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Roommate Woes
Giggles_Funsworth
Blight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered User regular
Blight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered User regular
Below is a bunch of spoilered background. Current problem is unspoilered below.
Tonight, as my roommate was walking out the door for work, he mentioned that it was unacceptable for us to have people over on the weekends overnight because it interferes with his watching TV and doing laundry. We had a friend that stayed over last weekend because it was a two hour drive for him to get home and it was late. We don't have people stay over super often, maybe once every couple months. The last time before this was in September, it was for a few nights that time, but the circumstances were unusual. Our friend's father had died and he was trying to get out of the house for a little bit, be around friends. We would have consulted with our roommate first this last weekend but he's never made an issue of it in the past, and has in fact said it was okay, and he tends to sleep around 14 hours on the weekends, doesn't get up until about 12-2AM. My roommate voluntarily changed his hours to overnights between signing the lease with us and us moving in, without seeking out our feelings on the matter first.
Because this schedule was a voluntary decision on his part since he likes the extra money and he could switch back if he wanted to, I almost feel like this is his problem, not ours. He's told us that having people over during the week when he's at work is fine but I feel that this is both unreasonable and impractical given that all of us are working professionals, or students, or both, and the weekends are our free time. We don't have people over every weekend, most weekends, or even half or one quarter of the weekends. He watches Netflix or shows on HBO Go on the Xbox, or The Daily Show and the Colbert Report on On Demand, all of these are things he could do in his room on his computer on the few weekends we have guests over, and he could shift his laundry to the morning (his evening) before he goes to bed if that's an issue. I furnished the entire goddamn apartment on unemployment while he continued to draw his regular paycheck and pay down his student loans, including couches and a futon so we could sleep guests occasionally. Him deciding all of a sudden that him not being able to watch the TV I also bought once in a while is such an inconvenience we can't have people over is incredibly frustrating to both me and my girlfriend.
Of additional concern, I was planning on having my best friend over from Montana after the New Year for a couple weeks to a month to look for job opportunities here, had already cleared this with my roommate as being acceptable, and promised my best friend there was a place for him to use as a launchpad or move to temporarily if something turned around for him out here. If him not being able to watch TV is too much of an imposition where the fuck are we on that now?
Has anybody else dealt with roommate drama like this before? I don't want to rock the boat so much I end up losing my roommate, because right now, while I can afford the extra rent, utilities, etc. I much prefer being able to have a generous cushion every month to throw at my own student loans, business expenses, or just fun things at the drop of a hat. My girlfriend and I both feel like he changed the terms of our arrangement by volunteering for overnights at work before we'd even moved in, and it's been an issue but this is basically the straw that's broken the camel's back for us.
So a little over a year ago I signed a lease with a friend and former coworker (got him a job where I used to work), the original plan was to move in with my girlfriend at the start of the New Year but that got delayed a little bit when I got fired. We ended up moving in an extra month later, a total of four months after the lease was signed. I had already bought a high end router, and a TV for the apartment, along with some various cleaning supplies, odds and ends for the kitchens and bathrooms, trash cans, etc. He supplied the apartment with a few plates, some pans and silverware, the world's shittiest knife set he'd bought at a thrift store, and a Dyson vacuum cleaner he already owned. When we moved in with me collecting unemployment at a little more than half of what I had been making and him still gainfully employed, we ended up providing the dining room table, kitchen chairs, coffee table, book shelves for the common area, entertainment center, couches a couple few other pieces of furniture and necessities...he finally bought a microwave a few months after we moved in. That was when the beginning of my frustrations with him started but I figured I couldn't tell him how to spend his money and it would just make it easier when we move eventually because we own everything.
I had known the guy a decent amount of time before moving in with him, two or three years, took a roadtrip across the country with him and some other people. Everything I knew about him led me to believe he was a clean, fairly conservative, quiet person, unlikely to cause a stir, stay up late making noise, having drunk idiots over, etc. Very easy to live with.
By the time we moved in however, while most of my assessment about his personality was correct, dude turned out to be the bacheloriest bachelor ever. I don't think the place had been cleaned a single time in the four months he was here alone. There was visible grime on the bathtub, the toilets and sinks were filthy, place hadn't been vacuumed, and the kitchen was in dire need of attention. So fine, I'm not his mom and he's free to conduct himself how he likes, me and my girlfriend clean the place up and that's that. We've been doing all the cleaning, more or less, since. Once in a while if his toilet gets super filthy he'll clean it and only it (not the rest of the bathroom) but never the other bathroom or bathtub, and very occasionally, maybe a total of three or four times in 10 months, if he's feeling super charitable he'll do the dishes but generally he only does his own even if there's other dishes in the sink, even though if he leaves some dishes in the sink with ours I'll do all of them, it's only polite. Since he generally does his own dishes, and our laundry is separate, it's not like he's making a huge amount of extra work for us that entropy wouldn't create on its own, though it's incredibly irksome feeling like we're his maids.
Part of the problem, and a more or less valid reason why he doesn't clean more, is that between when we signed the lease and when we moved in he decided to start working overnights at work without consulting the people he'd be living with about it at all. I was apprehensive about this initially, I thought it might become an issue with noise and everything during our daytime and him being up at night, but for the most part it turned out okay. He remained remarkably quiet at night for the first eight months or so, was gone most nights for the duration of our sleeping, and it was more or less like living in a one bedroom apartment for cheaper. Some unforeseen things that ended up sucking, during the summer our power bill ended up getting us thrown in a higher consumption tier for more money per kilowatt between electronic devices being on more or less 24/7, and running the A/C. Our apartment lacks central air but has an A/C unit in the living room that does well enough cooling down the whole place at night with the bedroom doors open, but because he was sleeping during the day with his door closed and the sun beating down on his window his room was turning into an oven and he was unable to sleep. He bought a portable A/C unit to cool down his room, our power bill almost tripled, but I negotiated paying half and half with him instead of 2/3 (me and my girlfriend) 1/3 and got screwed only somewhat as opposed to completely, and called the rest even since me and my girlfriend work from home which also contributes to higher rates of consumption.
In the past couple months he's taken to watching TV and playing games on my 360 when he's awake during the weekend, which is fine, I set him up with an account on the Xbox ages ago and told him so. He keeps the volume down ridiculously low but even so I noticed I'm not sleeping as well as I used to on the weekends, but I figure it's only fair considering we make considerably more noise at times during the day. He uses earplugs and it doesn't bother him, I can't because of rather severe tinnitus that becomes more distracting and insomnia inducing if I block out ambient noises around me.
