Thursday, November 9

A Timeline of a Horrible Roommate

This was a co-worker of mine in the mailroom.  I really didn't consider her a friend but more of a co-worker I did scrapbooking with occasionally.  As I got to know her she became more annoying as time went on and I truly believe she uses her "problems" to her advantage.

In December 2016 she was kicked out of her house by her husband and his new girlfriend (this is a long naïve story) because they thought she was seeing someone else behind their back which in fact she was just having food with a friend.  She didn't know where to go so she came and lived with us for a week because we are nice people.  She then moved to Roy to live in a loft owned by some of her friends.  Of course I helped her move because I am a nice person.

At the start of the new year, a week into January, Ben lost his job (that's an even longer story) and we needed to find a creative way to make money for rent and bills.  I am thankful I went from part-time in the mailroom to full-time early December.  I also started carpooling with her so we could earn about $150 more on our paychecks every quarter.

In February Ben started looking for work, applied to unemployment and looked into doing perquisites for medic school at SPSCC.  In the meantime we were trying to come up with a way to make rent.

In March Ben enrolled into school and unemployment would last until August 2017.  My co-worker had a 2 hour meeting with our manager and lead.  It was about her behavior.  She sort of told me what it was for but kinda skirted around it.  Deep down I knew what it was for.

Her divorce was finalized in April and she didn't feel comfortable in the Roy loft because she thought her ex-husband knew where she was, her landlord was getting creepy and the long commute.  Both parties agreed that she would move in with Ben and I.  She moved it April 5, 2017.  She would pay for half of everything.  We got permission from REMAX to sublet to her, we were responsible for her and the damages she caused (we added this into the agreement that she was responsible for damages if she caused them).  Ben and I put together a roommate agreement.  We thought it was very reasonable, presented it to her, she read it, signed and dated it.  That to us meant she understood it.  We all each got a copy.  Ben started spring quarter at SPSCC.

I started a non-perm position in Retrospective Rating in May.  The weather started improving and we started getting busy.  We noticed she did a lot of sitting in her room.  She struggled with a few of her friends shared by her and her ex-husband.  She started defying her manager and her lead in the mailroom.  She started talking with a guy she met online who was from Port Orchard/Bremerton.

In June I had a hard time leaving for the weekend because I didn't trust her to be by herself at our house.  We had an issue with her not leaving the laundry room door open (that is where we keep the cat box and his food and water) so kitty pooped on the floor in the living room because she was careless.  Not sure if she fed him when he was supposed to be or just overfed him so she didn't have to keep to a schedule.  I'm sure she started inviting her "boyfriend" over when we weren't there.  We've never met him and we thought it was disrespectful.  We didn't trust her with a mail key so we didn't have one made.

July is when it started to go downhill.  We finally met her "boyfriend" while Erika and Travis were in town visiting for the holiday.  She never told us he was coming over and he almost got punched in the face because we got home and all the lights were off, Ben went into the house and some stranger was in the hallway...Ben immediately went into defensive mode.  She continued having him over without our knowledge.  We finally got her to write it on the calendar so we knew when he might be coming over.   At the end of July we had to go get Erika from Nevada and she moved into the extra room.  That made bills and rent cheaper.

In August, she started locking herself into her room more and more because Erika gave her access to her extra Kindle and gave her permissions to use her Netflix and Hulu accounts.  I told Erika that was a huge mistake and she didn't realize it until later.  She started not communicating with us or doing chores when they were needed.  To me that was unfair to the rest of the people living in the house and we had to constantly remind her.  She started her new job as of August 1. She started leaving really early and leaving work really late because the job was too hard and got behind.  She stopped carpooling with me and then lied to me about it even though I knew she was carpooling with someone else.  I caught them in October.  Also she brought it a poisonous plant and tried to kill my cat.  That resulted in a $1301 vet bill that she told us she would pay back.  She would be playing me $200 a month until it was done.

September was a really busy month for me because I was preparing for my upcoming international trip and I had no time to babysit her. I knew this problem got bigger and bigger the more we ignored it but I just had no time to deal with it right now.  I went on my trip and I really had no idea how the day to day stuff went.  Ben did tell me that she actually made dinner one night after Ben told her to.  When I got home I was so disappointed that no one swept the floor for 12 days.

October:

She wrote us the first letter on October 11 and left it on the coffee table, it said that she had no idea what happened and has a hard time communicating.  To us, we made everything pretty clear and had to remind her weekly on chores and letting her know when we wanted our rent, bills and vet payment.

