My roommate, well, sucks. Novel Inside.
I am sick and tired of living with this chick. We're both 24, currently living in Austin Texas. We both moved out here in a company expansion from Southern California, near LA.
Originally, I had planned to live alone. I had an apartment picked out, ready to go. This girl, we'll call her Jane, was working with me at the time, and was an outgoing, fun person to be around. She was a little on the bubbly-typical-air-head-California girl side (which she calls herself), but she was nice. I knew her for about 5 months before the fact.
Our company ended up expanding to Austin in February of 07. She expressed interest in coming to Texas, when re-locating was offered to us. One day, she casually mentioned that we should be roommates. I was thinking hey, that wouldn't be such a bad idea if she decided to go.
Moving out to a state I'd never been to before by myself, I figured having a roommate would be beneficial in case anything happened. I told her this, and she decided to come to Austin. After she got the okay email from our HR department, I told my leasing company the circumstances. My apartment leasing company was nice enough to transfer my lease over to a 1 year contract in a lovely 2 bedroom townhouse complex on a new property near a lake in Northern Austin, due to my moving there blind, and situation. I would move in on May 1. She would arrive mid-June.
The lease was emailed to me, so I printed it up, and brought it to work. I presented it to Jane, who signed it with fervor. Presto, we were roommates.
Then everything changed.
We were good buddies up until I left. I didn't hear one peep from her after then. The next time I heard from her, she was on her way to Austin, and was going to stop by some guy's house first.
Days went on. She moved her stuff in, I rarely saw her. I didn't really care, because our schedules were different, and well, we weren't that great of friends yet anyway. So whatever.
About a week later, another mutual friend at work pulls me aside and asks me why Jane is telling people that I forced her to sign the lease.? What?
The next day, another person I assume that we both know, who is completely unrelated to the first person, asks me how the roommate thing is going. I smile, and say "as well as it can be." This person looks sympathetic, and says, "Huh, I thought it would be worse, considering the situation."
What situation?
"Well with your lease and all."
I didn't have to hear any more. That very day I got an email from her at work saying how she doesn't think she wants to stay, and she doesn't like, it. I got text messages from her over the next month too, saying that she hates Austin, and will probably be moving out the next month. I told her she was welcome to go, as long as she got someone to take over her portion of the lease, per our contract.
Then the issues started. First, I got a knock on my bedroom door one day, and opened it to her standing there with an eviction notice. She had the audacity to make ME check my banking account to see if it was my check that bounced. When I could prove that it wasn't, she stated that she didn't have access to her bank account, and would need to call her mother, who wasn't up yet.
Then there was the electricity bill. Yeah, it gets kind of high in the summer, but of course it's going to if you're running the air when it's 120 outside. You can't NOT run the air. Fortunately, the apt complex came with a state of the art energy saving timer based thermostat. Since she seemed to be having money issues, I set it to 75 to ease on the bill for her. Unfortunately, I can't tell you how many times I came home to the house being well above 85, and the thermostat completely off. I wrote her a note (since I never saw her), saying not to turn off the thermostat, since it costs more to cool down the apt when it's 85 inside everyday, than to just have it running at 75 all the time.
She wrote me a rude letter back saying how she shouldn't have to pay half the electricity bill because she's not even home most of the time. Oh, and I shouldn't put the washing machine or dryer on past 7pm, because they're on her side, and they make too much noise. Ugh.
Well, next month's move out dates always became postponed to the next month, and eventually to Christmas time. Around Christmas time, I heard nothing else of her moving out.
I received a phone call from her one day where she claimed we needed to talk. Then she began exploding at me telling me that she can't believe I would talk about her to people we both know and blah blah. I'd talked about my crazy roommate before, but I'd NEVER mention her name. I don't think anyone even knew my roommate worked at the same company, and I'd certainly never said anything devious. Just told crazy stories about dishsoap in the washing machine and such. And she was the one making up stuff about me forcing her to sign the lease. When I tried to remind her how it ACTUALLY went, she INSISTED that I forced her to sign it? How could I do that when she took the pen and wrote her own name? I was flabbergasted at her belief of her own lie.
She continued to be all whiny on the phone, so I decided to bring up her monetary shortcomings and how she never helps around the apartment. She ended up telling me that she feels like the apartment is MY apartment, and that she doesn't even belong there. I asked her how I can fix that, and she didn't have an answer.
So what was I supposed to do?
It got worse steadily, as I was pretty much paying for everything, and she always had some excuse. The internet she got wasn't good, so she was just leeching from a neighbor, and shouldn't have to pay for it. The water bill is too high. My cat's litter box smelled. Granted, I was struggling after just moving too, so I didn't have money to just fling everywhere. I went down to just cents in my bank account several times because she didn't feel like paying her stuff.
Yet she comes home from partying in the bars, takes these weird workout classes, buys new clothes, and has a Mustang she upkeeps very well.
I don't get it. I don't think I ever did anything wrong to her, and if I did, she never talked to me about it.
Minor grievances I have with her are walking around practically naked when my boyfriend is over, and telling me strange things like I have spirits following me. She cooks hot pockets all the time and leaves greasy drippings and burnt cheese crusted in the microwave. One time she set a bag of popcorn on fire in the microwave, and didn't even clean it out. She's put dishsoap in the dishwasher AND washing machine. She never takes the trash out, but will use my dishes and flatware and not clean them. She didn't provide any part of the furnishings, or even attempt to help me out. I always asked her to, and she would never respond.
Now here we are in mid-April, she still hasn't paid Feb or March bills, and any attempt I make to ask her what she's going to do when our lease is up come June 2, I get no response at all.
I can't wait until June 2, when I can kick her the heck out. I just hope she's dumb enough to leave her stuff in the apartment, so I can call a Sherriff to come put it all out on the front porch. INCLUDING the two half gallons of milk she put in the fridge that have been there for the past 5 months.
I guess my question here is - I'm scared she's going to move out, and not pay any of her bills that are due. Is there something I should be doing in the meantime to ensure that I can prove in a court that payment is due, aside from the standard bills?
