Sharing "worst roommate stories" is a tradition among people getting to know each other and strangers on the Internet alike—so much so that someone asks the popular AskReddit forum for these stories several times a month. The following stories are taken from the best submissions from the most popular threads over the past year. Ranging from your standard inconsiderate substance abuse to the occult sacrifice of a pet, these horror stories will make you realize that maybe your roommate who collected their toenails in a bottle wasn't that bad. Compared to these nutjobs, they were just quirky.
1. Persephone11185's roommate illustrates that you don't need to be violent or dramatic to be a weird manipulator who doesn't understand the word "prank."
I had a roommate who thought it was funny to change my alarm clock setting from am to pm at night. Then she'd gaslight me and tell me I must have set it wrong. Every time I would reset it and it would be fine the rest of the week and come Monday it would be switched again. I finally caught her when I woke up one night while she was changing it.
Ever since that year, I only use 24 hour time.
2. Even though "splorf" here got screwed, they also had pretty lucky timing.
Me: I'm moving out.
Roommates: Good, because we have been using the rent money you've given us for months to buy drugs and we are being evicted.
3. There are stupid roommates, druggie roommates, and crazy roommates, and then there's Graphitetshirt's roommate.
He drank my contact lens solution because he thought it was drugs. The whole bottle. A big bottle. Not only did he not figure it out while not being remotely high halfway through a fucking pint of lens solution, if it had been drugs, he would've died a lot.
Bonus idiocy: Also claimed he invented lettuce wraps
4. The fact that this person is named sippysippy13 makes the fate of their glassware all the more tragic.
I noticed that our drinking glasses would go missing from time to time. Cleaning up the house one day I found one of the glasses under my roommate's bed, full to the brim with urine.
He was too lazy to get out of bed at night to use the bathroom, so would periodically use the communal drinking glasses. We lived together for three years before I figured that out.
5. Objectively, other roommates on this list have done worse things. On the other hand, there's no denying that punchingline's roommate is literally a barbarian.
Shower with the shower curtains outside the basin.
6. Strap in for the ride and get ready to really hate t6393a's roommate Sam.
Oh so many things. When I still liked her, I invited some friends over and told her to do the same for dinner. I spent like $60 on the food for everyone, and made it myself. The next day I got left a nasty text saying I need to do all the dishes and I was gross.
Then she made me get rid of my cat, and as soon as I did, she went out and bought two.
I had mentioned before how I wanted a to eventually get a German Shepherd. Well one day she pops in and lo and behold there is a giant German Shepherd in our tiny little apartment. She didn't even bother to ask, and when I said something she told me I couldn't complain since I had said I wanted one. She also refused to clean up after him.
She had a pet rabbit in her room that smelled God awful. She ruined my vacuum by sucking up all the hay it spread everywhere and let it chew on my tv cords.
She invited strange men she didn't know over and have sex with them, like the cashier at the gas station. She had sex with my friends multiple times, and when they started to like her, she avoided them and never spoke to them again.
She never cleaned, ever. She didn't even clean up her period blood that was running down the toilet.
When I was about to move out, I told her the person who actually owned the couches were going to come get them in a few weeks. She was still going to live there, so I was nice enough to tell her about some cheap ones I saw. She went that day and bought them, then bitched about there not being any room. I had no control of when the person was getting the couch and told her it would be awhile.
She also still owes me $300 but I know I am never getting that money from her.
Wow sorry for the novel. I just really hate her. Fuck you Sam.
7. While blzitup's roommate never did anything bad to blzitup or anyone else, it's hard not to get angry with him, anyway.
Shared a room with a wealthy kid who let his laundry pile up for like two months, then when his mom was visiting threw all the dirty clothes out and made her go buy all new clothes, so he could avoid doing laundry.
8. Maybe it's because of their young ages, maybe it's because nobody gets to choose them, but college seems like the worst time for roommates. Both elvisthepelvis and his straight-edge roommate probably remember each other as the "worst ever."
My roommate was a born again christian who did not allow alcohol or women in the room. If he saw alcohol he would go to the floor manager and demand a room check since we were not allowed on campus. The floor manager would come in and ask "do you have alcohol" and I would reply "no". The floor manager would try to leave and the roommate would burst in from the hallway and say "yes, he does!!!" but would not find it. I hid it in his closet every time. He never figured that part out.
Literally the same process would happen with women in the dorm after 11pm. Same two act play, same hiding place.
He would always scream about the women when they came in. "My momma didn't raise me to shack up with no woman," was his favorite phrase.
