I almost just killed my roommate... (not literally) (1 Viewer)

[Thomas_Berg]

holy crap i should have hit him harder. i was having a good day today when (about an hour ago) my roommate walks in with a mutual friend of ours. my roommie is in one of his crazy/weird/stupid (almost half-drunk) moods and goes to fill up his water bottle at the sink.



[background before i go on: earlier in the day he knocked over a full 44oz cup of water onto our carpet on purpose, just to piss me off. he then splashed some water on me to aggrivate me further. (i have no idea why he's just now being a dumbass)]



well he decides he now wants to splash some more water on me, and i let him do it for fear of spraying the water and getting my HT stuff wet. (we live in a dorm room ~11x17 with 10' ceilings) well he goes to dump some water on our mutual friend, but this guy doesnt want to get wet and hits the water bottle really hard. water flies, and i lost it. man i was pissed.



oh god...seeing water fly through the air in a small room packed with $2500 of electronics is not something i EVER want to see again. if you were a poor college kid like me who pours his summer job earnings (and about all the $$ i have) into HT, you would have lost it too.



water got on EVERYTHING ELECTRONIC that i own. EVERYTHING. my computer, my keyboard, my mouse was drenched, my PalmPilot, my Sennheisers, my phone, and my monitor. my receiver, CD players, the remotes, and new 46+ sub all got wet, and so did 3 of the five speakers. my center speaker's grille was really wet, and when i pulled off the grille, there was water on the cones themselves! (does this ruin the speakers?? i was careful when drying them.) the microwave was drenched, and some of his stuff got wet too but he didnt seem to care. my stack of newspapers/magazines i wanted to read got wet; so did a few textbooks. my bed is also soaking wet. geez i am mad.



this guy has REALLY pissed me off alot in the past few weeks, and i'm stuck with him for the rest of the semester. i don't know how i'm gonna last...



[btw- thanks for reading my rant!]

 

[Sean Conklin]

Thomas if I were you I would pack his stuff and send him on down the road!! I think you will be ok if you let your stuff dry up before putting some power to them.

But that is unacceptable behavior because he knows your concerns with your pride and joy.

If this is an isolated incident a good tongue lashing is in order, if he is acting like this on a regular basis I would show him the door!

 

[Evan S]

Sounds like how my ex-girlfriend used to provoke me. Notice I said EX. But at least I got to sleep with HER!!! I feel for you man. I know how I can get when I "lose it". I woulda beat the living crap out of the guy.

 

[Dennis Reno]

Thomas - bad roommates can make life hell! It sounds like he recently became a flaming a**hole. If so you could always ask him for a minute (when he is sober) and let him know how you feel. Don't get too agressive or "in his face", just tell him the facts. Personally, anyone who would pull such a stunt with all the A/V equipment in the room is a dolt. Let me guess, he enjoys using it even when you aren't around! Not that there is a problem with that, but he should be far more considerate of the time and money you have invested in it.

My first roomate in college came from a small town on a band scholarship. At first I was fearful of having to live with a "band geek" but after meeting him he seemed like a nice guy. Then I got to know him. It was 1988 and some of the more vial (IMO) rap was just coming onto the scene. He was a major NWA fan, I hated the stuff. Nothing worse than walking in with a date to the sensual sounds of "F*ck Da Police". Well, one thing led to another and after discovering the joys of pot, his academic career went downhill fast. The first semester he received a 0.4 GPA (yes, "Oh point four") and was booted out. After being reinstated on academic probation he attended class regularly for three or four weeks before returning to his old ways with his stoner buddies. He ended up selling his books 5-6 weeks before finals so he could attend the "Hash Bash" in Ann Arbor and the following month attempted to enlist in the Navy. Don't know what happened and I really don't care!

 

[Patrick Sun]

Aren't there Resident Assistants that can help you out with such a dork of a roommate?

Can you move to another room? Appeal to the housing department, have him evicted if possible. Clown like that should not ruin your college experience.

