My boyfriend is totally tired of hearing me bitch about my roommate (let’s call him Phil). Luckily Phil is moving out in a few days, but those few days couldn’t pass by fast enough.
So I’m gonna use my blog to bitch about Phil. Anyone who can relate to having a roommate from hell feel free to comment.
Ok so Phil isn’t exactly a roommate from HELL. I have to admit I have had worse. Interestingly but not surprisingly, the worst was the one who didn’t pay rent, go figure.
But Phil is gross. And he is the first truly gross sloppy roommate I have had. I get extra bitter about crappy roommates because I am SUPER specific about what I am looking for in a roommate when I post an ad on Craigslist. I’m so specific, I repeat the house rules to prospective roommates when we first email back and forth, when they come see the room, and when they are signing the lease which includes a separate page with our specific house rules they need to sign separately. So I see no reason to have had the roommates I have had. Except for the reason of them giving two shits about the rules I repeatedly reiterate and just straight up lack of respect for anyone.
Before I continue, let me first say that my boyfriend and I own a two bedroom condo in Toluca Lake which we rent out, and we own a 4 bedroom 3 bathroom house in Los Angeles which we live in and rent out the other rooms. Owning two properties in Los Angeles before the age of 30, more specifically, two nice properties in Los Angeles is no easy feat.
My boyfriend is a tax accountant and he counts every penny and I mean every penny. Did I mention he has Jewish ancestry? He also is a genius at maximizing our money. And we both could have chosen to be less humble and not have roommates. But then we wouldn’t go on lavish vacations each year and I wouldn’t be able to shop the way I do. We have been lucky enough to have financial help for the down payments on our properties from my boyfriend’s parents, but my point is we try to save where we can and we are not ungrateful. We don’t waste our time being lazy.
Back to Phil. When I place an ad on Craigslist for a roommate it goes something like this:
ROOM FOR RENT IN 4 BEDROOM 3 BATH HOUSE $750/MTH ALL UTILITES INC
Seeking a roommate for a private room for rent in a 4 bed 3 bath house, all utilities included, cable, and Wi-Fi. The three roommates share two full bathrooms. We have huge balcony and large back patio with a view of L.A. Hardwood floors, central air, granite counters, pool table. We provide dishes, pot, pans, and utensils as well as paper towels, sponges, and dish soap in the kitchen. Washer/dryer on site.
House rules:
- Dishes need to be washed/dried/put away after you eat or cook
- Chores are shared (throwing out trash, taking out recycling, taking out trash cans, cleaning bathrooms)
- overnight guests allowed no more than 2x week
- everyone gets 2 loads of laundry per week. no more.
- No eating in the bedrooms
- about you: please be clean, like dogs (we have 3)
If I had posted a craigslist ad for the roommates I actually got it would have read something like this:
SEEKING UNEMPLOYED ROOMMATE IN MID 20’S WHOSE RENT IS PAID BY THEIR PARENTS
Room for rent in 4bedroom 3 bath house. Late 20’s couple seek to rent out rooms in their home to unemployed people in their mid 20’s who moved to L.A. from another state where they did nothing, to be able to tell people back home they are a “freelance artists in L.A.” when in reality they are 100% unemployed. We prefer that you lie in your response to this ad and tell us that you have a job in which you “edit video” OR “act on the side” or “drive for Lyft”.
We prefer that your parents actually be paying your rent so that you can sit in our house (instead of their house) all day doing nothing. Or, more specifically, watching Netflix, reading graphic novels, or playing with watercolor paint. We prefer that you smoke weed and read comic books all day or have no artistic talent at all (as an artist I can say this) and sit in your room all playing with watercolors and call yourself a “freelancer”.
More importantly: please NEVER have done chores in your life. Please have parents who never spanked you.
If you are a guy:
Please have a mother who thinks you are God’s gift to this earth, when in reality, the only action you get is from your hand watching porn because women who aren’t paid to act out sex online or have sex with you in person won’t touch you. Please stink, come home piss drunk, forget your keys and break in through our window, and completely ignore the house rules (or bend them as you see fit). Please break things throughout our house and not take responsibility for it like a child, and when you move out ask if you are getting your entire security deposit back. Also please be so lazy you never leave the house except to go buy yourself Starbucks for breakfast, Little Caesar’s pizza for lunch, and maybe Subway for dinner if you don’t have left over pizza. Please only eat out because you are really lazy in general and washing a dish then putting it away is harder to you than getting in your car and driving somewhere. Also, if you ever do use the dishes please stack them in the cupboard to the point where they resemble the Leaning tower of Pisa because you are too lazy to separate the stack of dishes into two…you might die if you exert that much energy.
- If you are a girl: Please be insanely lazy, bratty, skanky, and messy. Please cook daily in our kitchen like you are competing in Iron Chef, but have absolutely no knowledge of cooking. Please leave a huge mess on the stove and make a pouty face and ask if we are still friends when I ask you to clean it. Please fill up the bathroom trash can with your used tissues and q-tips for makeup until it is overflowing and your own mother has to come visit for it to get thrown out (by her). Please see all of my expensive furniture and serveware as dispensable things for you to use to play house with your boyfriend. Please shit on my rule about overnight guests no more than twice a week. Please invite your homeless or “transient” friends to come over just to shower and brush their teeth. Please walk around without a bra while my boyfriend is around, I especially like that. Please slam doors like a six year old when you are upset. Please let me hear you having sex often, thanks.
