My Year With a Fatty My Year with a Fatty (Warning: This is a little long.) Last year, I was in the unfortunate position of not yet being able to live on my own, but not having a wide pool of roommates to choose from. I’d heard an acquaintance of mine from my college days (I say that like I didn’t only graduate two years ago) was looking for a roommate, so we met up, talked, and that was that. I never actually wanted to live with her - it was just a matter of convenience - but I figured I could just avoid her by staying in my room. I did manage to persuade her to live at a complex 5 minutes from my work and 30 from hers. From the get-go, she described herself as “somewhat messy”, but that she would keep it confined to her personal space and clean up the common areas. I’m sure you can all guess that ended up being FALSE. But how false, I had no idea. Upon move-in, I placed a trash can under the sink. It isn’t huge, so it needs to be taken out every other day or so. Well, a couple months in, she decided this wasn’t enough for her and purchased a large one about three feet high. Where did it find a home? Not in her room, but in our LIVING ROOM. Nothing says “welcome to my apartment” like an overflowing, smelly trash can - because unfortunately, that’s what it often became. “But why not just ask her to take it out?” Believe me, I did. She’d say she would, and 9 times out of 10, I usually ended up taking it out. Typically when she left on one of her many weekend trips to California. At least she stopped using the small trash can, right? Wrong. She would stuff that thing until it was overflowing and, once again, I was left to take it out, lest it start to fester. Finally, I got so sick of it, I started using - and taking out - my own trash bags. I decided it could sit there, growing fuller and fuller, until she finally took it out. She didn’t take it out for over two weeks. We got a bug infestation because of it, which took MONTHS to get rid of. Even still, God forbid I let an empty cereal bowl sit in the sink for more than a nanosecond or else they’re back. I discovered a layer of dead bugs under the crispers in our fridge and asked her to clean them up. She said she would, then left for California. Once again, I ended up doing it. Furthermore, whenever she cooked (and this got worse when she got a boyfriend), the kitchen would become a disaster zone. Any ingredients she used would be splattered all around, and the dishes would pile up in the sink for days on end - MY dishes (from my dead mother, no less) included. Certainly not helping our bug problem! Again, I would ask her to clean it up, she would promise to do so, and then never do it. I would come home after working 12 hour days at two jobs, and clean up her mess. Of course, she would apologize and say she’d be better about it in the future, or that when her schedule was less crazy, she’d be more on top of things (again, this to the person working 50 hours in a week). She never was. One night, it came to a head because the kitchen was a pigsty, the trash hadn’t been taken out in two weeks (aforementioned issue), and I’m sitting on the couch as she and her boyfriend are in her room watching a movie. It pauses, and there’s silence for a couple minutes, then I start hearing heavy breathing and whimpering. SHE WAS HAVING SEX WITH HER BOYFRIEND. Like the PAUSED the movie to go at it. I wanted to PUKE. At least leave the damn movie running! Enraged, and desperate to get away from the noise, I started cleaning. It took me a while to get everything taken care of, and just as I’m finishing up to take the trash out, she comes out of her room. It had spilled everywhere and as she starts helping me clean it up, I walked away. “Just so you know, I could hear you,” I told her, and went into my room. She did slightly improve after that (read: her boyfriend started cleaning up after her), but even her clean dishes sit on the counter for weeks at a time. At least that’s the extent of our problems, right? Wrong. To preface, our refrigerator is set up so that she and I each get half of the freezer (though mine is usually empty, while hers fills with junk food). I have commandeered the top shelf of the fridge and the other two (large) shelves and both crispers are hers. Well, a few days ago, I was investigating some strange noises coming from the fridge and found myself face to face with a large Tupperware full of MOLDY spaghetti. More digging produced MORE severely expired food, including a Pyrex container that was growing BLACK mold. I texted her (because she was in California of course), asking her to clean it up, but then said fuck it and did it myself. God, was it disgusting. I ended up filling an entire large trash bag with food - containers included because fuck that noise. In addition to all of this, I kept (and still keep) coming home to lights on in empty rooms. It resulted in a high electricity bill, and when I told her we were going to have to be more mindful of our usage, her reply was, “Yeah, I just don’t like walking into dark rooms at night.” Are you five?!?  I also kept having to remind her every month when bills were due. She was constantly paying late, until finally I told her to put a reminder in her phone because I was DONE doing so myself, and any late fees would result in an extra charge. Even with rent, she would drag her feet with getting me the check. In January, days before I was leaving for a trip, the check I gave our complex cleared before I could deposit her check.  I kept having to remind her every month when bills were due and she was constantly paying late, until finally I told her to put a reminder in her phone because I was DONE reminding her myself. Even with rent, she would drag her feet with getting me the rent check. Then, in January, right before I was leaving for a short trip, she once again was dragging her feet, and the check I gave our complex cleared before I could deposit her check. She had given me the check the night before (on a Friday), and I woke up on Saturday morning to multiple notifications from my bank that my account was overdrawn. Immediately, I went into crisis solving mode. I’d already been hit with several fees, and as I’m telling her all of this, her response was, “Okay, well I have to run (lol) so I don’t have time to talk about this now.” And she just LEAVES. I was able to get the fees taken care of, but actually ended up getting hit with another one out of nowhere a couple days later. When I told her the total of overdraft fees (which she had actually asked me to let her know), her response was, “Can we split that?” WTF?! No! I was blown away by that, but I wasn’t too mad because even the halved amount was enough to cover the overdraft fee (which the bank took off anyway), so I said yes. That conversation took place that Monday, but the day before, I was still frustrated after getting everything settled. My account was essentially frozen, and although I’d withdrawn $40 at the bank, I didn’t really want to use it. I went to do laundry, then remembered I couldn’t because our machines are card operated. Oh well, I’ll just go to the store and get some cleaning supplies to do some deep cleaning. Well, couldn’t do that, either. I expressed my frustration to her and she didn’t even offer to let me use her card or borrow money! I ended up going to my boss’s house to do it. Even when I said I was still considering going to the store, she hands me $10 and asks me to get her cough drops!!  A few days later, the night before I left for my trip, I asked her to give me some of the $45 she owed me, and she handed me $20 in several bills. Except when I counted it on the plane, she’d given me only $19. About a week later, I asked her how she wanted to give me the rest of the money (cash, pay more of a bill, etc), she goes, “About that...” and tells me she bought some cleaning supplies so “that should really take care of the rest.”  First of all, I didn’t ask you to buy cleaning supplies. I have my own. Second of all, do you not see the new outdoor broom? Or mop in the kitchen? All I could see that she bought was dishwashing detergent, and for that matter, I’d really like to know who she thought had been buying it for the entire SIX MONTHS we’d been living there at that point. But crafty me just started raising rent by $10-$15 each month to make up for it. (I also thought it was ironic she bought cleaning supplies considering she NEVER CLEANS.) Finally, the other day, I went in to talk to our leasing office about moving out. I wanted to make sure they knew about an issue they were going to be facing with our floors. You see, I had brought couches for the living room that sat on large, round feet. Well, fatty has a habit of flopping onto things, and she routinely flopped onto one end of one of the couches SO OFTEN that the legs gouged holes into the vinyl flooring. There goes our $150 security deposit. Not to mention, she flopped ONCE onto the other couch and SNAPPED THE BACK SUPPORT. Thank God I only paid $20 a piece for those things! All in all, I have a little over a month left with this bitch and I cannot WAIT until it is all said and done. And you can bet I’m going to make her pay up for having to replace the floors.