques (read: when I don't use the network he can download all he pleases, I don't care). He kept refusing, using petty excuses up to the point that I managed to build a completely transparent to him bridging firewall (spending an entire weekend - nights included). I was so happy! Web browsing was again a joy, e-mail traffic was fluid and the impact on his download was no more than an average 10-20 kb/s overall.

A week after the gateway installation, I come home late at night only to find the box sitting dead. Now there was probably a power shortage earlier in the evening since my desktop pc was also down, but the firewall box never recovered. An entire weekend of work thrown out of the window... I can't make any allegations of foul play since nothing can be proved, but it's definately fishy. Now I'm back at cherishing a few extra kbs of bandwith everytime I have the chance. Since I hope to graduate really soon and therefore leave this place, getting off the shared broadband to get my own line is not worth the trouble or the money so I try to be as patient as I can.

Afterthought: I 've reached the point to rather seriously consider ARP-poisoning the bloody DSL router to create a man-in-the-middle attack only to traffic-shape his connections!
That is when you start taking control of his computer. There are all sorts of fun stuff you can do to it. You could change his background to some gay porn pic. Just remember to blaime everything you do on P2P related viruses/trojans/spyware/adware.

...

How the fuck did she become your best friend?

she isn't my friend anymore. (owe and she owes me in addition to replacing the things she stole $1500 in back rent)

"Owes you"? She's a criminal! Didn't you report her to the police?

That is when you start taking control of his computer. There are all sorts of fun stuff you can do to it. You could change his background to some gay porn pic. Just remember to blaime everything you do on P2P related viruses/trojans/spyware/adware.

Well, that's a rather obvious "attack", and although he's not what you could call a technical guy he's not that demented. Besides, my taste is for something far more subtle (see the afterthought). But since you mention changing wallpapers and stuff, you reminded me of how I enjoyed myself exposing a PhD student as the complete moron he was in the university lab back in the Win98 days. The trick was to simply change the boot splashscreen to something rather nasty, therefore forcing him to a panicked format. Naturally, he had no back-ups but "miraculously" I was able to produce a "yesterday's" set of CD-ROMs for the experimental data that (supposedly) had written for some extra homework.

Yes, I know... I should stop reading BOFH stories. It has a very bad influence on me! :-P

PS.: I'm a medicine student so the place is actually flooded by computer-illiterate people with rather overblown egos to admit it. After a few more pranks I lost interest: it was too damn easy!

"Owes you"? She's a criminal! Didn't you report her to the police?
yeah, they said "why didn't you report it immediately?" and "why don't you know the exact day she took the stuff?" (apparently "I was in the hospital in labor for 65 hours, and had to stay 2 days after because of major surgery" wasn't a good enough excuse for the Tucson police department.)


How the fuck did she become your best friend?

we met in the first grade, after about 15 years, she just seemed to "belong" in my life.

yeah, they said "why didn't you report it immediately?" and "why don't you know the exact day she took the stuff?" (apparently "I was in the hospital in labor for 65 hours, and had to stay 2 days after because of major surgery" wasn't a good enough excuse for the Tucson police department.)




we met in the first grade, after about 15 years, she just seemed to "belong" in my life.

Ah, okay. Forgive my brash manner.

I found the original flatmates from hell page XD (http://www.b3ta.com/board/2344846)!

Sounds like something I'd hear on one of those afternoon court shows...

Judge Judy is a despicable human being. People who go there don't even get fair rulings. She just makes fun of them and makes a random decision.

Well, I got nothin' on Smunkeeville...Key-Ryst...but I do have some tales of suck.

I had one roommate who was something else, gotta tell ya...

He said he was taking care of the phone bill. None of us knew why, but in retrospect we should have guessed...

For the rest of the bills, since at the time I didn't have a bank account I was giving him cash. It didn't seem that big a deal.

Until the lights went out. He asked me for money, I asked him what he did with the money I'd been giving him. Then there was a sudden cold chill from both him and my other roommate. I later found out that he told my other roommate that I hadn't been paying the bills. The other roommate took his word for it without talking to me at all.

He was pocketing the money that we where giving him and blaming the shit on me to everyone we knew (which is how it got back to me, from friends who had seen me give him money). I got pissed and told him that I would be paying in money orders made out to the companies from now on. Three months later there was a stack of my money orders sitting around. I showed them to the other roommate and then told them I was moving.

A month after I left the phone was shut off. Over a thousand dollars. Turns out all those times he told us not to answer the phone because it was supposed to be his girlfriend it turned to be phone sex lines call him. (the internet existed, but wasn't as common as now)

I pretty much never talked to that dude again and more or less cut out the other roommate because I introduced the two of them and he didn't have the decency to talk with me instead of just taking this other dudes word for it. There was a moment of tacit acknowledgement that he now knew what was really up, but I was pretty pissed off.

After Smunkee's story that seems pretty small potatoes...

I think the best story from b3ta is this one:

Back at university I lived next door to this guy who helped to run a university sponsored dance club. For some reason this required him to be off his bonce on E all the time, and to play intensely loud techno through my bedroom wall at all hours. In fact the only time it was quiet was when the fucker was out running the club.

One night Jon returned from clubbing, on, we estimate 8 Es. He came in as normal, but quickly went balistic, and started screaming at Sean (our token stoner flatmate)'s door. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SARAH YOU C*NT! WHERE IS SARAH? YOU BASTARD, I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU. I mean, in a REALLY unhinged way. He then started to kick Sean's door down. This took about half an hour, all of the time he was screaming that Sean had done something to Sarah. I honestly thought
a) He was going to kill Sean
b) Sean had actually done something to Sarah, and Jon was going to kill Sean

After trembling in my bed for the remainder of the night imagining Jon stalking the flat with a knife, I awoke to a silent flat, Sean's broken door, and the explanation.

"Sarah" was Jon's Sarah Lee chocolate cake, which he had purchased that morning. Sean had got stoned, eaten the whole cake, and then gone out to his girlfriend's....