The perfect roommate is hard to come by — even if your roomie is your BFF, you’re bound to run into some issues. Though some might get lucky with a nice, tidy roommate, others have to deal with the absolute worst. From secretly stealing their food to totally turning against them, these 13 women and men share their craziest roommate experiences. Here are the shocking stories that’ll make you appreciate your completely normal roommates!
1. “Freshman year, I was assigned to a random roommate who thought she was a mermaid/witch. I came home one day and there was a wet six-foot mermaid tail hanging over my door. She also got permission from the school to swim in the campus pool with her mermaid tail on. I’d also wake up from naps sometimes and it would be pitch black, and I’d hear her and her friends chanting and talking about spells they had made. She was an interesting gal.”
— Clare, 22
2. “Freshman year, my random roommate appeared to be chill. We were on good terms, but not best friends. One day, I got a Chase notification that my account balance was -$20 and the money was taken out of my dorm’s ATM. I freaked because my parents had just put a $300 allowance in there and I had books to buy. I got back to the dorm and checked my wallet, but my debit card was there, so nothing seemed wrong. I called everyone on my floor to a meeting asking if anyone had taken my money. No one fessed up, so I got really heated and called the cops. The cops told me that they needed to roll back the tape on the dorm’s ATM camera. But out of nowhere, my roommate comes and confesses. I was so shocked. I had her kicked out of my room, but I didn’t press charges for identity theft or anything. But seriously, how did she know my pin number?! Oh, and the craziest part is, when the cops came, she came down wearing MY L.L. Bean raincoat.” — Sarah, 24
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3. “My sister’s freshman year of college, she roomed with a really shy girl who kept to herself and was just sort of odd. After a couple of months, my sister noticed that their room started to have the weirdest smell. She tried to drop hints at her roommate, but she didn’t seem to notice, so my sister and her friends decided to investigate while her roommate was in class. They looked through the whole room and then finally looked through the roommate’s desk. They opened the bottom drawer to find that it was completely full of used, old, bloody tampons and pads… My sister moved out shortly after that.” — Isabelle, 21
4. “I met this guy when I moved into my apartment my first year of university. He seemed fine, so my friends and I decided to live with him again my second year. By our second semester, he began ordering items off Amazon in preparation for the zombie apocalypse. We teased him about it and he was fairly coy and kind of laughed it off, but he showed us both a hatchet and kept a list of all the things he needed pinned on the wall by his bed. There were nights where we'd come in from a night out and he would just stand in his doorway and be really weird. My other flatmate and I used to joke that he would watch us sleep (that's how creepy he was), but I'm such a heavy sleeper, I have no idea if that actually happened. The whole thing was just super uneasy and one of the strangest things I've ever seen.” — Peter, 26
5. “There was a time in the spring when it got very hot and my roommates had just gotten a couple of hermit crabs. They insisted on keeping the room at 80 degrees because if it was any colder, it would ‘hurt the hermies’ (their words, not mine). I couldn’t tell the R.A. because I didn’t want to rat on them, so I had to suffer through the heat.” — Sarah, 19
6. “My freshman year, my roommate used to tweet about me all semester long. She never left the room and legitimately tweeted over 50 times about me and my friend, and whatever we were talking about. She even posted a 17-minute voice memo of us once. It became a thing for my friend and I to check her tweets every morning to see if she wrote about us. She never knew that we found out. #ChroniclesOfTheDrunkVariety if you’re interested.” — Stephanie, 21
7. “My first year at university, I lived in a room referred to as a ‘late application triple.’ It was a room made for two people, so as you can imagine, it was close quarters for three girls to be living in. I was 18 and my roommates were 22 and 23, but I didn’t mind. Throughout the semester, my roommates would place new ‘rules’ about our room that only I had to follow. For example, no lights on past 12 a.m. (but they would leave theirs on while turning mine out) and no boys in the room (but both their boyfriends frequented the room). Slowly these ‘rules’ began to target me to the point that they told me I wasn’t allowed in the room unless I was sleeping or changing. I spent more nights sleeping on the floor of my friends’ dorms than in my own room. After a while, they told me they couldn’t stand to live with me and that I should request to move out to speed up the process. The only reason they gave me was that I was ‘too young’ for them. This made no sense to me. They never saw me and I never did anything to them!” — Cara, 21
8. “I found my roommate on Craigslist and she seemed like an angel when I met her. My mom was staying with us on New Year’s Eve, while my roommate decided to go out with friends. My mom has a form of sickle cell anemia, so I let my roommate know beforehand that it's important we have the heat a little higher than normal because my mom's illness flares up in the cold. That night, my roommate left her dog and her friend's dog in her bedroom while she went out. My mom and I were minding our own business in the living room, making collages and watching rom-coms on Netflix, typical homebody stuff. We heard the dogs barking and playing in her room and didn't think much of it because we assumed they left the animals with enough food and water while they were out. It was cold in the apartment, so I turned the heat up so that my mom was comfortable. The heat was on for about 30 minutes when my roommate returns and she yells, ‘It’s like Madagascar in here! The dogs, they’re out of water!’ She starts screaming at me and my mother while looking at the thermostat, and claimed that I tried to hotbox the dogs. She started saying things like ‘’I bet you did this on purpose, I know you hate animals.’ Um, I’m vegan?! My mom then told me to go to my room and she talked to my roommate. I was peeking out from the door and next thing you know, my roommate was calm. #MomPower. But she didn't apologize for any of it until the night my mom left to go back home, and I was shook for the next two months and wanted to move out.” — Cecilia, 23