All this, incredibly frustrating, but he makes his choices and I make mine, and the rent's the cheapest in possibly the entire Bay Area in a pretty good neighborhood. Not worth causing trouble in what is a stable living situation.
I had known the guy a decent amount of time before moving in with him, two or three years, took a roadtrip across the country with him and some other people. Everything I knew about him led me to believe he was a clean, fairly conservative, quiet person, unlikely to cause a stir, stay up late making noise, having drunk idiots over, etc. Very easy to live with.
By the time we moved in however, while most of my assessment about his personality was correct, dude turned out to be the bacheloriest bachelor ever. I don't think the place had been cleaned a single time in the four months he was here alone. There was visible grime on the bathtub, the toilets and sinks were filthy, place hadn't been vacuumed, and the kitchen was in dire need of attention. So fine, I'm not his mom and he's free to conduct himself how he likes, me and my girlfriend clean the place up and that's that. We've been doing all the cleaning, more or less, since. Once in a while if his toilet gets super filthy he'll clean it and only it (not the rest of the bathroom) but never the other bathroom or bathtub, and very occasionally, maybe a total of three or four times in 10 months, if he's feeling super charitable he'll do the dishes but generally he only does his own even if there's other dishes in the sink, even though if he leaves some dishes in the sink with ours I'll do all of them, it's only polite. Since he generally does his own dishes, and our laundry is separate, it's not like he's making a huge amount of extra work for us that entropy wouldn't create on its own, though it's incredibly irksome feeling like we're his maids.
Part of the problem, and a more or less valid reason why he doesn't clean more, is that between when we signed the lease and when we moved in he decided to start working overnights at work without consulting the people he'd be living with about it at all. I was apprehensive about this initially, I thought it might become an issue with noise and everything during our daytime and him being up at night, but for the most part it turned out okay. He remained remarkably quiet at night for the first eight months or so, was gone most nights for the duration of our sleeping, and it was more or less like living in a one bedroom apartment for cheaper. Some unforeseen things that ended up sucking, during the summer our power bill ended up getting us thrown in a higher consumption tier for more money per kilowatt between electronic devices being on more or less 24/7, and running the A/C. Our apartment lacks central air but has an A/C unit in the living room that does well enough cooling down the whole place at night with the bedroom doors open, but because he was sleeping during the day with his door closed and the sun beating down on his window his room was turning into an oven and he was unable to sleep. He bought a portable A/C unit to cool down his room, our power bill almost tripled, but I negotiated paying half and half with him instead of 2/3 (me and my girlfriend) 1/3 and got screwed only somewhat as opposed to completely, and called the rest even since me and my girlfriend work from home which also contributes to higher rates of consumption.
In the past couple months he's taken to watching TV and playing games on my 360 when he's awake during the weekend, which is fine, I set him up with an account on the Xbox ages ago and told him so. He keeps the volume down ridiculously low but even so I noticed I'm not sleeping as well as I used to on the weekends, but I figure it's only fair considering we make considerably more noise at times during the day. He uses earplugs and it doesn't bother him, I can't because of rather severe tinnitus that becomes more distracting and insomnia inducing if I block out ambient noises around me.
All this, incredibly frustrating, but he makes his choices and I make mine, and the rent's the cheapest in possibly the entire Bay Area in a pretty good neighborhood. Not worth causing trouble in what is a stable living situation.
Tonight, as my roommate was walking out the door for work, he mentioned that it was unacceptable for us to have people over on the weekends overnight because it interferes with his watching TV and doing laundry. We had a friend that stayed over last weekend because it was a two hour drive for him to get home and it was late. We don't have people stay over super often, maybe once every couple months. The last time before this was in September, it was for a few nights that time, but the circumstances were unusual. Our friend's father had died and he was trying to get out of the house for a little bit, be around friends. We would have consulted with our roommate first this last weekend but he's never made an issue of it in the past, and has in fact said it was okay, and he tends to sleep around 14 hours on the weekends, doesn't get up until about 12-2AM. My roommate voluntarily changed his hours to overnights between signing the lease with us and us moving in, without seeking out our feelings on the matter first.
Because this schedule was a voluntary decision on his part since he likes the extra money and he could switch back if he wanted to, I almost feel like this is his problem, not ours. He's told us that having people over during the week when he's at work is fine but I feel that this is both unreasonable and impractical given that all of us are working professionals, or students, or both, and the weekends are our free time. We don't have people over every weekend, most weekends, or even half or one quarter of the weekends. He watches Netflix or shows on HBO Go on the Xbox, or The Daily Show and the Colbert Report on On Demand, all of these are things he could do in his room on his computer on the few weekends we have guests over, and he could shift his laundry to the morning (his evening) before he goes to bed if that's an issue. I furnished the entire goddamn apartment on unemployment while he continued to draw his regular paycheck and pay down his student loans, including couches and a futon so we could sleep guests occasionally. Him deciding all of a sudden that him not being able to watch the TV I also bought once in a while is such an inconvenience we can't have people over is incredibly frustrating to both me and my girlfriend.
Of additional concern, I was planning on having my best friend over from Montana after the New Year for a couple weeks to a month to look for job opportunities here, had already cleared this with my roommate as being acceptable, and promised my best friend there was a place for him to use as a launchpad or move to temporarily if something turned around for him out here. If him not being able to watch TV is too much of an imposition where the fuck are we on that now?
Has anybody else dealt with roommate drama like this before? I don't want to rock the boat so much I end up losing my roommate, because right now, while I can afford the extra rent, utilities, etc. I much prefer being able to have a generous cushion every month to throw at my own student loans, business expenses, or just fun things at the drop of a hat. My girlfriend and I both feel like he changed the terms of our arrangement by volunteering for overnights at work before we'd even moved in, and it's been an issue but this is basically the straw that's broken the camel's back for us.
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-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Not sure how long you have until then, but give him warning and talk to him about compromising until then. Your friend is coming over - he already said it was fine so that should be a done deal. Make sure that he is aware that this is a plan you made with his blessing and aren't changing at this point. Most other things are probably negotiable for what is hopefully the fairly short amount of time left on your lease.
