While on active duty, I lived just off base at Fort Leonard Wood. The apartments were cheap. They were dirty. But most importantly, they were close to work. I only lived there because I could be in my office within 12 minutes of walking out of my door. The way the apartments worked was that there was no single lease upon an apartment, but you as a renter would sign a lease on you having a room of your own. This way, if your roommate was deployed, there would be no problem making the rent. The bad side to this was that you didn't really get a say in who lived with you. As long as there was an empty bedroom, someone would eventually be living with you.
A couple weeks after I moved in, a young private from Rhode Island moved into the adjoining room while he waited for his clearance check to come through. The first thing, the very first thing, he did when he came in was to light up a cigarette in our communal living space. I had quit smoking not long before this so I was really sensitive about the smell. The room was rented out as a non-smoking room. So, when I asked him to smoke out in the outside gazebos, he flipped out on me. The third day, he woke me up on my day off at 4am, to complain that my 32" television was too small for him to enjoy. When he hooked it up to his video game system, there was a conflicting video decoding error and he blamed me and my television for breaking his old system. Also, he thought that my "Pump up the Volume" movie poster should be taken down from the kitchen wall since the movie was about how a kid broke the law over and over, thus would be a bad influence on his well being......really.
I did try to be his friend. I really did. The first weekend that he was there, he complained that there was nothing do in the area so I invited him to hangout with my (at the time) girlfriend for a night of putt putt and movies. All night long, he did nothing but complain that we were forcing him to do what we wanted and he just wanted to go home. Fine, we did and took off on our own. That Sunday, we invited him to join us in the living room for a night of old school NES Mario, PBRs, and meatball sliders. My girlfriend, Tracy, even invited one of her friends to join us in hopes that he may like her. About 30 minutes after he had eaten a lion's share of the sandwiches, he hid a case of the beers into his room, yelled at us because he was being "smothered". A week later, I was sitting at my bedroom desk when I overheard him talking on the phone to his family about how I was a horrible roommate because I had made him feel unwelcome here since I had stopped inviting him to anything. The next week he left one of his god awful smelling frozen pizzas in the oven at full blast while he went on a walk to "talk to mother nature". When I came into the apartment, the room was full of smoke and the oil from the pizza was dripping down onto the heating element building a fire with each drip. He would later blame me for the destruction of the pizza and smoke damage because I should of checked on it while we was gone. The last weekend, before I left FLW, a great friend from Georgia came in for the going away party. She and her partner slept in my room on Friday while I crashed on the couch since their hotel room was not available until the following night. All night long, and I mean ALL NIGHT, he would randomly come out into the living room, wake me up, only to complain to me about how it was rude of me to allow them to do this in his apartment. We went into St.Roberts for drinks and a dinner before the party so I thought that this would be one last olive branch to be nice to end our relationship on. I bought everyone dinner that night. He sat at the corner of the table, didn't talk to anyone else, and just got incoherently drunk off his ass on the most expensive ouzo on the menu. At the party, he pulled Tracy aside and told her that I was going to hell for supporting sin in his home.
After I left, a few of our mutual friends told me that he had complained to them that I had left him with a cleaning bill of 1000$. He refused to let Tracy into the apartment to get the stuff I had left behind for her and sold it all to make up the money. I know I hadn't left anything wrong in the apartment. It was so clean that I had gotten my sexurity deposit back which was rare in the complex.
Now everyone has personality conflicts sometimes. I know this. But, there was just not one redeeming quality to this person. He was lazy. He was closed minded to new things. He was anti-social. He was just a plain dick. I have never lived with another roommate since then for the reason that I don't want to take the chance that I may run into another person like him.
A couple weeks after I moved in, a young private from Rhode Island moved into the adjoining room while he waited for his clearance check to come through. The first thing, the very first thing, he did when he came in was to light up a cigarette in our communal living space. I had quit smoking not long before this so I was really sensitive about the smell. The room was rented out as a non-smoking room. So, when I asked him to smoke out in the outside gazebos, he flipped out on me. The third day, he woke me up on my day off at 4am, to complain that my 32" television was too small for him to enjoy. When he hooked it up to his video game system, there was a conflicting video decoding error and he blamed me and my television for breaking his old system. Also, he thought that my "Pump up the Volume" movie poster should be taken down from the kitchen wall since the movie was about how a kid broke the law over and over, thus would be a bad influence on his well being......really.
I did try to be his friend. I really did. The first weekend that he was there, he complained that there was nothing do in the area so I invited him to hangout with my (at the time) girlfriend for a night of putt putt and movies. All night long, he did nothing but complain that we were forcing him to do what we wanted and he just wanted to go home. Fine, we did and took off on our own. That Sunday, we invited him to join us in the living room for a night of old school NES Mario, PBRs, and meatball sliders. My girlfriend, Tracy, even invited one of her friends to join us in hopes that he may like her. About 30 minutes after he had eaten a lion's share of the sandwiches, he hid a case of the beers into his room, yelled at us because he was being "smothered". A week later, I was sitting at my bedroom desk when I overheard him talking on the phone to his family about how I was a horrible roommate because I had made him feel unwelcome here since I had stopped inviting him to anything. The next week he left one of his god awful smelling frozen pizzas in the oven at full blast while he went on a walk to "talk to mother nature". When I came into the apartment, the room was full of smoke and the oil from the pizza was dripping down onto the heating element building a fire with each drip. He would later blame me for the destruction of the pizza and smoke damage because I should of checked on it while we was gone. The last weekend, before I left FLW, a great friend from Georgia came in for the going away party. She and her partner slept in my room on Friday while I crashed on the couch since their hotel room was not available until the following night. All night long, and I mean ALL NIGHT, he would randomly come out into the living room, wake me up, only to complain to me about how it was rude of me to allow them to do this in his apartment. We went into St.Roberts for drinks and a dinner before the party so I thought that this would be one last olive branch to be nice to end our relationship on. I bought everyone dinner that night. He sat at the corner of the table, didn't talk to anyone else, and just got incoherently drunk off his ass on the most expensive ouzo on the menu. At the party, he pulled Tracy aside and told her that I was going to hell for supporting sin in his home.
After I left, a few of our mutual friends told me that he had complained to them that I had left him with a cleaning bill of 1000$. He refused to let Tracy into the apartment to get the stuff I had left behind for her and sold it all to make up the money. I know I hadn't left anything wrong in the apartment. It was so clean that I had gotten my sexurity deposit back which was rare in the complex.
Now everyone has personality conflicts sometimes. I know this. But, there was just not one redeeming quality to this person. He was lazy. He was closed minded to new things. He was anti-social. He was just a plain dick. I have never lived with another roommate since then for the reason that I don't want to take the chance that I may run into another person like him.
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