So…back to Phil? ok so Phil is one of 5 roommates thus far who lied about being employed. In his email, he said he worked for a non-profit editing videos which helped to promote their charity from Africa. That’s sounds nice. And he is from Michigan. Ok, I thought.
Turns out, Phil volunteers to edit stuff for this non-profit…once in a while. He leaves the house maybe 5 times a month, at night, to go out on dates (women he meets on OKCupid) which never turn into anything, not surprisingly. This is Phil’s daily routine:
- 10 a.m. wake up to an alarm, then go to the bathroom for 30-45 mins to take a shit because I am perpetually constipated from a daily diet of Starbucks and pizza.
- Maybe shower after my 30-45 morning shit, if I do shower, make it about a 30 minute shower and manage to break both towel rods in both bathrooms because I pull my towel off of it so hard it goes flying and bouncing all over the bathroom. Proceed to deny that it was me even though everyone heard the noise.
- Go to Starbucks in my Pj’s for my morning coffee and muffin, which I come home and eat in my room even though I agreed not to eat in my room.
- Stay in my room for about three hours until I have to shit again
- Wash my towel because my roommates and landlord tell me it stinks and I should keep it in my room from now on. Go ahead and do 3-4 loads of laundry even though I agreed in my lease not to do more than 2 loads of laundry per week.
- 1:00 p.m. go to the bathroom to take a shit, sit in there for about an hour, then back to Netlix in my room.
- 2:00 p.m. Go get Little Caesar’s pizza, go home and eat it in my room even though I agreed not to eat in my room.
- 4:00 p.m. Go to the bathroom for 45 mins to take a shit, then back to my room to watch Netflix
- 6:00 p.m. either go buy Subway and eat it in my room, or go take a shit for a half hour, then a second shower if I am going on another unsuccessful date at night.
- 11:00 p.m. come home from a date with junk food I eat in my room even though I agreed not to.
- Repeat everything the next day and wonder why my landlords can’t stand me.
This dude is the biggest water waster. Now don’t get me wrong. I may be an animal loving vegetarian/undercover hippie, but I definitely indulge in my long showers…once a week..because I have long ethnic hair that takes long to wash. This dude will take a half an hour shower, get out of the shower and run the sink water for about ten minutes straight, go to his room, come back to the bathroom and run the sink water for another ten minutes. All so he can leave the same sweaty tub of lard he went in as.
That may sound insensitive but let me just say that this guy is fat for a reason. The reason being himself. I was overweight at one point too, for one reason…myself. I understand that there are people who struggle daily with their weight and no matter what they do can’t lose, but I do believe that most people are fat because they are like Phil…unhealthy and lazy.
When I say Phil is fat, I don’t mean he can lose ten pounds. Or even twenty, or thirty. He is overweight, like 60-80 pounds over weight and you just need to hang out with him for a few hours to see why.
First of all, he literally never leaves the house except to get food. He wakes up at ten a.m. gets a Venti Starbucks drink (which is replete with calories an overweight person trying to lose weight should be avoiding) and a muffin. Lunch is an entire Large pizza…everyday. Sometimes I just wanna knock on the bathroom door in the morning when he is sitting there for his hour long shit and tell him..”You know, that daily large pizza can’t be helping your regularity, you might want to try some fiber in your diet. You’d be able to cut down your three hours+ a day in the bathroom maybe down to one.”
Once he did a juice fast for a week and lost ten pounds, only to go right back to his old routine of eating pizza everyday. I wanted to tell him, “it would have been more effective for you to just go for a walk around the block everyday and keep doing that.”
Perhaps what bothers me most about Phil is how lazy he is. you may have already guessed that. The reality is his diet is his business, but he is just all around lazy. He is home ALL day and never does anything to help around the house…nothing..unless I ask him. Even my other pothead, parents-paying-his-rent roommate manages to take out the trash or recycling without being told every now and then.
The trash could be completely full and stinky, the recycling full, bathroom trash full, my dogs begging to be let outside..nothing. I just wonder sometimes how do women manage to raise such inept, useless sons?
I hate to toot my own childless horn, but I aspire to raise very useful and productive children. Call it my traditional Latin upbringing, or my Dad’s drill sergeant influence, but both my brother and I were brought up to abhor laziness. Furthermore, we were raised to believe men should be very hard workers. Any male over the age of 16 who sat on his butt all day was totally looked down on as useless bum, let alone a 26 year old who sits on his ass all day and whose parents still pay his rent. How do his parents expect him to marry as useless as he is? I suspect his mother deliberately raised him to be that way because she hates her husband and purposely raised Phil to be inept and need her so she could have a lifelong companion other than her husband. She is just waiting for him to come back home to keep her company .
So I have a very hard time having any respect for Phil. This is someone who literally sits on his ass all day contributing nothing of value to the world or the household he lives in.
Any thoughts/comments?
Proud Modern Bitch 