Have you ever had a nightmarish roommate? What made you incompatible? How did you eventually resolve your conflicts?
This isn’t technically a roommate from hell story. It’s a story about the ex-roommate who (I’m 99% certain) stole my credit card, then convinced his friends that I’d been going after him.
I didn’t have any major problems with the roommate assigned to me during my second year of college, but the following year, he “took a year off” from school — without telling his parents — and just hung around with his friends in the same dorm where I was, often crashing in their rooms. Then one morning I tried to buy coffee, and didn’t have any cash. I didn’t use the card much back then, so I didn’t notice it was missing until the credit card company called me later in the day to confirm roughly $600 of unusual activity.
Meanwhile, he boasted to another resident that he’d gone on a shopping spree that day with what he claimed was his dad’s credit card…at the same mall where all the charges on my card had been made.
I mentioned my suspicions when I reported the theft to campus police, but nothing ever came of it. The credit card dropped all the fraudulent charges and issued a new card, so I wasn’t out anything except trust.
It doesn’t end there, though.
His parents thought he was still in school, and had been sending him money for tuition. His father found out, came down from northern California, and they had a fight so bad that someone called the police. I heard about it afterward, when it turned out that he was telling people (falsely) that I’d contacted his parents and spilled the beans. So of course his friends blamed me for getting him in trouble.
Eventually he was caught stealing phone cards (remember those?) from residents, then using them to call other people in the dorm. One student started calling all the numbers she found on her bill, trying to find out who had used the card, and kept reaching people she knew, who remembered, “Oh, yeah, so-and-so called me to pick him up from the mall that day.”
IIRC, other things had gone missing as well, and people started putting two and two together. He lost the sympathy he’d gained by getting beaten up, and his friends kicked him out.
After that, I have no idea what happened to him.