So your odds may have been a little unlucky and all of your cards are on the table. You hate your roommate and those fantasies of finding the Beavis to your Butthead or the Wayne to your Garth have been effectively squashed. It’s okay, because you’re not the only one who was dealt a defective hand. Take a look at ten tales of utterly ridiculous and bizarre bunkmate issues, along with some tips of the trade to ease some of the pains of your struggle.
1. Do Not Touch
“Sophomore year I lived in a suite with three other girls. When I moved in, I brought a customized pack of Vitamin Water with specific flavors. Both my roommate and I were gone one weekend very early in the semester and when I got back, three of my five Vitamin Waters were gone, so I got very angry. The other two girls denied taking them. Basically it ended with me putting passive aggressive sticky notes on everything saying ‘Melinda’s, do not touch.’” – Melinda Rosenthal, Sophomore Technical Theater, Nassau Community College
2. The Unholy Wake Up Call
“At region band senior year, we had to share a hotel room and one of the girls asked if I knew what evolution was because I went to a Catholic school. Then we had to share a bed, and she woke up to her alarm so violently that she slapped me.”– Deanna Herb, Sophomore, Music Education, Temple University
3. The Brita Bandit
“During the spring semester, I noticed my roommate would consistently use the water filter pitcher and put it back into the fridge with only half an inch of water left in it. We were on pretty different schedules during the day, so when I would find it I’d refill the pitcher and stick it in the fridge without her knowing. After a few weeks, she still hadn’t gotten the hint and I unknowingly became her water maid so I stopped refilling it all together. Again, nothing changed. For some strange reason, this frustrated me to no end. I wasn’t able to drink cold, filtered water anymore.” – Helen Ann Lawless, Junior, Sociology, University of Pittsburgh
4. Tongue Tied
“My roommate and I were always on good terms except for one issue – she liked to drink…a lot. While she is the most considerate drunk person I know, most of the time I had to play the mom and make sure she was okay. You could tell she was really drunk when she came back and would randomly start waving her tongue up and down. I walked in on her lying on her back in the dorm bathroom doing that tongue thing one night and all I can remember is her screaming at me to not look at her like this. The rest of the night she would mumble to me about how I need to remember how she isn’t always like this and I spent most of the night hearing her apologize.”– Zoe Weiner, Sophomore, International Business, Temple University
5. The Hula Hoop Method
“My roommate from freshman year had a guy in the room when I didn’t know, so I walked in on them having sex. From then on we would wedge a hula hoop in front of our door behind a desk so you couldn’t actually open the door if either of us were with a guy.”–Emilee Siegl, Senior, Political Science, West Chester University
6. Mrs. Clean
“My one roommate never did dishes or cleaned the kitchen and then always said her leftover mess was from me. One day, I asked her to clean up the splattered bacon grease from all around the stove and she told me she wasn’t going to touch the sponge I used because ‘it was too dirty.’ So, I bought a new pack of sponges and asked her again to please clean off the now solidified grease off the cooktop. She instead used the sponges to clean her toilet, and then told me they were too dirty to use. At least we know she keeps her bathroom clean.”– Annie Malmud, Junior, Instrumental Performance, Temple University
7. The Glass Is Always Half Full
“As my roommate was moving out, he pointed to the LED light on my clock and complained about how it had annoyed him every night instead of asking me the first night to turn it off. My other roommate would constantly pour a glass of water, drink half and go do something else. When he would come back, he wouldn’t finish it or pour it out. He would get a new glass and do the same thing – leaving them all over the apartment.”–Owen Meiman, Junior, Actuarial Science, Temple University
8. Staking Out
“I’ve lived with the same roommate for three years. After being with the same person for that long you tend to get on each other’s nerves often and feel more like a married couple than college roommates. I like to feign illness and hide in my room to avoid a full-blown fight over something stupid, like who left the lights on in the kitchen.” – Allison Herman, Senior, Exercise Science, University of Pittsburgh
9. Sticky Situation Notes
“I had a resident, um… we will call her Laura, who decided she didn’t like the way her roommate – we’ll call her Anne – cleaned the room. Laura basically wrote a passive-aggressive sticky note, of the post-it variety, and posted it on the bathroom mirror for Anne to see. Laura decided to recruit her other two roommates in this process, basically bullying Anne, even though the conflict was really between just Laura and Anne. They continued to write aggressive sticky notes back and forth, posting them on the mirror, and pretty soon their entire mirror was covered in post-it notes.
We stepped in and tried to de-escalate the situation but by then, Anne had had enough and decided to move out. They’d basically all bullied Anne out of the room. But, the joke’s on Laura because Anne ended up in a better room and the minions that were recruited to help in this mission later turned on Anne because they found out how awful she really was.” – Krysanne Bryan, Temple University RA
10. It’s Not that Cereal
“I was an RA in Temple Towers for three years and one of my fellow RA’s told me that one time they had a resident come to their room in tears because they’d had enough of their roommate. They were complaining about any and everything that they could think of to complain about. When he asked them why they had specifically come to his room, the resident started to freak out and told him that her roommate was eating cereal in bed and that she thought it was just disgusting to eat in bed. Needless to say he was a little confused and didn’t really know what to say back. They ended up having an entire sit-down mediation all because of someone eating cereal in bed.” – Samantha Birmingham, Temple University RA
