Story A

This happened to a former employer of mine, “Craig”, when he attended the University of British Columbia in the seventies. When Craig moved into the dorm, he was assigned a roommate who was a card-carrying Nazi. The roomie had a Nazi uniform in the closet and an enormous swastika dividing one half of the room from the other. This did not sit well with Craig, who is a) in his right mind and b) Jewish. They lasted four weeks together before Craig moved out and got his own place, and since then he has steadfastly refused to ever have another roommate.

Story B

This happened to the sister of a friend of mine from university – “Lisa”. Lisa had a roommate who was very effeminate and she suspected that he was gay. However, he always seemed to have a girlfriend and it really made no difference to Lisa either way. But she did have one problem with him, and that was that he kept stealing the batteries from the remote to the TV she kept in her room. She took to hiding the remote in the covers on her bed.

One night she got home and found upon clicking that her batteries were gone AGAIN. Her roommate wasn’t home, and she got completely fed up and decided she was just going to go in his room and find the batteries.

Upon walking into his room, the first thing she saw was one of her dresses hanging from his closet door. Below it sat a pair of her pumps. At this point Lisa decided she bloody well had probable cause and could search his room. She found quite a few items of makeup that were close to being entirely used up. The lipsticks were all worn to small nubs. She found several items of her underwear. She salvaged what she could (i.e., the dress and the shoes and other clothing she found) and left her roommate the underwear and makeup. She decided she didn’t even want to know in what appliance she might find the batteries, and wrote them off too.

After that she kept her door locked. Her roommate got very huffy and made a few comments along the lines of, “I thought we trusted each other here!” Lisa refused to even discuss it with him. The living arrangement didn’t last much longer as he moved out of his own accord. But for the remainder of the time she was occasionally treated to the sounds of his masturbating to the music of ABBA (this was back before ABBA had a kind of resurgence).

Story C

A friend of a friend, “Jill”, was a single mother having a hard time making ends meet, so she took in a roommate. The roommate was disastrous from the beginning – dirty, inconsiderate, dishonest. She would not pay her rent. She would bring home drunken or stoned people she didn’t know and let them sleep on the couch. Jill was not thrilled at these risks to her child’s safety.

The roommate would never buy her share of things for the apartment. Jill finally got sick of being the only one to buy toilet paper and took to keeping what she bought locked in her room. When the roommate found there was no toilet paper in the bathroom, she yelled, “Hey! WHY DIDN’T YOU BUY ANY TOILET PAPER?” Jill informed the woman through the door that she would have to buy her own from then on. Jill heard the sound of the vanity doors being slammed, and then her roommate stormed out of the bathroom and into her room, slamming that door behind her as well. Jill went into the bathroom to see what the roommate had done… and discovered that the woman had wiped her ass on the shower curtain.

At this, Jill told the woman she had to move out. The roommate had to be forcibly prevented from stealing Jill’s things when she left.

I also have a slightly different variation on this one – a friend of mine had a roommate who had come from a very wealthy family and had never had to pick up after herself or do housework of any kind. So she had no idea of how to keep a house and no interest in learning. She would not clean up after herself, nor buy her share of things for the house. Her three roommates, like Jill, went on toilet paper buying strike and kept their rolls in their rooms.

The day the woman discovered there was no toilet paper they heard slamming vanity doors in the bathroom. After she had left it one of the three other roommates went up to the bathroom to check things out and came down the stairs laughing so hard he couldn’t speak. The roommate had wiped her ass with a Lysol disinfectant wipe.

My friend commented that this was the closest the roommate had ever gotten to a cleaning product. It’s certainly closer than I’ve ever been, and I keep a clean house;-)

So everyone... have fun ranking those three. I'll be interested in hearing what situation sounds the worst to people.

They're all awful, but it would be awfully hard to sleep with a Nazi in the same room. That's my pick.

I think that *C* would be the worst. Feces on the shower curtain just did it for me, I guess.

Yeah, I'd rate them just as the are: A-B-C, although on second thought C is probably worse than A, for anyone who has kids.

Definitely C. Feces in places other than the toilet abhors me.

Feces in places other than the toilet abhors me.

But how do you feel about it?

Yeah, C's the worst, although because of the whole situation, not just the feces.

Feces in places other than the toilet abhors me.

But how do you feel about it?

Hahaha! I didn't even realize that I'd written that backwards! I guess I can't say that it abhors me (I don't know how feces feels) but I can say that I abhor it. :P

Wow, tough pick between C and A... But I guess I'll have to go with C. Or A.

I'd go with A, as a father feces places it doesn't belong doesn't bother me as much anymore.

What is it about toilet paper that it is such an issue? It must be the different usage patterns. I had a roommate who averaged 1/2 - 3/4s of a roll per day. Insane.

With three girls in my current place, we use toilet paper a lot. And since we don't have any place to store a lot of toilet paper, I can't go out and buy one of those 12-pack dealies and let it ride.

I will say, though, that since I bought the last rolls (a 6-pack, which barely fits under the sink) the roommate who is home more than the other one HAS to pick up the "tab" for the next pack. But maybe that's less of a sharing expenses issue than an actual female-related toilet issue.

BTW, I pick C. as well. Feces on the shower curtain = rubbing his/her nose in it so she doesn't do it again.

C-A-B. And I'm thanking the gods that I've never had to have a roommate.

My tenants brought in a roommate who was annoying. Said she had a job at a law firm, didn't mention it was a 2 week temp job, had weirdly 'off' social skills. They asked her to leave. She started talking about knowing powerful warlocks, and being more creepy, at which point they asked me to boot her out.

Nope, I says, you brought her in, so you deal with it.

They demanded she leave, and next day, a roomie came home to find a pentacle on the table with red thread connecting different points to symbols. We took pictures. Now, I said, you can throw her out, because this is intended to be threatening.

Silly girl came to complain to me, and proceeded to try to scare/threaten me with talk of warlocks and how I had a child to consider, and she knew lawyers, too, and I might get sued. She left that very day.

Don't threaten the landlady, especially if she has a child.

C. is worst for me, as I was a single mom for a while (though I didn't take in a roommate-no room). But the apartment I lived in was small and close enough to the neighbors that they were almost roommates!
One guy, really quiet, was apparantly getting evicted. He kept to himself, so I didn't know. The night he moved out, he turned on the gas on his stove, blew out the burners, then spray painted black paint all over the inside of his apartment-the walls, windows, everywhere. Bizarre.