 

[Thomas_Berg]

Let me guess, he enjoys using it even when you aren't around!

of course! he likes movies and music when i have them going, but he seems to have no respect for people's private stuff.
Patrick- the RA is actually next door, so if something like this ever happens again, i'm gonna try to have him move out. (i myself dont want to move b/c it took a LONG TIME to get the wires and everything run, plus i dont want to nail more holes in the wall in another room.)
anyways thanks for feeling for me...i'm still really pissed. i woke up last night after dreaming that i beat the crap out of him and i felt a little better.

 

[DaveF]

Patrick- the RA is actually next door, so if something like this ever happens again

If you haven't, report this incident to the RA, and ask for help in dealing with it.

At the very least, you want to establish a pattern of (mis)behavior, which will hopefully make it easier to get rid of him if necessary.

And though it would suck, you should consider removing your electronics from the room until this guy is under control.

Water on electronics generally won't harm things, once dried out. (Caveat: if the electronics are on with dowsed, that could be a problem. Also, if the water has sufficient impurities that remain after the water evaporates, shorts could occur.)

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Turn the water off to your dorm.

 

[Mark Schermerhorn]

Reminds me of an incident about 6 years ago during my Freshman dorm days. Some dumb jock was chasing a girl down the hall with a garbage can full of water (prolly 3 gallons worth). He tosses it at her and completely misses, instead it gets all over my door, ruining all the stuff I had posted on it, and my door was cracked open so it got all over my things inside the door. Fortunatly no electronics were hit. It took quite a while to clean up.

I was lucky in the dorm...my roommie was really cool and we're still friends today.

Thomas: I seriously doubt the fact that he's "thrown water around" is enough to get him forced out, unless he actually damages some things. Personally I wouldn't have equipment of that value around someone I didn't trust. It's a tough situation, because I know you don't want to comprimise due to his stupidity. Most of my summer money went into HT and computer stuff during my early college years as well.

 

[Joseph Young]

Thomas,

I totally empathize. It can suck living with an alcoholic. My roomate is a great person but when he drinks he loses sense of what is 'loud' and pretty much forgets that his other roomates work early. So he comes home (a really nice guy, mind you) and blasts Big Black, Samhain, Hardcore in general. All the things that have ever annoyed me about roomates have been directly linked to drinking.

I assume that talking to him wouldn't make a difference because 'that's just the way he is,' an irreparable trait that puts your valuables at risk. Get out of the situation however you can. You shouldn't have to alter your lifestyle or manically guard your valuables to take responsibility for his drinking.

Cheers,

Joseph

 

[MikeAlletto]

Before you go crying (yes that is what it will look like) to the RA, try and solve it yourself. Try a few times. Then if it doesn't work ask the RA for help. The RA's aren't baby sitters and you're all "supposed" to be adults in college.

 

[Jeffrey Noel]

Aren't there Resident Assistants that can help you out with such a dork of a roommate?

Yes there are! As I am an RA! And if I were your RA, I would totally understand and talk to that guy myself!!
Set up a meeting with your RA and bring your roommie along. At this meeting, set some ground rules. This way your RA and roommate will be aware of the problems going on. If he, the roommate, does not comply, you should be able to easily move out of the room with someone else, availibility permitting. This kind of sucks since you'd have to move out, but at least your gear would be better off. Heck, if you just piss him off enough, maybe he'll want to move out!
Best of luck though Thomas

 

[Jeffrey Noel]

EDIT: Sorry, double post!

 

[Thomas_Berg]

thanks for the suggestions! my problem is that 1) i dont want to really cause a problem by whining and 2) our RA is from Sri Lanka and he speaks kind of limited English. i'm just gonna stick it out and see what happens. any more shit from him, though, and one of us is leaving.

 

[Patrick Sun]

*Chuckle* I met a lot of people in college, and had 13 different roommates (I co-op'd so it's not like I was hard to live with) but I would not classify more than 2/3 of the students being "adults" while the other 1/3 were still in that "kiddie" mentality for the most part. It seems Thomas is rooming with a "kid".

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Wow, and I thought you guys from TCU were just calm folk.
Do the "Patton" method: start a fight, kick his ass, and make it look like its his fault.

Just kidding. Seriously, think of every possible alternative before resorting to fighting.