Chapter 9: Not everybody is a good roommate
When choosing a roommate, some people have very strict rules. Some won’t live with their friends, by fear of hurting the friendship and hating each other after a few months. Others don’t care, they don’t even talk to their roommates so they have no problem living with strangers. When I signed for my apartment and got stuck with the task of finding roommates, I didn’t really think about what my rules would be. Since it was my first apartment, and my first time not living at home, I pretty much just wanted to find two individuals, anyone, to live in the other bedrooms of my apartment so I wouldn’t be stuck with a rent higher than my tuition!
Internet was a great help; I posted an add, got a call one day later and that’s how Kat became my roommate. For Kristen, it was a little different. We were friends before I moved to Montréal, but not best friends. I had been to her last apartment a few times, I had a good idea of the kind of person and roommate she was, so when she asked me if I still had a room available I was happy to answer yes! But oh…how wrong was I! Now, 7 months later, I laugh at my own naivety. Because the one roommate I found on the internet turned out to be amazing, and the one that was my friend, a total nightmare.
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Day 6 of the roommates’ war.
The kitchen looks like a war zone. Kristen had friends over last night, and they made homemade fries in the oven. The stove is covered in oil, all dried up in small, sticky puddles. There are little flakes of spices all over the floor, the dish towel is covered in oily fingerprints, the door handle on the fridge is all greasy, there’s still plates, glasses, and utensils all over the table, with the ketchup bottle still out, now lukewarm. The pan that was used to make the fries is abandoned in the sink and the kitchen smells like something died, and then burned!
I know, I should let her clean this mess herself, but this is not livable. How am I supposed to cook my own dinner in this mess? I grab some paper towels and get to work, swearing under my breath the whole time.
Days 15 of the roommates’ war.
Kat and Kristen are ex æquo in the battle of the washer-dryer. It started when Kat made a schedule for using the washer-dryer, because Kristen was washing stuff every single day and our electricity bill was reaching extreme numbers. The new rule was once a week, twice if it was an emergency. Kristen, not liking the schedule, made sure to put it in the washer while Kat’s clothes were washing, and everything came out with little pieces of wet paper stuck everywhere!
The next time Kristen washed her clothes, Kat turned the washer’s breaker off on the electric panel, so Kristen’s clothes spent a full day in the washer, soaking wet, still dirty. The smell of humidity was so intense she had to wash everything twice, but only after she found where the electric panel was. One after the other, dumping wet clothes on the other’s bed, using the other’s soap, mixing the other’s clothes so that their whites came out grey and adding bleach to their dark clothes to cover them in a multitude of tiny, discolored spots. One time, Kat added so much soap to the washer that all the clothes were sticky after. The thing was, those were my clothes and not Kristen’s. To avoid any other incidents like this, I now do my laundry at Sam’s place.
Day 28 of the roommates’ war.
Kristen no longer has access to the internet in the apartment. Since the apartment is under my name, the bills are also addressed to me, so they pass on my credit card. It worked out fine at first, I would pay a bill, let my two roommates know and would get the money within a week. Now that Kat and Kristen are at war, and since I side with Kat most of the time when they ask me to interfere during arguments, Kristen is also mad at me and won’t pay me the money she owes me. I can’t do much about the money she owes for the electricity, it’s winter so it would be cruel to turn off the heat in her room. But, after asking her six times for the internet money, I just changed the password! If she doesn’t pay, she doesn’t get Wi-Fi…A simple solution. But now she’s very mad at me…
Day 33 of the roommates’ war
The issue of the volume of music as now taken dramatic proportions. When Kristen first started not respecting Kat’s “no noise after 9 pm” rule, she fired the next shot by making a lot of noise in the morning to wake Kristen up early. From this, it escalated to Kristen inviting friends over almost every night, all of them chatting and laughing in the living room, while Kat was desperately trying to study for her exams. When she got a crappy grade on one test, she got really mad. She hid many alarm clocks Kristen’s room, one taped under her bed to the metal frame with heavy-duty tape, another inside the pocket of a pair of pants in her wardrobe, another in one of her decorative cushion! She made all the alarms ring one morning at different times, one at 3 am, one at 4 and another at 5! Let’s just say Kristen woke Kat up the next morning with a bucket of cold water!
Day 39 of the roommates’ war.
I had to put my foot down. As much as I hate confrontation, I didn’t have a choice anymore, I had to intervene in this whole thing. Because of all the arguing and the screaming and the throwing of things and the swearing and the blasting of the music, my neighbors called the police on us last night. And when I was the one who had to explain all the noise to the police, I realized just how stupid I had been to let this go on for so long. This is my apartment, and yes, I closed my eyes on the whole roommate problem, but I couldn’t anymore. So, when I received a warning from the police officers, Kristen received a notice from me saying she had two weeks to move out. She packed her boxes this morning, tried to steal some of Kat’s things from the kitchen before Kat caught her, probably took some of my things too, and then left in the evening. Her room is now empty. This is the end of the roommates’ war, peace finally setting on the kingdom of Elliot’s apartment…and I now have to pay two thirds of the rent. Oh well, nobody said war was cheap!
Images obtained from:
http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/11710/Blog_Assets_/annoying-roommate.jpg
https://static.vix.com/pt/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/bdm/ma…
https://www.skylineliving.ca/assets/Uploads/roommate-agreement.jpg