If you've been living in harmony with roommates, consider yourselves lucky.
That's not the case for everyone sharing a space together.
Even friends who mutually want to save money by becoming roommates can be a total disaster.
Idiosyncratic behavior and bad habits that were never apparent before can surface once living arrangements are finalized.
Strangers online shared their horror stories when Redditor Jman1994678 asked:
"What’s the worst experience you’ve had with a roommate?"
People with bad habits don't make ideal roommates.
Kind Gesture Gone Wrong
"I let my boss crash at my second apartment about 15 years ago. It was a sh**ty timeshare call-center where everyone did drugs and were pretty everyman types, so he and I were more friends than coworkers. Anyway he loses his apartment and asks to stay with me for a couple months while he gets back on his feet and I agree."
"He's a great dude. Kind, smart, funny, confident, and a solid ~350 lb. I only mention the weight because it's relevant to the negative experience."
"So around a month into staying with us, he decides to get clean from his crippling opioid addiction. He's decided to cold-turkey from a 20 a day 10mg hydrocodone habit, which (for the uninitiated) is pretty intense. I advised rehab, but he elected to lie on the couch in my living room for weeks (costing him his job), sweating his a** off and shaking under a blanket."
"The reason why his size was relevant: he sweat a lot already, and had to take pains to mitigate his body odor on normal days (with varying degrees of success), but with the withdrawals and being mostly sedentary on that textile couch for weeks, the apartment started to smell like a hot a**-forest. It was a party-house with a revolving door, and people just kinda stopped coming during his tenure there. Even with my bedroom down the hall's door closed, the stench was pervasive."
"It wasn't his fault, I liked the man, and he was trying to better himself and his life, so I put up with it. And he succeeded. Got himself a new place in the agreed time frame, stayed clean and everything was hunky-dory."
"After he moved out, my actual roommate and I carried the couch to the parking lot dumpster and it took several days to air out the smell. We even did a thermal fog with an oil-based cherry-scented counterfactant, and it still didn't help."
"Kinda irrelevant, but just an addendum; we stayed in touch for a while back when I still had Facebook, and he got his life together. Got a good job as a realtor, lost a lot of weight, had a baby girl, found religion or whatever. Then after a few years of being off Facebook and radio silence, I get a call from my old roommate saying that he'd relapsed and died from a heroin overdose. Pretty f'ked."
"RIP Don."
– squalorparlor
Fire Hazard
"Dude kept falling asleep while smoking cigarettes. I got mad every time and woke him up. He bought me a fire extinguisher at a yard sale one day. He thought it was best joke ever. He fell asleep on night on the couch. Cigarettes rolled off on to the carpet. Carpet caught fire, couch caught fire, his shirt catches fire. He never woke up. I woke up, having smelled it. Grabbed his gag gift and put it all out. His shirt and hair were GONE. He was okay. Never even went to the hospital, but he absolutely would have died if I hadn't been there and had that fire extinguisher beside my bed. I moved immediately."
– 1lazylady
Some people just aren't roommate material.
Living With "Demonica"
"Shared a quad in college with a girl named Monica. She was fine in the beginning but then began doing things like hiding the toilet paper, trying to limit how much time we spent in the shared living room, allowed a homeless man to sleep on the sofa and hoarded cutlery. She decided she wanted to be a vampire and had her teeth filed into points.. at the end of the year we started referring to her as 'Demonica.'"
– goodgirlgonebad75
Runaway Roommate
"I called to ask if he had his half of the rent and he informed me that he was on I95, headed back to his hometown of Virginia. Dude cleared his sh*t out of the apartment and dipped with no warning."
– Mindofmierda90
There instances of animal abuse.
Jealous Of The Bunny
"Dude killed my pet rabbit because he was jealous of the time I spent with it. Needless to say he stopped being my roommate that day."
– huiscloslaqueue
"As a rabbit owner, this makes me absolutely furious. Bunnies are wonderful creatures and I can't imagine intentionally causing one harm 😭"
– streeboat
Some people just don't understand boundaries and think they can do whatever they want.
Eight Is Enough
"First night in the new shared apartment I was renting, my landlord slept on the floor in my living room on a rug. I thought that was weird but I was not in a position to argue, as I really needed a place to live. Then, over the next couple of months, my landlord moved in and brought over 8 family members from Turkmenistan, including a newborn baby, and they all lived in 2 bedrooms (and by bedrooms I mean one was the living room!!). When I complained, they locked me out of the apartment. I called the police who let me in and scolded the family. It was a nightmare. I finally got out of there and never looked back."
– LauraPa1mer
Pure Chaos
"Freshman year of college- she came back drunk night 5 and pissed on our carpet and some of my clothes. Then in the morning she denied all of it despite the room smelling like piss. She would have random guys over constantly and bang them with me in the room (even though she had a bf)."
"She ended up getting arrested twice during the first semester (she had painkillers that were not hers and she got a marijuana charge lmao). She was pure chaos and ended up in academic poor standing since she literally never went to class. The second semester her parents required her to come home every single weekend, so it made things much nicer lol."
– Clementinequeen95
Fortunately, I haven't had any alarming experiences where I felt slighted or if I had to sleep with one eye open at night.
My husband, however, experienced an awkward situation when we subletted our New York apartment while we were touring with a show.
When my husband had to return to New York for business, the temporary occupant said it was fine for him to crash on the couch for the night.
When my husband arrived, our tenant was nowhere to be found. But in our bed were three young Russian women in their 20s who were just crashing there for a couple of nights.
It turns out our guy subletted to those young women while he went away for the weekend.
