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Roommate advice.
Esh
Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered User regular
Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered User regular
So, last night I'm awoken to every smoke alarm in the apartment going off. I madly rush to the kitchen which is the source of the smoke and find a very badly burnt and smoking pizza in the oven. I quickly take it out, turn off the oven, and toss it in the sink. I then go around the apartment and disable all the smoke alarms. All through this, there's no sign of my roommate. I go into his room and there passed out face down on his bed is his girlfriend. No roommate anywhere. I poke her in the head and she doesn't even stir. I go check the front door and it's unlocked.
A couple hours later the doorbell rings and I wake up and go downstairs to let him in. I tell him what happened and he just looks at me and goes to his room. Probably so fucked up he can't comprehend.
From this I surmise he gave her his keys while they were out and about to come to our apartment and pass out. She comes in, leaves the front door unlocked for him (which I'm also horribly unpleased with.) puts a pizza in the oven and proceeds to pass out in such a drunken stupor that piercing alarms for two or three minutes don't wake her.
.
If I hadn't been home I'm sure at some point the fire department would've been called and we would have had some VERY displeased neighbors and a landlord. We probably would have been evicted.
Now, I've had a slight bone of contention with my roommate for a bit now. He moved in three months ago and I clearly set boundaries. No late night coming and goings (I'm a student), no people over late, he needs to be home if his girlfriend is here, etc...
Now it hasn't been horrible, but when he gets drunk he tends to forget these things and it kinda annoys the piss out of me. With this latest shennanigan I'm considering telling him he needs to move out. He is on the lease, but it is month to month.
Am I crazy or is this an acceptable thing for me to tell him?
A couple hours later the doorbell rings and I wake up and go downstairs to let him in. I tell him what happened and he just looks at me and goes to his room. Probably so fucked up he can't comprehend.
From this I surmise he gave her his keys while they were out and about to come to our apartment and pass out. She comes in, leaves the front door unlocked for him (which I'm also horribly unpleased with.) puts a pizza in the oven and proceeds to pass out in such a drunken stupor that piercing alarms for two or three minutes don't wake her.
.
If I hadn't been home I'm sure at some point the fire department would've been called and we would have had some VERY displeased neighbors and a landlord. We probably would have been evicted.
Now, I've had a slight bone of contention with my roommate for a bit now. He moved in three months ago and I clearly set boundaries. No late night coming and goings (I'm a student), no people over late, he needs to be home if his girlfriend is here, etc...
Now it hasn't been horrible, but when he gets drunk he tends to forget these things and it kinda annoys the piss out of me. With this latest shennanigan I'm considering telling him he needs to move out. He is on the lease, but it is month to month.
Am I crazy or is this an acceptable thing for me to tell him?
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I would say that it's clear they are not thinking of safety (leaving the door open, trying to burn the place down while sleeping through it) and that they don't give a shit about you or improving (completely ignoring you). This is the reason that I would ask them to move more-so than one accident with the pizza burning. If the g/f had come running when the alarms were set off, this would be a different story.
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Yeah, that's not happening. He's a hipster of the nth degree. Drinking is part of his lifestyle.
So why not have him get drunk at his girlfriend's house?
Face Twit Rav Gram
I don't think banning all alcohol from the house or telling him he can't come home when he's drunk is really going to go over too well. He may as well just find somewhere else to live. He drinks on a fairly regular basis.
Face Twit Rav Gram
Oh yes, I should mention that I could care less about burning any bridges with him. :P
As I've gotten older, the realization of how short life actually is has made me significantly less patience with the a**holes and dumbsh*ts in our society.
From what you have told us of your situation, I would definitely tell that stupid bastard to leave. I am not my usual reserved, well-mannered self after I'm rudely disturbed from my slumbers. You probably handled it better than I would have.
Good luck.
Well if the apartment is yours or you are the main tenant (which it seems you are) you don't need an excuse to give him his marching orders. Just tell him you don't think it's working out since you seem to have incompatible ways of living.
But remember it's a big wide world full off asshats and weirdos out there so don't expect his replacement to be any better.
You don't think that possibly getting us both evicted is a good reason for him to leave?
Well aware of the wide world. I've had roommates for 14 years+.
I mean he sounds like a jerk but "WE WOULD'VE GOTTEN EVICTED BECAUSE OF YOU GOD YOU'RE ALWAYS DRUNK AND YOU'RE NEVER RESPONSIBLE ABOUT ANYTHING OBEY THE RULES!" also seems to be a little on the uptight side.
I'd explain you're not happy, that if anything like it happens again you won't be best pleased, and ask him to cut down on his drinking or do it elsewhere to make sure it doesn't, and you get an unreasonable response, then you can start thinking about anything further. As of right now, it's just 'dude - You said you wouldn't come home late and wake me up. You did come back late, your girlfriend set off a fire alarm that woke me up and could easily have burned the house down if I wasn't in, and she left the door unlocked. This isn't acceptable.'
