I have had two bad roommates, neither in a dorm. The one roommate I had in a college dorm was absolutely perfect.
The most recent of my two bad experiences was with a friend, about whom I've posted briefly elsewhere on this forum. I called her Nala then, as I will now. During college, I was a member of a sorority and lived in their house. I became close to two girls in the sorority with whom I lived, Nala and Andrea. Having already lived together for two years in the house when we graduated, the three of us moved into an apartment together. We thought we all had the same standards, as we routinely complained about the behaviors of our fellow tenants regarding cleanliness. Surely there should be no surprises, right?
Wrong. Everything was great for the first 6 months or so. Then Nala's more irritating traits began to emerge. She had a new boyfriend and basically stopped talking to us or wanting to do anything with us. She stopped hanging out in the living room and spent most nights in her bedroom, emerging only to use the bathroom or heat something up in the microwave.
While shopping for cleaning supplies when we moved in, Nala was extremely insistant that we get this one particular kind of mop. I'm glad that I won out, because in the two years that we lived there, she did mop the floors one. single. time. She was very particular about her bedroom, dusting, sweeping, and straightening up at least weekly. She never cleaned the rest of the apartment. She was a very sloppy cook, getting crumbs and splatters all over the stove, countertops, floor, and walls. She never cleaned up anything when she made a mess. She would just let it fall onto the floor where it would dry into a crust on the linoleum that she never mopped. She would leave dishes in the sink for days at a time, meaning that nobody else could use the sink to wash/rinse dishes. (We did not have a divided sink.)
She cleaned the bathroom once while we lived there. I have no idea what prompted that burst of helpfulness. So Andrea and I became used to doing the cleaning ourselves. We developed somewhat of a rhythm. We both had the same idea of when the apartment needed to be cleaned. She would clean the bathroom while I would mop the floors. This was fine. We didn't feel like making waves and asking Nala to help; it was just easier to do it ourselves. We cleaned about once every 2-3 weeks.
Then she started to complain about the cleaning. That's right. Nala began to complain about the cleaning in which we had never tried to coerce her to partipate. She called us neurotic and obsessive. Yes, obsessive. For going no fewer than 14 days between scrubbings of the toilet. Oh, of course she didn't say this to our faces. She would post it as a public entry in her online journal that she knew that I read, as I commented there frequently.
Other fun things that she posted in her public journal that she knew that I read include polls like this:
When you buy a loaf of bread, you:
A) Put on the counter/in a bread box like a normal person.
B) Put it in the freezer.
That was directed at me, as I don't go through bread very fast. I either chill or freeze it so that it doesn't go to waste before I can eat it. She also posted a poll directed toward Andrea about electricity usage, as Andrea won't always turn off the TV when she goes to the kitchen to heat up a dinner that she plans to eat in front of the TV.
Nala was also weird about oven usage. Our apartment was hot in the summer due to being unairconditioned, and hot in the winter due to an overactive boiler. She hated it when we used the oven. I bake a lot. Baking is a stress reliever for me. I love cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, breads...everything. I probably bake something about once a week, which I don't think is too excessive. Nala did. I will give her credit for actually directing a comment to me by name in her online journal when she asked me to stop baking so much. I once made cookies at 2 am when it was cooler outside and in the apartment, but she found that to be extremely weird and rolled her eyes. I couldn't win. Now, I will grant you that baking isn't necessary for survival, but she actually told Andrea to stop cooking food. Andrea was making dinner in the oven, and Nala complained that the oven was on. Andrea responded that you can't have microwave food for every meal. Nala's response to that was something to the effect of "Yes you can." She expected us to not use the oven ever.
Andrea has a cat, LucyCat. I was once making something to take to Thanksgiving, and I saw a cat hair. The hair became lost in what I was making, so I threw it out and started over. Nala's response was "Well, you live with a cat! That's what happens. People should deal with it." So I should feed my relatives cat hair just because I can't be bothered to tend to basic cleanliness?!
She also could not stand the smell of the kitty litter, which is understandable. The kitty box closet was across the hall from Nala's bedroom. You really couldn't smell it unless it was being disturbed. Once, while Andrea was on vacation, I was cleaning LucyCat's box. Once done, I stood up, and there was Nala. She found the smell so awful that she saw fit to spray Lysol into the closet directly at me! I had a cold at the time, so my entire respiratory system was extremely raw. She couldn't understand why I wasn't happy to be inhaling a cloud of disinfectant spray.
Nala's lack of concern for others was more than annoying for those two years, but the incident that put the nail in the coffin of our frienship was when she posted on her public journal that she knows that I read that she couldn't wait to not be living with white females anymore because they are neurotic and passive agressive.
And I have washed my hands of that relationship. I am now living in harmony with Andrea and LucyCat in a nice little townhouse.