Like I said, I just let everything previously lie for the most part, and the way he dropped this latest bombshell before waltzing out the door I didn't have much time to say no or collect my thoughts or even ask my girlfriend if she thought it was reasonable (she doesn't and expressed it reinforcing her desire to finish up her portfolio so she can find a job and we can move back to San Francisco).
When I was busy spending what scant money I could get together from my unemployment to furnish the apartment I did make some indirect comments about how stressful it was but it didn't get through and I sure didn't feel like I could tell him how to spend his money. Same thing with the cleaning, he certainly contributes to dirtying up the place but he mostly cleans up after the things he is directly responsible for. I'm not his mom. The only thing I mentioned as far as cleaning goes, is he used to keep the towel for drying the dishes on the handle for the oven...where it dragged against the kitchen floor every time the oven was opened. I got a rather dickish response about how he wasn't a germaphobe like I was but he ended up keeping it elsewhere after the fact.
I am not his mom, I don't feel like I can tell him how to spend his money or when he should clean, I confronted him and renegotiated how we were splitting the utilities when he got his A/C unit and I am not getting dicked too hard there anymore.
Both me and my girl working from home all the time though, him not wanting us to have people overnight on the weekends makes it significantly harder to socialize with our friends we don't see all that often because of geography, which has become increasingly important to the both of us. We both feel it is unacceptable, but we don't want to lose our roommate over this either.
It was honestly pretty workable with some minor inconveniences until this latest decision on his part.
We are already month to month on the apartment but we were hoping to make it into the New Year before moving. She has an iOS application she's been developing for equity with a startup. iOS devs are in such high demand at the moment that even though she has no college degree, no previous development experience, we've already got two different tech recruiters very interested in finding her work, so either the startup takes off and she gets a livable wage or she finds work for herself with a company which should put us well above $100k a year. Contract rates for experienced iOS devs in the area right now are as much as $300/hr., it is not unreasonable to expect she'll be able to get something between $50-100k a year salaried. Until then I am the only income stream for us, and while we could afford to move to San Francisco on that it would be tighter than I'd like, and we don't actually know where she'll get the most favorable offer, even though we both like the City more, and would like to be closer to her father, whose wife just passed away recently.
I just don't want to fuck up a good thing before we can make the decision to move under much more favorable conditions.
The cleaning alone seems like a real issue that you are being incredibly kind about, but now it seems like you are getting walked over by this guy. I would strongly suggest being completely honest with him and laying it all out like you have done for us here. He might just not have realised, I know I've lived in places by myself before and let them get way too messy without really noticing until someone else mentions it. Then he will either compromise for you, or you should find somewhere else on a short-term lease until you can afford to move properly.
If you talk to him and he moves out you can live on a tighter budget, save a little less, and pay for the place for just the two of you. Or you can do that without talking to him. But you don't have a sweet deal here. You have a roommate who is mooching off you in every way except money and somehow still calling the shots.
When you tell him that's not a good deal for you, he may be an adult about it, and it's probably a good idea for you to give him the chance to do so, but you need to do something because right now you two have a 16-year-old kid who is dictating your social life and happens to be contributing something to the rent. That is just not something that is going to last peaceably; something is going to give.
I mean he's being a dick about it, but is well within his rights to be so.
Question is, do you want to live with a dick? You can't make him change, so the only other options I see are negotiation to satisfaction of all parties or moving out.
The fact you let his laziness make you act as his unpaid maid is irrelevant to the current situation, other than being more evidence to his being a dick.
If the guests slept on your bedroom floor would that solve the issue in the short term?
You clearly have different values and they're coming into conflict. From what you've said the furniture thing clearly bothers you but it is unlikely he cares about it. So you feel you've done this big thing for "us" it falls into the same category as the shift work does for you, as far as you are concerned it's his choice and his consequences and doesn't really reflect on you. It sounds like he thinks the exact same thing about the furniture.
Regarding that, it sounds like you guys get the apartment effectively all to yourselves during the week (for work and living) and pay 2/3rd's the rent. He gets the apartment.....never? It is obviously not that simple but having a guest over radically changes his "weekend" plans, talking to him about it ahead of time would probably be polite. It sounds like this last time was a last minute thing. Waking up on (your effective) Saturday and discovering you'll be spending the entire day (long boring overnight where you can't really go anywhere) effectively locked into bedroom because of civility is bound to raise a little ire.
The cleaning thing though....yeah. Unfortunately the ship has probably sailed on that one if you've gone these months without addressing it. It's not fair but it's likely the truth.
Other than that, I don't think you guys are impossibly far apart, I just think you're both pissed off at things that seem stupid from your POV without talking it out. His "pronouncement" wasn't really the right way to address it....but he did at least wait until after your guest was gone. If he didn't give a shit about your feelings/opinion he would have just caused a shitstorm when it was occurring.
I agree that he's entitled to be a dick about using the living room, but the thing about him being entitled to be a dick is that the OP is entitled to be an even bigger dick. For a start, that's the OP's TV and XBox that the room mate wants to be using in that living room. The OP is entitled to keep those in his own room while he's not using them.
So people who are swinging their entitled dicks should be careful that others aren't entitled to swing an even bigger one.
Rather than dick-swinging, the answer is, as it usually is, dialogue and compromise. OP can recognise that his room mate needs his R&R time; room mate can recognise that the OP is entitled to a social life.
Or both of them can live in hell until one of them can move out.
I'm with Jam Warrior. It also rubs me the wrong way how you seem to be insulted he didn't consult with you before switching work schedules. It sucks yeah, but that's what happens when you choose to live with a roommate. I know that if I was in his position, I probably would be pissed if I couldn't use the living room for the weekend. I would think that it's totally in his right to plop down while your guest is sleeping int he living room and do whatever the fuck he wants.
THAT SAID
It's also totally in your right to go "My tv, my xbox."
Until he buys his own TV and a PS3 and set it up in the living room playing it without headphones, because FUCK YOU.
This. If you can't get along, move.
This is all really good advice and is something I hadn't really considered. The main thing seems to be communication. He probably doesn't realise the furniture thing was a 'good thing' you did, similarly he might think 'jesus I spend all my time living silently so as not to bother them and they don't even appreciate it'. If you let him know about the guests beforehand, he might have been able to make other plans/let you know he had a problem beforehand. You couldn't this time, so he deserved a bit of an apology. So yeah, talk more honestly to each other and it might work itself out without you needing to move out.