I asked more and more women to come in and stay until exactly 10:59:59pm every night. Eventually he dropped out of college from the stress.
I guess I am the monster.
9. On the opposite end from the bad religious roommate is whatever you would call Titsticular_Cancer's dormmate.
Oh boy, where do I even start? I'll just make a list.
I shared a 12x12 dorm room with her, for reference.
She would free bleed and leave trails of her period blood from our room to the bathroom and not clean it up.
She would leave crusty underwear on the floor on my side of the room, next to my bed, while at the same time she insisted we divide the room with tape, and freaked out if anything of mine crossed that border for 2 seconds.
She was 18 and had a creepy 31 year old fiance she had been with for six years (you can do the math) that stayed over every weekend, and watched her asleep over Skype every week night, with me in view of the camera.
She smelled so bad that other students in our hall started making complaints about the stench coming from our room.
The first thing she said to me when I met her was, "I'm bi, but you need to know that I don't find you attractive." As if I was going to be disappointed by that news.
She had a bunch of plants in the room that I was allergic to that were making me miserable, and she refused to get rid of them.
I also used to have a roommate who did meth in our basement and stole a bunch of my money, that was also pretty shitty.
10. User DoNotSexToThis takes us back to 2001 to prove that "roommate love at first sight" does not exist, and you should really vet people. It has a happy ending, though.
Circa 2001. It was my first apartment and I wasn't a good judge of roommate character back then. I was working at a welding shop and had befriended this big Mexican guy after driving him home from work enough to start hanging out at his house after work for a few beers and his mom's excellent biscuits and gravy she'd make for us.
Naturally, we thought it would be a good idea to roommate at my place to cut down on expense. Little did I know, he was one of those drinkers that black out and destroy everything. Each day after work was him with a case of beer and getting in arguments with kids in Yahoo chat rooms over a mic until he would pass out.
It escalated. He quit going to work and I'd come home with him passed out, vomit all over the floors, piss in the corners, half-eaten pizza face down on the couch, the works. I started telling him he needed to leave but he wasn't hearing it. Eventually he got arrested for something and ended up in jail. I was free. For a while. He got out and I woke to banging on my door. I didn't let him in. (His mom collected all his things when he got locked up)
Fast forward to recently, I'd been overseas for 6 years and moved back to my home state afterward, and recently stumbled across his Facebook page after not having seen or heard from him in 13 years. We talked. He's doing really well now, training to be an addiction counselor, and I'm happy for him.
11. Warning: Mister Phamtastic's roommate story involves a very grisly and occult incident involving a rabbit.
Killed my rabbit and used his bones to form some sort of makeshift Satanic summoning ritual thing on her bed.
I wish I was making this up.
I didn't even confront her, the next night when I knew she was working late at McDonald's I got a friend with a truck and got all of my shit out of there.
Probably the most stressful time of my college years.
...
My parents come from a very spiritual background so I've been raised not to fuck with stuff of this nature, I'm not even going to look into whether or not this crazy thing even worked and I never want to see her again. Although if I did see her again she's getting a roundhouse to the face because my rabbit was awesome.
Moral of the story: Don't use Craigslist for roommates
12. It sounds like Carol, leatherglitterlace's college roommate, has a good heart. A terrible brain, a damaged liver, and an overactive libido, but a good heart.
Freshman year is always the hardest. My first roommate came from a party family and wanted to continue the tradition at school. I would wake up to her fucking random dudes or loudly masturbating whilst drunk (she would sometimes throw up when orgasming). The worst part was, she cared about her fellow partiers. Every night when she went out, she would get smashed but would find people worse off than her. If they couldn't find their home or communicate, she'd drop them back at our tiny dorm room and go back to parties for another few hours - if she came back at all. The bad part was my bed wasn't lofted originally, so every night I'd wake up to people getting into bed with me and have to put them to sleep elsewhere.
The worst it ever was when she dropped off a pledge who had triple what he should have to drink and had dropped some molly. He was all over the place and I was afraid to leave him to sleep. She didn't come back that night. All night was spent carrying this guy back and forth to the girls only restroom so he could try to sober up. He was pretty fucked up well into the next day. Eventually he was good to go home and I walked him to his dorm across campus. When I returned home, there was my roommate, furiously drunk masturbating again.
Why would you do that Carol?!? I just wanted sleep!
Edit: I'm glad my freshman year is funny for y'all. Let me answer a few questions. No, I haven't seen the pledge since. Yes, I eventually reported her and moved to a different dorm. No, I don't have her number, but I still see her around campus. No, she wasn't hot. Thanks y'all.
