The 12 Roommates You Never Want To Have

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I’ve worked hard to live alone.

1. The drug dealer roommate.

To say that all drug dealer roommates are bad roommates would be a flat-out lie, and for obvious reasons. But on the whole, it’s also not the most ideal type of roommate too. A drug dealer roommate in college, for instance, does not make for the most serene and tranquil environment. The concern of getting in trouble with campus police never really goes away, and same with your roommates customers — they’re unabashed motherfuckers who will barge into your dorm room during the most inopportune times because that’s just the nature of a fiending freshman.

2. The grossly nauseating roommate.

I know, I know. What a vague title, right? To be more precise, this is the type of roommate who is physically gross — with his or her eating habits, hygiene, and general upkeep. She’ll be the one to introduce you to that singular, fetid odor that only exists in the deepest and darkest depths of 5-day-old, unrefrigerated Dominos Pizza. She’ll be an Olympic-level phlegm cougher-upper, and she’ll seemingly bathe herself in bong water. And it sucks, because in your 4-person dorm room, she’s actually the chillest.

3. The closet everything roommate.

This is the roommate whose appearance is astoundingly misleading; the one who, while living with her for a full year, not once revealed even a freckle of the bulimic and pregnant 18-year-old that she actually was. As far as one can tell, she’ll be a fine roommate, but that’s only because she tried really hard to cover up the fact that she aborted her child in your toilet.

4. The princess roommate.

If you find yourself paired up with anyone who color coordinates her closet or seems to orgasm over a hot cup of tea, run for the hills. Because this is the princess roommate and she knows no bounds. In college she’s a rare specimen — a disturbing mixture of innocence and stupidity. If you had any fun plans in mind for the year, you can go ahead and chuck those now because princesses need to be in bed, with the lights out, by 11:30 or else they get cranky.

5. The sociopathic attention-seeker.

There are girls looking for attention and, much farther up the crazy spectrum, lies the sociopathic attention-seeker. Don’t get them twisted. The worst of the girl looking for attention will probably be a quick butt-cheek flash at an ill-chosen time. Whereas you’ll be woken up at 8am by the sociopathic attention-seeker because she’s screaming and crying on the phone to her parents, promising them suicide by the end of the day. Her emotions are not contained, not healthy, and definitely not suitable for pleasant a pleasant life — in dorms or otherwise.

6. The grossly-conceited roommate.

Don’t bother trying out for any sports teams or trying to join any clubs, because this roommate has already swiped up your spot. She’s in a business fraternity and, well…she wants you to know it. She finds herself gorgeous and would actually like you to know that too. When her mom visit, you’ll assume it’s her sister.

7. The unconfrontational roommate.

Frankly, you’ll be impressed by her uncanny ability to bottle things up and remain a passive bitch for month’s on end. Four months down the road of not speaking and you’ll be less impressed, but more curious as to the nature of her upbringing — were her parents never around? Was she not held as a child? Ultimately, no girl is this passive without being massively insecure and jealous and so, at some dreadful point, you two will finally come to a head and she’ll admit she hasn’t been speaking to you because you “spend too much time on the phone with your long distance boyfriend.”

8. The klepto roommate.

It sucks; she really is cool and you thought you had finally found a kindred spirit, but then your clothes and bronzer and hair dryer and shoes start to go missing and it turns out she’s actually a klepto. Before college, most of us had gone to school with roughly the same group of people for 18 years — we blindly trusted them, and took this trust for granted too. Because when we got to college, we were just as eager to trust our new classmates, but as the klepto roommate proves, you can never fully know someone you just met.

9. The one who is not one but two.

I would never scold a lady for spending too much time with her significant other…that is, unless this gets in the way of my ability to live. Dorm rooms are not the most capacious, and so sharing a room with five other people when you only signed up for four actually makes a vast difference. Especially when the additional roommate in question is a shitting, fully-grown man.

10. The roommate who leaves dishes in the sink for days.

All (college) guys seem to get a perverse pleasure from doing this. That, or they truly believe they’re not wired to be able to hold a sponge in one hand, a plate in the other, and scrub. It’s as if they consider the sprouting of mold in their sink to be a sign of integrity or something.

11. The roommate with an awkward, constantly-around significant other.

Sometimes a roommate’s significant other can be a great addition to the tea. Sometimes the significant other actually uses his own toilet to take shits and does nothing more than puts your roommate in a good mood. But the alternative — a roommate with a cripplingly awkward significant other — is far far worse than you could ever imagine. It sucks, but it’s the hard truth: in college, your filthy dorm room is your home. Same goes for the decrepit “home” you first move into after graduating. And what is home supposed to be if not a safe and comfortable space? Something that the awkward significant other completely messes up, by obliterating any chill vibe you had going on.

12. The immeasurably insecure roommate.

Like many freshmen in college, she just recently overcame an eating disorder and doesn’t hesitate to talk about it. And yet, whenever you two are getting ready to go out, it would appear she hasn’t overcome the disorder at all; that she is still fully shrouded in a thick coat of body dysmorphia. What would take your average Kappa pledge 15 minutes, takes this roommate four hours. Trying on outfits quickly becomes fits of tears and shrieks of “I’m fatttttttttt!!!” and suddenly you’ve unwillingly signed your life away as an unpaid and unofficial (but certainly in-demand) psychiatrist.