The furniture thing bothered me but like I said before, can't tell the dude how to spend his money. On the one hand it was something he "didn't care about" but on the other hand before me and my girlfriend moved in here it was an unfurnished cave. We changed that, at what the time was a great financial strain, and as soon as things were furnished dude was happy to plop his ass down on the couch I sourced, and eat off the coffee table I bought, and watch my TV.
We get the apartment to ourselves because he chose to work overnights. This is not something that was forced on him by his employers, out of 30+ people in the group we worked with he volunteered for the off hours. I got fired and less than a month later we found out. Also I don't pay 2/3 rent, I pay half because we have half the bedrooms, I was paying 2/3 on things that adjusted in price based on consumption until we reached a situation where I would have been paying double what I was before he got his A/C unit on the energy bill. Now I only pay 2/3 on groceries. It's also not like it's a thing where we have it completely to ourselves during those days, we're quieter than we would be otherwise as well because we don't want to be inconsiderate.
What hours he keeps would be a non-issue except it affects most facets of living here, and has led in part or in whole to the only frustrations I've had with him. He doesn't clean except after himself but on the other hand he doesn't have as much time he could partake in group cleaning without being incredibly disruptive to our sleep. We ended up paying way more for energy than I would have imagined possible, our bill went from $40-60 to $120 a month. Since he discovered he could watch The Next Generation on Netflix I've been waking up several times a night on the weekends, and getting less restful sleep overall on nights he is home and watching TV, even though he does it at an extremely low considerate volume. Now we are not allowed to have people over on his weekend because it would interfere with him sitting on my couch and using my electronics once in a while.
If you were about to completely change the dynamics of living with your roommates you would not run it by them first? I've done a lot to compromise and not get offended by this whole thing but the fact is the living situation is less than optimal as a direct result of him volunteering to work overnights and it would not be if he hadn't. That he didn't even take our feelings on the matter into consideration is incredibly frustrating.
It's not like having someone over was a new component to our arrangement, like I said, it had been happening on occasion before, but previously he's been very agreeable to it, whether we were able to seek permission or not. When we've had people over on the weekends before he hasn't completely sequestered himself in his bedroom, which hasn't contributed to the best sleep for our guests but that's been okay. He's still used the kitchen, the bathroom, gone out, etc. which all require he walk through the common area. At issue is him not being able to watch his stuff on the TV when we have guests over, my TV, and a Netflix subscription he does not pay for, and every piece of content he consumes he could watch in his bedroom on his computer.
This is an occasional inconvenience on him, but it's one he'd be dealing with constantly if I hadn't furnished the entire goddamn place, and considering all the inconveniences I've put up with as a result of his choices I don't see how a little give and take is out of order here.
We may end up having people stay on our floor but at the moment that's going to take a considerable amount of rearranging.
I'm not going to start a war over objects here because that is goddamn retarded.
This is definitely the plan, yes. Need to sit down and make double plus 100% sure we can afford the place on just my income if he takes it the wrong way though.
This is just not something I expected to deal with given our relationship and previous events, and as such things tend to happen is at an unideal time.
Making a declaration of a required change in your behavior as he's walking out was not the best way he could've handled his airing of grievances.
It reads like you're upset about multiple issues which you did not express to him to your liking, and you've decided to take this "straw that broke the camel's back" as the moment to do your Festivus. While this may make you feel better, delivering a bunch of pent up resentment as a response to his trying to offhand change your behavior is probably not going to end well.
It sounds like the demanded change to social behavior and guests occupying the domicile is the most salient issue so I'd drop the "free usage of stuff you bought and he did not contribute to" and his difference in opinion on cleaning procedures and focus on discussing how you guys can all use the space civilly until you 2 make your exit.
Caveat: I only read the unspoilered bit.
He sounds like hes fairly considerate by roommate standards when it comes to the hours. I wouldn't muddle that with the usage of your stuff.
Unless I missed something, or you just didn't add it, your roommate didn't ask you to furnish the apartment. Stop being bitter/angry that you did and he didn't.
I'm not saying he's in the right about everything, but so far, and especially with the level of bitterness you're displaying here, it seems like it might be a case where he has absolutely no idea that the things he's doing is pissing you off, and you're just going to make things worse by continuing to vent them in a forum instead of talking to him like an adult.
And regarding the work thing- If he had switched to nights, and then constantly complained about how much noise you guys are making during the day, I would be on your side. But he's not doing that. He's just asking to be able to use the living room. If you don't want him to use the stuff you have bought that's in the living room, that's totally fair, but it isn't to be asking him to give it up entirely.
You're his room mate not his Mother. You don't have a divine right to kick him out of his own living room just because it's night time. If he was okay with that before that's was fine then. Now he isn't okay with it and you just have to live with that because them's the breaks of communal living.
I'm afraid you simply aren't displaying the right attitude for harmonious co-habitation here. You either need to readjust your expectations or get a place on your own.
Conversations might be awkward, because there doesn't seem to have been a lot of substantive communication about these issues so far. Don't force the conversation to happen as soon as possible though. Flag that you want to talk to him about these things, and find out when he's available so there won't be time pressure adding stress to the conversation. Don't expect to work everything out to everyone's satisfaction in one session (though that may happen). Think about what principles are important to you with respect to the issues, and what range of options would satisfy your needs.
Yeah. Totally agreeing with Iruka here.
Basically the only considerations you can ask from a roommate are living conditions. If he's playing his trumpet at 3:00am, okay, you can ask him to stop.
You can't make a commotion about his career choice because it's inconvenient to the living situation (marginally so).
Dude is straight up pretty accommodating everything else considered. Seems like he was angry that you didn't talk to him about guests and that he lost access to an apartment he's contributing to.
This was also a perfect opportunity to bring up the bachelor thing, which I still would, dude you need to help contribute to the dishes/cleaning situation. Sit him down, discuss the goings on, mention you'll bring it up with him first, and worst case the guest should(!) stay in your room because of his schedule.
They can come after you for damages too, by the way, just thought I'd mention that, so get on him to take care of his living space.
It sounds like it would be best to part ways on good terms, because most of this just sounds like 2 people clashing on little things with their schedule (day shifters vs night shift). Can't really fault the dude for taking night shift (more pay, often quieter shifts, great for introverted people since you can catch up on TV/games) but if it's that much a problem he shouldn't get offended if it's affecting you that much (power, hard to sleep).
If I had to wildly speculate I'd say the fact your girlfriend is living there too has pushed this issue a bit. The couple tends to vote continuously along the same lines so it can be easy for the 3rd wheel to get pushed out of decisions - that might have been a big part of him taking night shift; he has these stretches where he's got control of the house and not being in the way.