13. This person by the name of storefront tells the tale of why party animals make poor roommates, and the tragic NSFW death of a laptop.
this is actually about my friend's roommate, but that's hardly important. My friend's roommate comes stumbling into their dorm room (freshman year). It's blatantly obvious that she is drunk beyond reason. She starts shouting "I NEED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM", which wakes up my friend. She sees her roommate just staggering back and forth through the doorway. She stayed in bed because she really didn't know how to react. Her roommate returns through the door once more and reiterates that she needs to go to the bathroom. Before her roommate had left to go to a party, she had placed her white mac laptop on her chair by her desk. The rationale here, is that we believe the white from the laptop on the seat made the chair look like a porcelain load-throne in the mind of her drunken roommate. So she approaches the chair, pulls down her pants, and sits on her laptop. My friend braces herself because this situation can only go one way. As she braced for impact, her roommate releases a sigh of relief that unfortunately is synchronized with the release of her bladder and bowels. Despite her laptop being covered in piss and shit, her roommate denies that this ever happened.
14. The worst kind of roommate is the kind you don't even know you have, which is exactly what happened to dimafelix.
I was in a 2 bed house in East London. My housemate used to always tell me that she heard footsteps in our attic above her bed and sometimes whistling. I brushed it off as her just being silly until one day I heard them as I came out of the shower. A few days later, I come home from work to find a riot van outside our house. Turns out our neighbours actually bore a hole in the wall of their attic to go into ours and grow weed and hang out there. They were super creepy so was kinda glad we never went up there.
15. This NSFW tale of an unannounced house party at ask_me_if_Im_lying's house seems like the finale of an R-rated romp.
I used to work the afternoon shift, which meant that I'd usually get home around 1am. My new roommate had just moved in a few days ago. One Friday night I get home, walk in the door and there's 50-odd people in our tiny apartment. There's people punching holes in the walls, my tv is smashed on the ground, there's a few people shooting up on my couch, the place is fucked.
Not really knowing how to handle the situation I go into my room to try to think and when I open the door I get hit with a stink that will outlast religion. My new roommate is having some rather messy scat sex with another guy on my bed. There's shit alllll over my bed.
So I grabbed a beer, went outside, called the cops and watched the show.
16. OK, pralfer's roommate is probably the worst one, and that's saying a lot. As much weird stuff as other people had to put up with, they were crazy-crazy, not hate-crazy. (Warning: not an exaggeration)
I had a roommate who was racist and obsessed with WWII Nazi. Thought it was just in a History Channel kind of way. He chose to read "Mein Kampf" for a class. Then he started writing juvenile bathroom graffiti in German in the stalls. He became upset when he found out I dated a black girl in high school. Then the swastikas started showing up graffiti in the dorm elevator, along with "N*ggers" drawn in a noose.
He had a knife collection.
He seriously came back after the first week with an End table, folding lounge chair, and an easy chair, despite the fact that the room had no real extra space for it any of it.
He smelled, and tried to get rid of the room smell with a whole can of peach Renuzit one day. He left food garbage in his trash, left for the weekend, and when I empty it because it was smelling, got mad at me for touching his stuff. Said he "take care of me" if I did it again.
He said he hated kids. He was a special Ed major. I asked why he majored in that if he hated kids. He said "There are 52 Special Ed majors in this school and I am 1 of only two guys."
Moved out the start of next semester, as soon as they'd let me. Paid the extra money for a single the next year.
Edit: Looked him up. Found a picture of himself in Blackface and some creepy black and white photos.
17. After that last story, Batsignal_on_mars' story about their wife's lonely weirdo roommate seems positively charming by comparison.
My now-wife, back when we first started dating, lived with a girl that she didn't know very well prior to moving in with her. At first she seemed just a little quirky, but then it devolved into craziness. My wife and I ended up U-hauling pretty quick just to get her out of that situation.
She read Harry Potter erotica in the living room while we were watching TV, which I wouldn't mind if she didn't keep interrupting our show to let us know what was going on in the fanfic she was reading. She watched Twilight CONSTANTLY too, it was constantly playing unless we commandeered the TV. She had the larger bedroom with a TV in it, but insisted on sitting in the living room with us.
She went to the strip club every Friday and would come home crying about how alone she was, and how broke she was. Most of her friends were otherkin with names like 'Shadow' who would keep trying to sleep with her, or us. She had an insane Siamese cat that attacked everyone and she kept it's litter box in her bedroom, kept her bedroom door closed and never cleaned it.