That sparked us to find a day to talk about everything that was not going well. I chose October 17th and even wrote it on the calendar so everyone was aware of it.

On October 17th, we had a meeting about her behavior (basically) even though we called it a roommate meeting so we weren't "attacking" her.  A week before she was skeptical about how it would go down.  She spoke to Erika about it often.  This is where having her "boyfriend" around would give her support.  That, to me, implied that she was in the wrong and someone on her side to agree with her.  When the date got closer she tried getting out of it.  We found this out through Erika and a Facebook message to Ben.  We insisted she meet with us to talk about the current situation.  We can't ignore it anymore.  And we can't have a deadbeat living with us anymore.  Her "boyfriend" was not present.  Ben and I sat at the dining room table, Erika sat on the small couch and she sat on the couch next to the wall, isolated.  She did bring a notebook with her.  Ben opened up the meeting with an overview.  I went next with everything I wanted to cover.  I was prepared with the problem, the outlines/examples of each problem and a solution to fix it.  Erika was present to be the antagonist, the "why" person.  We gave the floor to her and she had nothing to say, which according to Erika a few days ago, said she had a slew of things to address.  Erika was pissed when she said she had nothing to say.  Ben asked a few questions which led to an answer from her of "I'm lost."  What the hell did that mean?  She didn't know exactly.  All she said was her job was hard getting used to.  I wanted to say, it's because you are NOT qualified for it!  But I didn't because I didn't want to hear crying.  She basically sat there looking dumb and confused.  I gave her a bunch of suggestions to work on and get better at, not just at our house, but better at life.  Clearly, she need some major work done in all areas of her life.  I guess we will see if she takes it seriously.  If not, she will have to move out.  I opted to have her do it on her own and have her do all the work...moving over her new address for mail, find a new place (which I hoped it was more expensive), playing the bills she owed us and moving her own stuff.

During the next week, I did not see any improvements, except she wrote stuff on the calendar.  Still no motivation to do chores with/like everyone else, she never spoke to us, except Erika, she continued living locked in in her room, continued leaving really early and coming home really late from work (behind at work and carpooling with someone else).  She would write "dinner w/friends" on the calendar so she wouldn't have to participate in dinner time activities.

October 23, confirmed she was carpooling with someone else and that she lied to me about it.

October 25, that evening she purposefully started clothes in the washer, took a shower while they were washing, it went off balance (our washer has never been off balance and I turned it off before it did more damage to the machine) and continued doing whatever she was doing.  When she was done I yelled down the hallway, "You need to do better at loading your laundry in the washer because I stopped it due to it being off balance!"  She came out of the bathroom, ignored me on the couch, went and fixed it.  Her clothes took forever because of the disruption during the cycle.  She was in "don't give a shit" mode and  did not care what our prior rules were for water consumption...try not to run several things at once.  If I had it my way, I would have called her out on it but Ben and Erika would have been mad at me for making her cry.

On October 31, she wrote us another letter and left it on the coffee table and if I was a betting person I would have been right with what I was about to read.  She stated that she was moving out because she basically didn't want to do chores or communicate with us anymore and needed to find a new place to live.  I was really hoping that she wouldn't leave until Ben got a job because now we were going to be strapped for money.

November 1-9, so many times (I lost count) she broke the rules because she didn't care.  Ben drafted a moving out contract, that he and I both signed on November 5th.  Ben went over it with her on November 6th with some edits that she agreed to.  So we expected she obey her responsibilities.  She gave us her forwarding address for her mail.  She was using a co-worker's address  She moved out on the 9th because Veterans day was celebrated on November 10th (we had a day off) so she had plenty of time go get her stuff out and clean.  As I was coming home from work, I noticed this truck with two people in it just chilling near Compton and 59th.  It was kinda creepy.  I then later found out that those two people were the ones helping her move her stuff to a storage unit.  She left the stuff she borrowed, the key to the house and the rest of the rent and bills (cat payment $776 of $1301) on the coffee table.  We changed the garage code as soon as we could and Erika changed her passwords to Netflix and Hulu.

Note:  she had plenty of time to do what we asked her to do with the bathroom and her room.  We simply requested that she vacuum, wipe the walls, and dust the room and wiped down all the counters, sweep and make sure her hair is out of all the drains in the bathroom.  If this was an actual place you were renting from, they would have made you do it as well before you left or you were charged.  Well she didn't.