I was gonna say something but it would probably be exactly this but not as good, so I'll just quote this and click the agree button.
All this shit here? Do all this shit here.
With the caveat that this:
is representative of a problematic view you have of how shit works when you live with a roommate. You bought a bunch of shit and put it in a communal room. Did you expect him to stand up to eat and turn his back to your TV?
Communication. It sounds like he is irritating you, but I am sure that you do things that irritate him that he hasn't brought up yet. His complaint about the guest during the weekend is not "hey you did this one thing that bothered me." It's just the tip of the complaint Iceberg. It might be uncomfortable, but you need to sit down and have a talk with him. I would do it just you and him, so he doesn't feel like he is getting ganged up on by both you and you GF. Schedule it in advance so he doesn't feel like he's being ambushed, and I would just let him know that you would like address his concerns as well as a few of your own to ensure that everyone is content with the living situation. Write down your grievences, and focus on the top few (like 3). Ask him to do the same. Take turns going over your lists. Don't interrupt or try to defend your actions when he brings up a grievence. Sure, you may have perfectly valid reasons for doing something that bugs him. Doesn't matter. If it bugs him, it bugs him (and vice versa) so see what you can do to work together to compromise and make the living arragnement work as smoothly as possible. The worst thing you could do is to ignore the problems and start having passive-aggressive battles while the other sleeps.
I do not think it is unreasonable, when setting up a living situation with a person that you share a job with that included talk about carpooling to work, etc. that you would expect that you would be moving in with someone that will be keeping more or less your same schedule.
We hadn't even moved in with him yet when he made the switch (it was in the month in between I got fired and when we moved in that his schedule changed), so couple dynamics are definitely not leading to any sort of resentment here.
I think I made it clear enough that I want to share the living space with him and that I think the idea that my stuff is mine and that he can't use it, or that he can only use it with restrictions pending my goodwill is a bad one when I referred to starting a war over objects in the common area as "goddamn retarded." I invited him to use the Xbox and set up an account for him for Christ's sake.
What I'm taking issue with, is that something that has been okay with him for more than ten months, that we have talked about multiple times before and I have cleared with him in the past, is now suddenly unacceptable. It stings more because back when I was furnishing the place and expressed distressed at trying to afford everything to him he said he was okay with not having furniture. For fuck's sake, if that's his sentiment why even bother getting an apartment instead of renting a room from someone in a furnished space?
I am sorry for his troubles, but he can do all the same things he does out here in his room on the rare occasions we have guests over, and his decision to work nights is not the situation we agreed to when we signed the lease, and has put a number of frustrations and hardships on me and my girlfriend that I have suffered in silence with because it's a difficult situation and it's not my place.
I don't see why he needs to take such a hardline stance with this when I compromise with his faults all the time.
It's funny, in my group of socially retarded internet friends I am usually seen as the person that is too confrontational and willing to push an issue because I'm fed up with it, but here it's the opposite. I just wanted to deal, have a peaceful household, didn't want to shit where I eat.
Looping @Melinoe (my girlfriend) into this, she is usually less blunt and negative than I am, better able to explain things.
You're coming off worse and worse the more you post you know.
As others have said, you're roommates, he doesn't have to get your okay to work nights. Would you really have told him no if he came up to you a month into the lease and told you that he was going to work nights? What if he wanted to take a job that got him home an hour earlier/later, does he need to run that by you as well?
And just because he can do everything in his room, doesn't mean he has to. By the same token, everything that you and your guests can do in the living room, should be able to be done in your room as well.
I don't think anyone here is automatically taking his side over yours. What most are saying is talk to him, and stop being so bitter about the work thing and the possessions thing(which despite whatever you said, the fact you continue to bring it up shows you're holding on to a grudge on that).
Or you know, you can keep making posts till someone finally agrees with your point of view.
Don't ever hold something nice you did over another person and resent them for it later when they fail to live up to expectations or provide in kind niceness. It'll just make you a resentful bitter person most folks won't want to associate with.
You are clearly still holding resentment over the furniture thing. It is clear in all your word choices and phrasing when you discuss this, even when you present your case trying to portray yourself in the best possible light the resentment shines through. They're your emotions, they're completely valid but they are a hindrance to a peaceful living experience for you. You can try and work through them or you can remove the cause of them.
Unless you would be fine with him saying one Saturday morning "I'm going to sleep on the floor here in the living room for the entire weekend, just do whatever you need to do in your own room" you are essentially demanding a one sided veto of common area use for half rent.
You keep saying that it is his choice to work nights. It is your choice to work from home. If you and your girlfriend had normal 9 to 5 jobs he would have all day with the apartment to himself. If abnormal working arrangements have to be cleared with your roommates, you certainly cleared this with him?
While he could have brought it up to you as a courtesy, I don't see how this is something you can harbor any sort of resentment about. I changed my work schedule and now have to wake up early in the morning and I live with a bunch of night owls. No, I did not ask them if it was okay. I thought it would be better to open, and I moved my shifts. My roommate dealt with it, just as I deal with the fact that hes still a night owl and occasionally the shower may wake me up at 3am because he wants to shower before bed.
This is part of living with people who aren't in some sort of invested relationship with you. If My roommate brought up that me getting up on a different schedule and doing things at a reasonable volume wasn't something he signed up for, I would tell him to go fuck himself, honestly.
I maybe have had more acquaintance level roommate experiences, but no, I don't think you can expect a similar schedule or car pooling, but you can decide that you need that, and find another roommate. The only reason I'm (and others) are separating this point from the rest is that it sort of highlights some personal expectations on your part that I have never felt when entering a roommate situation, which calls into question your other grievances.
I mean, not saying your roommate can decree that guests are no longer allowed, but I would check the back list of complaints at the door and focus on separating your furniture problems from your house-guest problems.
Moreover he seems very considerate of the issue. He has taken steps so that you and your girlfriend can enjoy normal daily activities at normal volume, while he tries to keep things down at night. His complaint about discovering someone sleeping in the communal area is valid since his usage of that area directly conflicts with when said person wants to be unconscious. Hell you can boil his problem down to "I really did not want to be the asshole that fired up the xbox and tv to relax on my day off like I normally would which would keep the total stranger sleeping in the living room up all night or drive him off. Therefore I stayed quietly trapped in my room because I am respectful enough of normal sleep habits to not disturb the guy."