She had a ton of fairy statues that she was convinced came to life every night and did stuff like pull her cat's tail or knock a glass over. My wife had a book that was 'pressings' of fairies and it made her cry. She was 23 at the time. She was constantly burning weird herbs to try and keep the spirits away, so the apartment smelled like a mixture of cat piss and smoke.
Also she kept trying to walk in on us having sex.
I feel bad for the next roommate that dealt with her, but damn we could not get out of there fast enough. I've dealt with a lot of weird folk in my time, but every day with her was just a trial.
18. It's hard to find one person this awful, but CtrlAltDeleteShit managed to score three of them.
I was away on holiday. When I got home I walked in and the carpet was soaked. My roommates were just sitting there watching TV. Turns out the hot water heater exploded and ruined the carpet and flooded my room which was right next to the heater.
Turns out it exploded 3 days prior to me returning and they just ignored it.
19. OK, Bilj's bad roommate story does involve some actual knife violence, but it was supposed to be cool and he messed it up.
Story time. So my roommate though it would be fun to try and 'air-slice' a mushroom. The basic principal is like real life fruit ninja, whereby you cut food whilst it is in the air. I was cooking when he decided to try to 'air-slice' something. When I saw a mushroom flying through the air towards me I tried to catch it thinking he was just trying to catch me off guard. As I caught the mushroom in my right hand, down came the brand new knife. Blood up the walls, blood on the ceiling, blood everywhere.
That was almost a year ago and I still have no feeling in my right pinky and only 80% movement.
20. What. The. Fuck. Let's all just be glad InformationFetus is around to tell this tale.
Kidnapped two guys and held them for ransom. One hostage was set free weeks later while the other wasn't so lucky. The body was eventually found in a basement cemented buried in the ground.
Cops busted into the flat (I rented a room in an apartment - he lived in it before I moved in) and apprehended my roommate while he was sleeping. Tried for kidnapping and manslaughter along with his other few associates.
This was in Ontario, Canada around 2011/2012. I never really followed the story after I moved the hell out and learned that they were all in jail.
Edit: Clarity of information / formatting above.
Did this post quickly on mobile, but here's a more detailed story.
My roommate was Sohaib Malik. He seemed like a normal, nice dude. Student at the local university. Had no problems with him (aside from him using my kitchen knife without permission).
22. You can soak the house in bodily fluids, but you do notruin The Lion King for LoooveCommando.
I had a roommate in college who could only fall asleep if he watched disney movies at night. I had to listen to them every night for hours trying to sleep. And I now hate the Lion King with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
23. Yeah, ashley1018, it sounds like this one would be hard to top in one lifetime.
Probably the girl who dated the homeless drug dealer. He ended up moving in (without my permission) and started dealing out of our apaprtment (definitely without my permission). He also had the rankest boots I've ever smelled that he would leave in the living room.
24. If you're going to have a roommate who's determined to be the worst ever, it's at least preferable to get one who's terrible at it, like flignats' housemate. (This last one is a long one.)
I was living in a townhome with my girlfriend (we shared a room), my best friend (master bedroom), and a random female (craigslist).
She didn't fit well with everyone and it eventually led to conflicts that couldn't be resolved.
She was unemployed, overweight, and, seemingly, only played video games all day with her boyfriend (who supposedly resided in London).
Anyway, the listtle things started to pile up and my best friend and her got into arguments frequently. She wouldn't clean her used dishes (which were provided by my friend), the common areas, and generally irritate others with her lifestyle choices (pushing them onto others).
One of our last interactions was us all having a big fight and her strumming into her room. My friend felt like he should at least try to resolve the conflict in a mature way, so he invited her down to the common area where we were holding a small gathering, bbqing, ect.
She came down, ate the food, and went back upstairs. The next day (monday, when we all left the house for work) we came back to an empty room and she left us all a txt message letting us know how horrible we were, that she left the country to go to England, she wont be giving us the last two months of rent (that she always had excuses for), and to have a terrible life.
What was most hilarious is that she stuck grilled chicken under our couches, right after my buddy went out of his way to invite her to our small gathering and cook for everyone! We have a dog..he smelled it immediately and tried to get at it under the couch, which is how we found out she put it there.
I'll probably get comments asking what I expected from a craigslist roommate, but I've been there and had others which were great experiences. This one was so ridiculous it was comical.
Related: These are the greatest notes ever written by roommates.