If after having the talk with him he doesn't want to meet you halfway, then the next time it happens, kick him out (assuming you have the authority to do so).
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Well burning a pizza is unsafe but it obviously wasn't malicious, it was just a dumb mistake. But I repeat what I said in my previous post if you don't like the guy you don't need to find some evidence of incompetence or negligence to give him the boot. If you're the lease holder then you not liking him is reason enough.
You seem aware of what you're letting yourself in for with a roomate search so I guess the question you should be asking yourself is "Is this guy enough of a pain in my ass that I want to go through the risk and effort of replacing him?". If the answer to that question is yes then your course of action seems pretty clear.
You can be evicted for waking up all your neighbors and having fire trucks on the scene though. I don't think that's uptight.
He's already gotten us a noise complaint from the neighbors.
Have you, personally, since he moved in, told him he needs to stop this shit or risk being evicted?
For me the answer to that question is also the answer to whether you should tell him today to start looking for a new place to live.
he's the brother of the other 2, but that doesnt help him one bit. we all want him out and it doesnt help the third guy is my landlady's son (if your counting, they're all related, but only the landlady likes him). if you got the power, push the eject button.
say, you live with 50 miles of seattle? hehe...
edit** and ill answer it.. nvm, your portland by your avatar location... :P
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You obviously dont want to live with this guy and want an excuse to kick him out. Honestly no you wouldnt get evicted for setting off the alarms and having the firetrucks come, ive never heard of that. Drunken mistakes happen, and unless your land lady is super up tight and you live in an uptight building, im sure they would understand that someone fell asleep and a pizza burned. As for the unlocked doors, i leave my door open all the time for my roommate when he forgets his key, i dont really see how this is an issue, its not like no one was home. If you live in the ghetto, maybe, but if you live in the ghetto cant you afford to not have a roommate?
As an aside, have you thought about living alone? People are generally pretty tough to live with, all people, if youre uptight about little things like coming in late at night and getting drunk. Unless you live with a priest in training or a nun or something.
So yeah, to sum it up, get rid of the dude, considering living alone or screening your next roommate better to make sure your personalities match.
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Don't say: You got drunk, your girlfriend almost burnt the house down, and you left the front door unlocked! I bet if you let him know that all three of those things make you feel like shit, he'll take it better than letting him know that HE's a piece of shit.
The other plus side is if he doesn't respond positively, then you know for SURE he's a douche, and then can go about your self righteous way.
Leaving the door unlocked - not safe.
Letting a pizza burn - terribly unsafe.
Give him the chance to fix those issues his way. If he doesn't.......then it's the highway for you or him.
I have never ever heard of someone being evicted for setting off a fire alarm, even if their neighbors were woken up and the fire department called. Maybe fined. And probably warned. I don't think anyone is evicted for a one-time thing unless it's pretty major. And if it was a continuing problem then obviously that would be taken into consideration and eviction could be brought up.
All I'm saying is while I'm sure he is somewhat at least irresponsible and slob-ish, you might be a little on the anal side too. And none of this means that you probably shouldn't look for a single or a different roommate, I'm just saying that you're getting really worked up over a drunken accident and that may be part of the problem, and if you choose to get another roommate instead of trying life in a single, it should probably be something you're aware of, to make sure you get along with your next roommate.
I can be pretty slob-ish my self, though if I have reason to I'll keep clean pretty well, and I practice a lot at home so I tend to generate a reasonable degree of noise. Also, I tend not to mind any parties or drunkenness from roommates, but I have a weird problem with cleanliness in the bathroom, and since I'm often gigging late, I can't deal much with people who make a lot of noise in the morning. Whenever I have choice of a roommate, I keep these things in mind. Because I know that at some point it'll probably come up. You should be able to go over anything that might make living with you other than perfection for every person ever too.
I'm not trying to attack you or anything, I'm just saying, if you're the sort of person who starts going on about getting evicted after a pizza was left in the oven you should probably be aware that it might come up with another roommate. Roommates are a tricky business and you need to be introspective as much as looking at them to make sure they work out.
But yeah, it's probably just not going to work with the two of you... if this is just a pattern of things like this that you react to like this it might just be time to ask him to move out(within a reasonable time frame) or move out yourself(after a reasonable time frame)
Personally, I wouldn't bother asking though. I'd just move out, less problems to deal with if this guy likes you as much as you like him.
Anyway, I texted him and asked him if he even remembered coming home last night. He said he came home with his girlfriend, put a pizza in, and then left to go get cigarettes and then she must've fallen asleep and forgot to take out the pizza. By my timeline it took him over TWO HOURS to walk two blocks to the 7-11 and get smokes. God only knows where he wandered off to.