If you came home to discover you could not use the TV/Xbox/access the communal areas during the day because one of this friends on a night schedule was crashed on the couch would you not be upset?
You have a roommate that is paying his share of the rent. You rarely if ever see him. He does not hassle you for doing loud activities during the day. He keeps the volume down at night. His big bitch is please don't let random people crash on the couch as it forces me to remain in my room because I do not want to be a jerk to said total strangers and would rather suffer than interrupt their sleep. If you want to have friends crash at your place have them do it on your floor. This way they do not block him from the communal areas. It could be much, much worse as far as roommates go.
My advice just tell him you and you girlfriend are getting serious and getting your own place. Then make damn sure your girlfriend furnishes half the furniture.
At the time, I was really frustrated with having to furnish the apartment without any help from my roommate; especially considering I was collecting unemployment from the place I'd just gotten fired from, the place I'd gotten him a job at six months earlier. It was a shitty, selfish thing for him to let me shoulder that burden on my own, would have been even if I wasn't going through an extremely trying time of my life. At the time we got them, I expressed to him that it was not only so we would have a place to sit, but also so that we (we, not me) would have a place to let company sleep over. At that time he expressed agreement, and hadn't told us that he'd changed to nights yet.
You guys are saying that it's not a big deal him working nights, but it is a completely different situation from someone in a house of night owls deciding they want to work the early shift. Just the amount of time that no longer overlaps with his is a hardship on its own. If me and my girlfriend had known that he was going to be operating on an opposite sleep schedule when we were looking for a roommate we definitely would have backed out of signing the lease with him. We didn't even find out he was working nights until after we'd moved in, and even then it was only when he was going to work at 8:30 PM and we were all like "the fuck?"
You are absolutely right that I would not have had any place telling him not to do it because it would inconvenience me, just like I never said anything about the cleaning, or straight up told him to buy shit for the apartment, it wouldn't have been my place. However, I pulled him out of a rut by getting him that job, invested a significant amount of time teaching him materials that would have been part of training normally and coaching him for the interview, and if he had asked me what I thought about him working nights before he took the leap I would have told him it would stall his advancement and I would have been right. Currently he is the only technical person working nights when he was completely new to the industry six months before he made the switch, he doesn't have anybody to glom off of like I did when I was learning and it has been observably bad. I got another friend a job there that started the same day he did, she had an even less technical background than him, worked nights with him briefly before deciding it wasn't a good thing, and now a little more than a year in she's been promoted to a team that handles high priority skills intensive work.
His complaint was that the weekend is his only time to relax and watch the TV and he couldn't do that if we had people over. Normal people that aren't doubling up on school and work and have a short commute find time to relax most days after work. He doesn't because he is a crazy person that puts in 12+ hour days almost every day-- as a salaried worker. I can speak with the authority of experience and say that that is definitely not the norm at his place of work. He gets a somewhat better quarterly bonus than usual as a result but it's nowhere near what it would be if he was compensated hourly, and if he'd just work less hours he would force the company's hand into not overworking him and they would have to move more people to nights.
The reason I bring up the way he handled letting us know about a major change that would have ramifications for our enjoyment of our living situation, telling me he didn't care if the living room remained empty when I expressed concern over being able to afford the furnishings on my own. Him making generous payments to his student debt and savings for a car while I made minimum ones to my own accounts and directing the extra money I had towards objects everyone in the apartment uses. That he spends next to none of his time on the cleaning while me and my girlfriend spend a not insignificant amount of our free time on it. It's not like I have an abundance of it myself, I work full time at my breadwinning job, I have research and self-learning projects related to my job I invest time in, I put in a decent amount of effort with the same startup project my girlfriend is developing for, and I also went back to school this semester. The fact that I had to confront him to reevaluate how we were paying for electricity when our bill more than doubled in a month because of him. The bill is in his name, he saw nothing wrong with it until I pointed it out, he is not a dumb guy, and our entire arrangement has been based around individual responsibility for the proportionate cost of utilities since before we moved in. All of this establishes a streak of frugality to the detriment of his friends and selfishness that is a serious character flaw that has lowered my opinion of him.
The furniture thing still pisses me off when I think about it, but the fact is I encouraged him to make use of the things I purchased that live in the common areas more than a few times. I made him an account on the Xbox, we showed him HBO Go and how he could watch anything at any time on it, the Netflix integration, etc. I never would have dreamed of not sharing things with him and I still don't. He is still my friend and even though I have had ongoing, minor frustrations with him for some time, I still make an effort to invite him to events and introduce him to people when I can get a hold of him, I continue to attempt to give him career advice or point him in the right direction for his continued learning when it comes up. When we were both attending a conference and the hotel room my company put me up in was awesome and had an extra bed and his hotel room sucked I invited him over to mine and I never breathed a word about charging him for the extra night I stayed I wasn't being reimbursed for. When the time is right I still intend to refer him to the company I work for now because despite his personal flaws he is a hard working, sharp guy.
I know I sound bitter about his work situation up there but it's not because of him, if it were I would have no problem with him being gone for more than half the day most the week. The place I used to work for is somewhat unscrupulous about the way they treat their employees, and I worry about my friend and roommate when I see him getting worn down voluntarily for a disproportionate reward. The circumstances that lead up to my departure didn't do them any favors in my opinion either, but it turned out to be the second best thing that's ever happened to me (first was getting hired there and switching industries), It was a rough six months but I ended up with a $20k raise and a better job. Since then I've been using the network of contacts I developed while I was unemployed to help people transition out of that place, but it's hard to do that for my roommate because of how much his isolation is stalling his development.
We could potentially sleep people in our bedroom but because of the layout of the room they're either sleeping on the floor without any sort of bed sized padding because there's no room for it, or in bed with us which is obviously sub-optimal. If we follow through with this demand of his that we not have people overnight on weekends, we will end up seeing some of our best friends that we are separated from by two hours even less than we do already. His insistence that we are interfering with his right to watch TV neglects our right to use the common area to sleep guests less than 1/16th of the time he wants to watch TV. Especially when he let me furnish it at my own expense with sleepable furniture with the express intent of having people over once in a while and did not voice his disapproval, never found a problem with it in the past, and while he said it interfered with his ability to do laundry the fact is the only people we've had sleep over here are mutual friends of his that are well aware of his schedule and he was hardly unable to move about during the nights people have been here. The only reason he can't use the TV is because it's directly in front of the couches and emanates sound.
