Survey: The Worst Roommates (EVER!)

We’ve teamed up with our blog buddies to bring you a series of weekly surveys where we tell you all about or favorite college moments, memories, and words of wisdom. Every week we’ll ask a new question and show you what they had to say.

This week we asked, “What was your worst roommate experience?” Here are their responses!

My worst roommate experience was more like a small clip of from Mean Girls. My dorm roommate (a friend I have known for years) and I moved in with a new friend we had met our sophomore year because, ya know, we were all besties. But living with someone you don’t know very well and adapting to their weird habits is, well, an adjustment. The worst of it was that the new friend’s boyfriend lived with us too. He used our laundry machine, ate our groceries, watched our TV on the couch all day long. It basically turned into a 2 against 1 situation where my friend and I were on the same side about everything and left the new friend flying solo and feeling extremely left out. I remember the day she came marching down the stairs with her hangers of clothes dangling on her arms–a sign she was moving out. Yes, I was on the “winning” side, but I look back on that experience and think a) how did I morph into Lindsay Lohan for a few months and b) why did I screw myself into paying an additional person’s rent for the remainder of our lease. Needless to say, the next year we had a 2-bedroom apartment.

- Talia, Bite Size Wellness

Oh, roommates. How many stories could I tell? I could tell you about the roommate who was so OCD that even a single hair I shed – or even a hair my friends would shed – made her hate me. But I think I’ll tell you about a roommate who decided that it was totally cool to invite her male friend, whom I’ve never met, from across the country to stay with us for 4 days without asking me — and then leaving me alone to host him by myself! Can we talk about that? We’re not going to because I’d rather not relive it, but let’s just say she got a little to generous about hosting guests in our tiny studio dorm so that for a month straight, my dorm was like a nonstop sleepover. Oh, the squeals. Oh, the gossip! I didn’t do too well in my midterms that semester…

- Pamela, Redesign Revolution

I fled one bad roommate experience and ended up in another. After asking to be transferred out of my dorm room early in my sophomore year (my ex-friend roomie tried to kill me in the middle of the night… literally) I was placed in a new dorm with new roommates who I had never met before. The guy I shared a room with made it clear as I was moving in that not only did he smoke weed at least 10 times per day out of a bong as tall as he was, he sold marijuana and other illicit substances out of his desk drawer.* I cannot tell you how many times I pretended to be doing homework or taking a shower to avoid looking at the unsavory characters sitting on my bed waiting for their drugs to be siphoned into baggies.

Oh yeah, and our suite mate had a rare degenerative eye disorder that made him able to see only out of the corners of his eyes. This meant that when he spoke to you he had to look at something next to your head instead of directly at it, making for confusing conversation. Things only got worse when he would come home drunk and run aground on my kitchen appliances.

Did I mention that both were music students and thought of themselves as DJs, meaning there was never not “ambient” techno playing in the suite? That was the least of my worries so sometimes I forget about that part.

- Steven, Travel Freak

My first roommate in college was a real druggie. I learned that during the first week of the semester, when he ate a bag of morning glory seeds and was chatting away all night about the significance of killing ants. That night already ranks as a Worst Roommate Ever story. Then I was given a bag of pot a couple of days later. My roommate immediately offered to buy a joint from me for $5.* I gave him the whole bag for that much. He’d kind of convinced me that drugs were a bad thing. Anyway, I took the $5 and went out to buy dinner with it. Then I ran into some friends, went out to a club, didn’t get home until 2 am–to find a sticker on my door authorizing the RA to search the room. Somebody had smelled my roommate smoking the joint, they busted in on him, and he was actually thrown out of the college over that. I didn’t know it was that strict of a college. Anyway, they never replaced him with anyone, so I had the dorm to myself for the whole semester–so he ended up as the Best Roommate ever.

- JR, Celebrity Watchdog

During my sophomore year at NYU, I lived in a 2-bedroom suite with 3 other girls. It was Halloween, and I had planned to have my sister Danielle stay over so she could go out with the four of us to the annual parade in The Village. I already knew the night would be a disaster when I returned to my dorm to find one of my suitemates standing completely naked in the common room while the other two covered her in red and blue body paint for her Superwoman “costume.” By the time Danielle arrived, my roommate (who had apparently been ignored all day by her long distance on-and-off boyfriend) had gotten completely drunk, crying on the couch. I left my poor sister alone out there with her while I went into my room to get changed, and when I came out, my roommate was babbling on about how she was going to electrocute this boy, and screaming at Danielle to never date a Bulgarian. She refused to go out with us (we didn’t even want her to anyway by that point), so we all left for the parade without her. Moments after we got outside, it started downpouring–effectively eliminating Superwoman’s painted-on outfit, by the way–so we ended up having to go back up to the dorm and deal with my roommate puking and crying all night. My sister refused to visit me again that year, and needless to say, it was the last time I ever tried to go to the parade.

- Nicole, HealthyWayToCook

And of course, our editor’s worst roomie experience:

I have more terrible roommate stories than I know what to do with. My first roommate used to leave me passive aggressive post-it notes and acted like she was my mom. I moved out of that dorm and into a room with another friend – who walked around completely naked half the time. I wish I was kidding. We were best friends and all, but it was awkward. It got so bad that one day I walked in while she and her boyfriend were having sex (they didn’t lock the door or make a sound when I turned the handle) and despite his good sense to hide under the covers, she got up and walked around. He told her to put clothes on, and she said, “It’s okay, Brittney doesn’t care.” Uhm, I totally did. I also had a roommate who would basically have phone sex with multiple people until 4 o’clock in the morning despite having a boyfriend who basically lived in our room so often that I used to sleep in my friend’s townhouse on an air mattress. Mind you, she had a prepaid phone plan and used all her minutes sexting – so when she had to call home? “Hey Brittney, can I use your phone to call my mom?” That was fun. When I got the RA job and moved out? Her last act of spite was stealing my favorite scarf and sweatshirt, and using my hair brushes while I was gone. Gross.

- Brittney

Do you have any terrible roommates stories? Let us know!

*Editor’s note: This post is in no way meant to promote drug use or any other illegal activities. Please be responsible!