Remember that time your food just happened to go missing from the refrigerator? Or the times spent balancing trash on top of the trash can, as a protest because you always take the trash out? Or, the time you were locked out of your own room until an ungodly hour?
Everyone has them — the stories about roommates nobody is bragging about, but everyone wants to hear (and then offer up their own in an attempt to prove how much worse their roommate was). From disrespectful to down right repulsive, roommates somehow find a way to annoy more than anyone, or anything.
Here are some types of roommates that will make you grateful your roommate’s only vice is that they can’t shut up. Or for some, you’ll be relieved to hear you’re not alone.
A common type of roommate is the one you thought was your friend but turned out to be just plain frustrating. This is what happened to biological sciences senior Collin Sabatini during his freshman year.
He and a friend from high school decided to be roommates in the dorms, despite advice from others who said it was a bad idea. Fast forward a few months, and this decision proved to be a bad one.
“Since we knew each other so long, we knew the things each other hated,” Sabatini said. “We knew how to piss each other off.”
Sometimes, Sabatini’s roommate would have friends over who would eat Sabatini’s food while playing video games into the wee hours of the morning — even after Sabatini had spent a late night in the library and needed sleep. Or, the roommate wouldn’t grant Sabatini the privacy he requested when his girlfriend visited, he said.
“I think there were three or four times during the year when we couldn’t take it anymore, and it would get physical,” Sabatini said. “I’d be mad at him for behaving stupid, and he’d get mad at me for caring so much.”
By the time the move-out date came around, Sabatini was happy to go home. The way he saw it, their personalities clashed living in such close proximity.
“At the end of freshman year, I didn’t talk to him for the entire summer because I was so angry with him and fed up with his antics,” Sabatini said. “After that, I cooled off, and we became friends again.”
Frustrating roommates can be a lot to deal with, but the roommate who lacks hygiene can be just as bad. Kinesiology senior Jesse Madera said during his freshman year he lived in a quad (a space converted into a room for four people, usually on the first floor of a residence hall) with two average guys and one who turned out to be not so average.
“He was a hygiene disaster,” Madera said. “He would frequently go to the gym, come back all sweaty and just go to bed. It was gross.”
Daily routines such as showering and shaving were not a part of the roommates’ to-do list. Instead, he became the roommate who hindered the others from bringing friends home.
“I was embarrassed, to be honest,” Madera said. “I’d usually go other places, and I wouldn’t want to bring people back.”
Even though Madera went into the living situation voluntarily, he said he regretted the decision after encountering this roommate.
“He once borrowed my sleeping bag for a trip,” he said. “When he returned it, it was full of dirt and smelled like death. It took four days outside (hanging) up in the sun to get the smell away.”
Once the year was up, Madera said he felt liberated when he finally moved out.
Then there is the infamous roommate who thinks it’s OK to “sexile” their roommate.
Business administration junior Meghan Dean said she once had to deal with a week-long visit from a roommate’s fling.
While Dean’s roommate and the guest were in the room doing their thing, she would go try to kill time with other people, but that would only last so long, she said.
“There were times when I had been out of the room for three hours either in class or with friends, so I’d try to go back,” Dean said. “One of the times, a friend and I were walking toward my room and heard the bed, so I was like, ‘Oh no!’ and we left again.”
During the week, Dean said she resorted to sleeping in friends’ rooms but still couldn’t get a good night’s sleep or keep up with schoolwork because of the sexile.
“The door would be locked, and I knew they were in there,” Dean said. “I would have to wait for hours to get something I needed for homework. The worst part was it wasn’t someone I was friends with.”
Finally, a week later, Dean said her roommate’s visitor left, and she was able to resume her normal lifestyle.
This isn’t to say all quarrels between roommates will go unsolved. To prevent such conflicts between roommates, associate director of housing and director of residential life and education Carole Schaffer said communication is key. For instance, University Housing recommends making a roommate agreement at the beginning of the year to create a clear understanding of what both roommates expect.
Schaffer said the residential and community advisers and Coordinators of Student Development are all trained in mediation to help with conflict.
“The roommates can sit down with (one of the trained employees), talk through the situation and come up with an agreement on how to move forward with the communication,” she said.
Schaffer’s best advice is to be open with each other.
“Always be respectful, be open to hearing what the other person has to say and be open to compromise,” she said.