9. “I met my freshman year roommate once before we decided to room together, and we were best friends all year until sorority recruitment, when we wanted to be in the same house. When bid day came and she didn't get the house we wanted, but I did, she wouldn’t speak to me for three days because she felt I should've consoled her rather than be happy for myself about the process. After we began speaking again, she got frustrated that I was doing new member activities late — she would stay up until I got home, so I would feel bad for keeping her up.. Then she eventually went out to a party while I was in the dry period [no partying or drinking during pledging] and hooked up with my best friend, who I had had a crush on all year. Then, she blamed me for our falling out after hiding the fact that she hooked up with my crush. We both eventually agreed that we hit the peak of friendship and we let things simmer and were civil for the rest of the year.” — Jordan, 19
10. “My roommate stopped going to her classes at one point in the semester, and was lying to her professors everyday saying that she was sick, in the hospital, or dealing with family problems. But in reality, she was in her bed, watching Netflix and eating chips. One night, she borrowed my laptop and dropped it from the top of our bunk bed! There was a huge crack on the bottom of my laptop, and it wouldn’t work for a week. When I asked her what happened, she said that I left it on the edge of the desk and it fell. Mind you, the other roommate had watched it all happen. At the end of the year she ended up getting on probation and wasn’t allowed to come back to the school. When she left, she also took my phone charger, hangers, and two of my jackets. Then she had the nerve to ask me to move into an apartment with her. No thanks!” — Savannah, 21
11. “My sophomore year, I shared an apartment with one of my best friends from freshman year. She turned out to be extremely passive aggressive and had really bad hygiene. She would leave chicken nuggets sitting out for days and then eat them. Whenever I tried to talk to her about pitching in more around the apartment, she would immediately become defensive and start accusing me of things. Second semester she did not speak one word to me, but would constantly aggressively slam doors just to remind me that she was still mad at me. We recently made up and she even told me that she wouldn't mind living with me again — no, thanks!” — Erica, 22
12. “Let me preface this by saying I’ve had more bad roommate experiences than the average person, but this was the WORST. My second year of college, I got assigned a random roommate. Our schedules really clashed — I was on a competitive collegiate dance team and our practices would start at 8 p.m. and go until 3-4 a.m. I tried to be considerate, and would always tiptoe into the room after practice and use my flashlight to get around the room, but I could tell she was annoyed. To this day, I’m honestly not sure what went wrong, but my roommate started to leave passive aggressive notes and ultimately created a toxic environment. I asked one of my best friends to help confront my roommate. A few days after the confrontation, my friend caught my roommate giving him dirty looks at the school dining hall, so he decided to go talk to her. The talk quickly developed into a yelling fight, and my friend was escorted out of the dining hall. Then, my friend and I were confronted by the POLICE. My roommate had called the campus police and claimed a case of harassment. Luckily, my friend and I were able to explain our situation and were let off the hook. After harassing housing services for months, my roommate was finally relocated to a new dorm room. The day she moved out, I was taking a nap in our room when I heard her walk in to pack her stuff. Not wanting to face her, I hid under my covers and tried to go to sleep. My roommate started making insulting comments about me while packing, clearly knowing that I was in the room. She was literally leaning over my bed, talking sh*t about me. To this day, I still don’t know what pushed her over the edge.” — Nicole, 21
13. “I was put in a random triple my freshman year of college and one girl in particular was a nightmare to live with. She was incredibly mean to me. After a rocky first semester of spreading rumors and backhanded comments, we ended up pledging the same sorority together second semester. Throughout the entire pledge process, she was determined to make my life difficult, bullying me every chance she got. She would quickly throw me under the bus every time something bad happened, and would often spread lies about me to the other girls. But to everyone else, she was a dear who would shower you with compliments and buy your friendship. But the most messed up thing she did was tell my boyfriend at the time that I cheated on him (which was false). That night, that rumor was spread among our sorority sisters and was shut down fast, exposing her true colors. I reported her to the RA and made her move out two weeks before the semester ended. Sadly, I still had to see her face throughout sorority events.” — Bianca, 26
Yerin Kim is the Assistant Snapchat Editor at Seventeen.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram!
Yerin Kim is the Assistant Editor for Snapchat Discover at Seventeen, covering beauty, sex & health, lifestyle, and entertainment. Originally from New Jersey but raised in Seoul, she is a proud Syracuse grad who loves fluffy puppies and a good Instagram opp. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram!
