We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the most passive-aggressive thing a roommate has ever done to them (or alternately, the most passive-aggressive thing THEY'VE done to a roommate). Here are their savage stories:
1. The noise assault:
"My roommate in my final year of uni had her alarm go off every morning at 5:30 a.m. Sounds okay — EXCEPT SHE SNOOZED IT EVERY 10 MINUTES UNTIL 8 a.m.!! To retaliate, I bought 24 alarm clocks and set them at 15-minute intervals. I locked my door, then left for the weekend."
2. The saucy revenge:
"I may have been a lil' bit of a passive-aggressive roommate, because my roommate was messy and always made our place a pigsty. She never did her dishes. I asked her but she just snapped at me. I finally got sick of it and the next time she didn’t clean her dishes, I took them and put all her dirty dishes dirty-side-down on her bed. After pasta night, she finally learned her lesson."
3. The angry one:
"I had a roommate in my early twenties who wanted to leave the apartment, so I told her she could move out but I wasn’t going to let her off the lease. There were nine months left and I couldn’t afford the apartment myself alone. She left, was still paying, and was PISSED that I wouldn’t take her off. So every day when I was at work she would come in, turn on all the lights, run all the faucets, open every cabinet, throw out everything from them, leave my front and porch doors wide open, and flip the dining table. Every. Single. Day. I held my ground and made her pay every penny of that nine months' rent."
4. The dirty surprise:
"In college, I asked my roommate if she would mind if her friend and I went on a date, and she said no. We started dating and apparently she did have a problem with it. She stopped talking to me and started being very rude to both of us. Over a weekend when I was staying at his place, she CHANGED THE LOCKS. I packed up my stuff, filled several trash bags with my unwanted crap, old food, etc., and cut holes in the bottom of each bag for a fun surprise when she took them out. I moved in with her friend."
5. The giver:
"My old roommate had one job when we lived together. Take out the trash. It was a constant struggle for him to even do that. So being the good roommate I am, I got him a birthday cake honoring him for his laziness. That shit cost me $30 and yes it was worth it!
6. The magnet messengers:
"One drunken night my roommate and I got in a huge fight, and for a week we wrote each other passive-aggressive notes using the magnet word sets on the fridge. We got the ~sassy pack~, so we were calling each other 'rude bitch in a tacky velour sweatsuit' all week long."
7. The fall:
"I was definitely the passive-aggressive one, but my roommate was completely awful. Whenever she made me mad, I used to pull her bed away from the wall about half an inch at a time. Just enough to not be noticed until she eventually fell through the gap in the middle of the night. Harmless ultimately, but so satisfying."
8. The dumpster rat:
"I once had five roommates, and only myself and one of the other girls EVER cleaned. On one of the many arguments we had with other roommates about doing their share, one of the guys said he shouldn’t have to take the trash out because none of the trash was his and proceeded to literally dig through and pick out every piece of trash he claimed as his own and took THOSE to the dumpster."
9. The shrimpcident:
"An old roommate of my boyfriend left her bowl of half-eaten shrimp in the living room for three days despite the three other housemates repeatedly telling her to take it out of the room and wash it. When I had finally had enough of the smell, I took the bowl and put it in the back of her wardrobe under some clothes. Three years later none of us have any idea what happened to that bowl of half-eaten shrimp."
10. The territory marker:
"I shared a house with two other girls a few years ago while we were all on an internship together. After a while one girl stopped paying her share of the TV/internet package so she was told she couldn’t use it until she paid. Her response was to put blue nail varnish dots on everything and I mean EVERYTHING in the house to claim it as hers and no one else could use it, whilst acting like the two of us literally didn’t exist at home and work. She never paid her share of the bill and the hub password remained ‘*name*isafreeloader.’"
11. The pube sprinkler:
"In college I lived with my best friend, and her boyfriend was always over. I'd find pubes all over the sink, which I secretly hoped were from his face, so eventually I started picking up the hairs and placing them in my friend's pillow case. They broke up soon after, and she said she thought he was weird because 'he was putting his pubes in her pillowcase.' I didn’t tell her it was me."
12. The one with too much time on her hands:
"My roommate was so passive-aggressive that she'd literally separate the dryer lint. She only cleaned out what she believed was her lint and then proceeded to put the lint trap back into the dryer after she picked through it."
13. The legal intervention:
"After a variety of major issues among five roommates, the main problem roommate and I agreed to meet for a drink to try and work things out. As I was walking across the street to the bar, his girlfriend handed me a subpoena."
14. The smelly one:
"One of my housemates never showered, did her dishes, or did laundry. We finally (delicately) asked her to be more hygienic. She responded by doing her dishes and laundry between 2 and 4 a.m. for the rest of the year, and interrupting everyone else's showers by barging into our only bathroom (it didn't lock), demanding it was her time to shower, and refusing to leave until we turned the water off."
15. The paranoid one:
"I had a roommate one time who had put a chain and lock on the refrigerator so that I couldn’t open it because she thought I drank one of her sodas. I never drank one of her sodas."
16. The organizer:
"My husband and I had a roommate who would refuse to wash his dishes for weeks at a time and leave them covered with food next to the sink. I finally put them all in a storage container and left them outside of his room."
17. And the lovely individual who is likely responsible for many soiled pairs of underwear:
"The bathroom in our house is connected to our bedroom, so whenever my roommate has friends over late at night and they’re being really loud, I’ll lock the bathroom door from the inside so her friends think I’m in there and can’t use the bathroom. It makes me feel better for some reason."