I still need to hash it out with my girlfriend some more to decide whether we should make an issue of this or just stick it out for another several months until we're sure whether her career will work out and what our living situation will be. I definitely want to confront him about this but I am not the only person that will be affected by the fallout if it doesn't go right.
My roommate agreed several months ago that my best friend from Montana whose children call me Uncle could come out here while he looks for work because all he can found out there is selling cell phones in retail hell for a fucking living when he's a Systems and Network Engineer with almost ten years of cumulative experience. I've already told him about this arrangement and that everything's clear for job hunting, and that he would have a place to crash until he gets his living arrangements sorted out if he gets hired out here, because of his financial hardship I'm even sending him money to facilitate the travel as a Christmas gift. My girlfriend is already in agreement with me that if the roommate finds honoring this commitment unacceptable then he can find a new place. I never expected 1-1 reimbursement for the good deeds I've done for this guy, but you'd be a fool if you were me and you didn't use the last ten months of a barometer of how much faith you can have in a person. I am not fucking over a guy who's always been there for me as long as I've known him for a guy I still consider a friend, and still want to help out, but who has also been kind of a tool to me as well.
I guess in the end I'm just disappointed that less camaraderie is shared between my roommate/friend and me than I had previously thought.
I created this thread to seek advice from people that may have dealt with similar situations before, on confronting him, on defusing the situation, a success to failure ratio in patching things up in similar situations.
I also created it to attempt to check my bias outside of the echo chamber I reside in with my girlfriend and make sure I wasn't being a dickhead about this. Such anecdotal advice and criticism is still greatly welcome because as long as he hasn't changed his mind about my friend from Montana being here as well then we still haven't determined whether we are going to raise a stink about this. It would risk upsetting not only the living situation, but also a personal and professional friendship a several months before it becomes a non-issue.
No it wasn't. He told you that he didn't really need a furnished apartment. He didn't make you get furniture. You could have waited and seen if down the road he would be okay with buying furniture.
This makes you sound like a real asshole. You're basically complaining about a guy that works tons of hours at work and goes to school. AND HE STILL DOESN'T GIVE YOU SHIT ABOUT ANY NOISE YOU MAKE DURING THE DAY. Have you ever thought he thinks that working extra hours will make him look good? Or that he needs/wants the extra bonus and is okay with working the extra hours?
Just like you would have liked a heads up about him working nights, I'm sure that your roommate would have enjoyed knowing that for every nice thing you do for him, you deserve the right to begrudge him for it.
I get it. You're an awesome guy that helps everyone that is need- which seems to be a lot of people in your life.
Awesome guy over here!
No he doesn't. YOU have to find someplace new to live. You can't just kick him out of a lease he's in, not if he's paying rent on time. You can certainly dissolve the lease if it's month to month though.
Out of curiosity, have you talk to him about all this yet? Probably not right, cause otherwise you might have to stop being a martyr, and we can't have that.
Listen, it's clear you're a selfish guy when it comes to living arrangements, and like Ceres said, that's perfectly fine. Instead of continuing to hold on to all this shit, just move on and find new living arrangements.
He told me that after a bunch of talk before we moved in about furnishing it together. There is still a list on the fridge he composed of shit that we should get for the place. Plus if he was truly okay with an unfurnished apartment he should be pretty alright not using the living room considering it was an unusable cave bereft of anything but plaster and carpet before I filled it.
I am not sure if I worded that poorly or not. I said aren't. As in he isn't. All he does is let them work him to the bone, goes to work, comes home, rinse/repeat, no social life to speak of. There is no school, he has a half hour commute by lightrail. On the other hand I work a full time job, am learning a foreign language in school, picking up a couple different programming languages, working part time with a startup, working on a couple different research projects related to my career that I hope turn into suitable material for talks at a conference, etc. and somehow I still manage to find six hours every couple weeks to a month to clean the apartment.
The bonus is for shit, bumps his pay up to just above $40k instead of $35k, and because he's been isolation he has not gotten equivalent recognition for it compared to those that work during the day and have been able to socialize with their coworkers and management, learn more from the open collaborative environment, etc. They keep dangling the idea of making him a "manager" of the night crew over his head, have been for at least half a year now, but all he'd be managing is himself. Meanwhile the other person I got a job there is on their elite team, and other people that started around the same time as him but stuck to days have moved on to management or more lucrative positions as Sales Engineers, Developers, etc.
He is getting dicked ridiculously hard because the management are fuckers and know that they can continue taking advantage of him for a pittance. He is working around 150-200% of what's expected there for the most part, and only receiving an extra 20-25% in compensation, and because he's acquiring skills slower it's prolonging the time when he can move on to a company that respects their employees.
Because that is totally what I am doing here and I don't have a right to be frustrated by his selfish behavior. If I was as much of a jerk as you seem to think I am I don't think I would have let as much as I did slide and continue to value him as a friend and lift him up.
And you're a super edgy internet tough guy.
I tried to enter the workforce right as the stock market crashed in 2008 and it didn't go so well, after two years of unemployment I lucked into a job at one of the only companies that hires people without experience in a rapidly growing cutting edge industry. I do my best to pay it forward when I can by finding other people that could use a break like that and show potential by putting them on the same path. Now, having worked at a company that pays their employees for shit, actively quashes attempts by them to leave through industry contacts when they show talent and better offers come along, and views their employees as disposable when something goes wrong because of their bassackwards practices; I have a pool of unsatisfied friends in a growth industry that poaches talent that are open to better offers. I've already gotten a friend a job with one of the most profitable tech companies in the world after he'd been stuck where I used to work, and where my roommate works, for five years and had had his attempts to seek employment elsewhere blocked several times. I got fuck all for this other than making a friend happier.
Having grown up in poverty, gotten stuck working temp jobs here and there despite having skills, education, internships, and certifications for two years because of bad timing, I get a lot of fulfillment out of getting people out of similar situations or opening up a door for them so their career can move forward. I know how much it meant to me and I know how much it means to them.
Fuck yeah I'm awesome.
I am saying that promises have been made to a friend who was there for me during that two year run of inconsistent employment, after clearing the plan with my roommate, and then when he couldn't afford to get out here because he is attempting to care for a wife and three kids on retail wages I promised I would make it happen for him.
I am not backing out of that promise.
