30 People Share Their Worst Roommate Experiences

Eric Lund

May 9, 2022 6:00 PM EDT

Your home isn't just the place that you sleep at after work. It should be a place of rest, relaxation, and enough solitude to help you gather up enough strength to go back out there and face the world. But something happens when you have a bad roommate. It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like getting home after a long day, putting the key in the door, and getting a spark of anxiety thinking "I wonder what I'm going to have to deal with now."

And there are a great deal of troubles one can deal with in a roommate. An overly passive roommate who doesn't do dishes and gets indignant when you suggest that they do them. A person with no boundaries who steals your stuff. The smelly guy. It's all part of the tapestry of stressful people to live with, and none of it is conducive to living a fulfilled, healthy, or even relaxing life. So to all the roommates out there who "have no idea why all my roommates are always so mad at me, I didn't do anything wrong," feel bad about it.

And also you still owe me money.

For people who at least left eventually, here are some of the worst and weirdest houseguests people have experienced.