I told him that I was beginning to seriously doubt that his living style was congruous to us living together. He apologized profusely and said he'd try and shape up. I laid into him a little and told him that if he was going to come home wasted he needed to stay at his girlfriend's and not come here. He's also been smoking in his room (a giant no-no according to the lease) and I told him he needed to knock that off immediately. I let him know I wasn't interested in dying in a blazing inferno if he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. I doubt he'll actually shape up. He's a super hipster and loves his booze, pills, and cocaine when he goes out to party. Luckily the most he does here is drink and smoke pot, but it's the after effects of his partying that concerns me. We'll see I guess. I'm mostly likely just going to save up some money and get a studio by myself in the next couple months. This apartment we have now is amazing, but I think I may be better off living by myself.
I do not live in the ghetto by any means, but I have quite a few expensive and irreplaceable things and I'd hate to take ANY chance of them getting walked off with.
He was told before he moved in that I have 9am classes and that I didn't want any partying or late night coming or goings in the apartment. My bedroom door is right at the top of the stairs when you come into the apartment. People coming in and out wake me up. Especially since him and his girlfriend both have a penchant for hard soled shoes/boots. I used to be quite the socialite and that part of my life is over. I don't want anything to do with it and he knew/knows that yet continues to ignore what I told him.
But the chances of you getting evicted from a pizza left in the oven, let alone dying from a pizza left in the oven are really, really low, and making a big deal about it, or saying something as utterly silly as "I'm amazed that anyone can refer to me as anal when I'm upset about possibly dying in a fire. Go figure." Is just so much overreacting it's almost funny.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the pizza was made of thermite and C4, and the lease says "IF YOU EVER OVERCOOK FOOD WE WILL KICK YOUR ASS OUT", but if you decide something other than living alone and get another roommate without taking a look at yourself and recognizing what could make another person have problems living with you or following all your rules you'll run a much higher risk of getting another roommate that you'll have problems with.
I have many good friends who I would probably have a problem living with because they're anal and uptight about where they live. I have a few friends who I would have a problem living with because there are things they would do that I would seem anal and uptight about. I have a few friends who I would just not be able to live with for a long sundried list of differences.
All I'm trying to do is help you. If you are the sort of person who gets that upset about someone leaving a pizza in the oven, or someone coming home late, and you present it as "hey man, could you try to stay at your girlfriends if you're out late? It's just that I have an early class" and they do a few or even several times then the problem isn't just that they're an irresponsible drunken fuck. I can say with almost certainty that if all you take away from this is "He was the problem, being irresponsible and refusing to listen to my concerns", you will end up in another crappy roommate situation. Again, I'm sure he's slob-ish, irresponsible, causing problems, and contributing to the problem and I'm not attacking you at all. I'm just saying that roommate situations are really tough and you need to recognize what solutions and potential problems you could cause as a roommate. This is not horribly out of line, this is not me being a dick or anything, this is how any roommate situation will have to work.
And hey, maybe you're not uptight or prone to overreaction, and this is just a bad night for you, or you're just not fully stating how bad he is, I could be wrong I guess. In theory.
there's no reason to get defensive about this at all.
I'm 32 and I've had many, many, many roommates and this is the first time I've considered asking one of them to get the fuck out.
Again, I could be wrong, I was just going from what I saw in the thread.
Also, it's all worthless and doesn't matter if you get a single, which is the silver bullet to ever having roommate problems.
Yeah, this is a shitty situation and I suggest you either tell your roommate to get the fuck out, or find a place to live by yourself.
Honestly I'd go with the latter regardless since you're 32.
Personally, I think it's worth it to have a worse apartment that you don't have to share. So if you need a smaller place in order to not have to have roomates, it might be worth it.
Face Twit Rav Gram
Its not unreasonable at all, but you need to find people to abide by those rules... Im 24 and honestly if someone told me i couldnt come home drunk, or that i had to be home by a certain hour, id be pissed off. But, thats also the reason i met with about 20 people before i found my current roommate. I needed to find someone that I could live with, as well as could live with me. When i walked into the apartment to meet the guy, and his girlfriend was sprawled on the couch, rockband was paused on the ps3, and it looked like it hadnt been cleaned in weeks and there were empty beer bottles everywhere, i knew i was home, because thats the way i like to live.
I did not choose to move in with the people who told me i needed to be in bed by 7pm because they get up really early, or the people who told me we will take turns cleaning the bathroom every other day, or the people who said i was not allowed to have guests over, ever period, or that i could not use their kitchen because its set up just the way they want it and there is no room for extra stuff. Now, if i had have, id have no right to get pissed off because they were upfront about it, like Esh is saying he was. This is why im suggesting Esh kick this guy out, because the guy is not going to change his habits. Its not going to happen, people dont change just so they can peacefully co-exist with another complete stranger. Both people involved here will be infinitely more happy not living together, Esh can get a good nights sleep and not worry about burning to death, and the roommate can get loaded and stumble in with his girlfriend at any time he wants.
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