Considering there's two of us on the lease as it stands and one of him, he can fit all of his shit in a van whereas we would need a large moving truck as a result of the furnishment breakdown, and I'm fairly certain he can't afford the place on his own and I can, he is probably not going to end up on top if it comes to that. I will admit I have no idea how a dispute like that would work if there is one though.
I haven't talked with him about this yet because I'm still trying to figure out the best course of action. I am going to have to ask him if he's changed his mind about my friend from Montana coming down as well soon though, probably tonight. There wasn't even an opportunity to talk to him yesterday because I didn't even see him.
If I was a selfish guy I wouldn't have bought all the goddamn shared stuff in the apartment and encouraged him to use all of it as much as he wants, taken care of all the shared cleaning in the apartment for 14 months (adding the 4 he lived alone and didn't clean shit), and offered to split the energy bill in half instead of 2 - 1 even though that means I've been paying an average of $20 extra on what used to be a $40 expense for me, solely because he runs his computer all the time (discovered that tonight when I was setting up a new router) and got a personal A/C unit because his schedule dictated he needed to sleep during the day.
I've been up all night worrying about this because despite his flaws my roommate is a valued personal and professional friend. As far as people I trust he is right below the two people I consider brothers, who are just a smidgin below my friend from Montana. I trust very few people that much. I am terrified that I will somehow fuck shit up through my choice of how to address it or a slip of the tongue when I do. If it was just about socializing with my more or less local friends I would probably suck it up until when we were planning on leaving anyway but I will not let down the person I trust most in the world besides my girlfriend.
Anyway I've got to be up in 4 hours now and I think between the exhaustion and the bourbon I may finally be able to sleep. Hopefully there will be more shit about how I'm a cunt in the morning.
Also @Detharin if all shared apartments went by your 24/7 mandate then nobody who lived in one would ever have family or friends crash on a hide-a-bed. That shit is absurd and I know from experience being the crashee that it's not how most places work. Maybe the Bay Area is more Bohemian like that though.
His change in schedule was 100% double-plus voluntary, the massive amount of hours he puts in doubly (quadrupeley?) so. I thought about making the same transition before I got canned because I've always been an insomniac night owl but my girlfriend shot it down. Like I said, my other friend that started with him worked that shift for a few before she decided it was as awful as it is and requested to work days again. I'm not sure he could transition back as immediately but if he made it known he was done with nights they would certainly request additional volunteers to replace him. As it is they should be doing that anyway because they constantly assign him too much work so he works too many hours so they keep constantly assigning him too much work. If they can keep paying him the same salary to get two people's work done they are fully willing to exploit that and got no incentive to put somebody else on the same shift. If he'd go home after 8 hours each day, the normal work period within this company, then it'd force their hand.
I don't think you are a huge Dick or whatever, I just think that you're dissatisfied with what is an incredibly common roommate situation. The fix is to move out, and I don't think talking to him in a way that is "I think you are making a ton of poor life decisions and that is inconsiderate to me" is going to positively affect your friendship.
Move out as soon as possible, and if you talk about you living issues, don't muddle them with your opinions about his working habits, or social life, that's basically all my advice is.
Having a house guest for an unspecified time that would be sleeping in the communal area where by your own account he's been behaving awesomely, is a massive inconvenience and completely unreasonable. Are you able to put up your buddy in your own room? If not, that's probably out the door.
You've furnished most of the apartment, you do most of the cleaning, and you've helped your roommate out with his work/career. That's great, but that doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want when it comes to the apartment and common area. That's it, no matter what you say, have done, how much you've helped, or have spent on things for everyone....it isn't going to change that.
*edit - I understand how you feel...and why you should since you handle the majority of managing/maintenance on the apartment...but it just isn't right or fair on him. He's paying his portion of the bills and rent, and that's the most important thing. That's what gives him the right to do what's he's done regardless of the furniture, cleaning, etc. etc.
You aren't happy with your situation...clearly. Talk to him about it (because it isn't going to just go away, even if your friend from Montana comes and no conversation takes place). You need to talk to him about it and figure out who's moving out.
Your options (IMO) - 1. Don't allow him to use any of your stuff since you've paid for it and it bothers you that he hasn't helped in that. Or 2. Talk to him about who is going to move out because the work situation isn't what you signed up for when you signed the lease, and you aren't happy because of it.
(Hint: 1. is suppose to be the silly goose option. Obviously you should go with option 2.)
Jesus Christ!!!
If you weren't a selfish guy, you wouldn't hold stuff over his head and feel entitled for in kind compensation. You're actually a pretty not awesome guy because you do things for other people with further expectation of self benefit.
Also, really you and your girlfriend should move out because I can pretty much tell from the way you've conducted yourself here, you will never ever get along with a roommate because you're a selfish, self entitled, self righteous person who passive aggressively feels owed for doing things. That is not conducive to a healthy roommate relationship and it's absolutely fucked when you start using 2 on 1 arguments as a basis for anything.
Finally, stop being his goddamn mother and worrying about his job.
The cold, hard truth is that his obligations as a room mate are the same as a stranger's obligations as a room mate. In exchange for him paying the bills on time, he gets 24 hour access to any common area, and exclusive access to his designated area, among other things. Him complaining about people sleeping on the couch is definitely within his rights. It sounds like he's been pretty accommodating about people sleeping on the couch for some time.
Also, seriously, seriously, get off the job thing. It is at once your weakest argument and biggest visible character detriment. It is in no conceivable way your place to accuse this guy of being a bad roommate due to his career path, especially because he keeps it down at night and doesn't complain about noise in the day. You obviously care about him, but try not to confuse frustration about your friend's situation with him being an inadequate roommate.
It sounds like you're just the sort of person who can't live with a roommate. So, move out. Or make an agreement with him of some sort so separate. Not everyone is cut out for roommate status- I've certainly known a few in my time. One of my best friends was also one of my worst roommates. He got irritated any time something wasn't clean, and he decided (without permission) to break lease without paying any of the bills when he did so, leaving me to pay his shares out of my own pocket- among other things. It's no big deal, I'm over it, and he's not a worse person for it, just a bad roommate. Those are signs of a bad roommate- not being awake at night, or wanting use of the living room.
Please, do not pretend that it's his fault. The common area is not yours to give away, and any time you have a guest over overnight that takes that common area, it is not because you deserve it, it is by your roommate's good graces that it is permitted, because he is sacrificing a right he is absolutely entitled to in order to accommodate it.