November 10, around 10 a.m. Ben asked her to come clean and she agreed to come before noon, Ben also told her that we found a hole in the wall from a dresser that her or her friends moved from the previous day right across from her bedroom door.  We didn't see it the previous night because we didn't turn the light on in the hallway.  We saw it after we got up in the daylight.  I asked Ben, where did this come from?  It wasn't here yesterday before she moved.  There was still wall powder (our walls are drywall) on the trim and the floor  It was literally across from her bedroom door and a perfect indentation of a corner of a dresser or table.  She freaked out, asked us what damage? We explained it to her (at this point we were going to ask $75 for damage fees) and she refused to come over to clean.  We gave her until 5 to decide what she was going to do, we didn't hear from her so we added a cleaning fee of $50 to her other outstanding bill she owed us.  I had a haircut with Celeste that day and it was the start of my 4-day birthday weekend and I had to start it off with stupidity.  On my way back home Erika sent me a screen shot of her phone of a conversation she had with Erika and it basically said, "Ben wants me to clean up after myself but I don't want to, can you do it for me?" Erika said no and she said thanks anyway.  That was around 8 a.m. that morning.  She had already planned on not showing up even before Ben asked.  Why didn't she just clean when she was here Thursday night?

November 12-16, she demanded that we get her an invoice from ReMax and they said they had no ties to her but they would gladly get a quote and invoice for her to see.  Ben worked with the admins and got something drafted up.  It was going to cost her $202.46 with the invoice instead of $75 that we asked her to give us for the wall.

November 29, Ben received the invoice (and drafted a letter to go with it explaining everything) and had it notarized and certified mailed it to the address she gave us.  A few days later we know she received it because we got the receipt of delivery.  The letter explained that if we didn't get ALL the money by the end of the year we are taking her to small claims court.  We will serve her after January 1, 2018.

November 30, received cat payment at my desk at work in an envelope after 8 days of being late and her being out of town which is really no excuse because we get paid on the 10th and the 25th of each month.  She could have mailed it out on time before she went out of town via certified so she would know when we received it.

She ignored us basically throughout the first part of December and Ben tried to get a hold of her several times to try and reason with her.  Finally on December 16&17 she texted us back to talk about the invoice and all the money she owed us.  We asked her if she had the vet money because it was almost a week late (we got paid on the 10th) and she told us she sent it through the mail on Dec 9th.  We never received anything from the mail (in our mailbox or otherwise), hence this is why we were contacting her.  If we would have received something she would have the proof when she checked her bank transactions that we cashed a check.  We believe she was lying to us about sending it in the mail.  She said she was going to try and send it again but she never confirmed it.  I just wanted the money she owed us so we didn't have to deal with her anymore.

We also tried to reason with her and tried to settle out of court.  About a week before Christmas I just wanted my money.  I told Ben to contact her to see if she would accept a payment plan through two pay periods (December 25th and January 10th) surprisingly she was the first one to propose this and we thought about it.  We agreed except we added that we wanted the money in check form delivered to my desk similar to how the last check was given to us.  She basically said she would do no such thing and ignored us.  I was like, what just happened?  We were going to do what she wanted!  We told her we will get the paperwork written up and expect to be served in January.

We applied for a late fee application and if she doesn't want to pay after the 30 days of our court date we applied for wage garnishment as well.

January 5, Josh went to L&I and served her with her small claims court paperwork.  She had her supervisor come out and talk to Josh.  She basically said she was too busy to come out and would have to wait until she was done.  Josh waited until she came out.  She came out with her co-worker who she is using her address for mail.  Josh handed her the document and said a few words.  She looked really confused but she asked for this to happen to her so she shouldn't be surprised that it did.

It is now up to her to either pay us what she owes us or we will go to court on February 23.

More notes:

Always asked about dinner but never took initiative to make it for everyone, we had to ask her to do it, the three times she did do it (from April 5th to November 9th) and they were very lazy sad meals.

Refused to eat leftovers and we wasted a bunch of food while she lived with us.  When she did eat leftovers (which was very rare) she would take the best part out of the left overs and would leave the rest for someone else (rice and chicken) would take the chicken out and leave the rice.

When she put the dishes away she put them on the counter instead of drying them off with a towel...basically left them for someone else to do (she did this several times) and we talked about it several times.

In October she jipped Ben rent money because he drank and replaced one of her Gatorades back in June and she claimed she did not receive change for utilities.

We had to make a chore chart because of her.

(Adding more later)

Next Adventure:  Flowvember Paint Day

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