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Stealing from your flatmates

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My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

17:04 / 28.04.05

when I get up in the morning and realize that someone ate the last of the milk and the last of the cereal and I now have to walk to the store on an empty stomach when I've been sick for a month and can't get around with low blood sugar...and the bastard in question wasn't even the roommate but some random friend of the roommate...not okay. I could give a shit about my pots and silverware. But the roommate uses shit that I don't think people normally share. Like my bathtowel. Does he know where it's been? Do I know what he's done with it? Does he really need to OPEN UP the medicine cabinet to get at my toothpaste when HIS is right there on the counter? (and is he physically capable of putting the fucking cap back on?) Who uses somebody else's comb? For all he knows I use it on my pubes. For all I know, he does. But if I complain it wouldn't mean anything - the next time he gets stoned he's going to grab whatever he wants anyway.

that being said, I pissed off my last roommate by using her soap - I had run out and grabbed some random bar of soap that was out on the sink and it turned out to be decorative soap "not for use" which had sentimental value. Which seems kind of weird to me (and a weird place to put soap that's not for use) but I still felt awful. I knew better.

19:34 / 28.04.05

Help yourself to my beverages, just don't take the last one please, unless I'm at work and you're going to buy some more before I get home.

I never use your dishes because I would feel obligated to wash them afterwards. On the rare occasion I use a knife or something, I make sure to wash it right away.

01:37 / 30.04.05

Surely you have all watched The Real World at some point in the last decade.

You know, "they" have done experiments where "they" put people in close quarters for different lengths of time and observe them, and regardless of prior values or personalities, people fall into the same roles. Variations arise only from the level of stress. In other words, in any household there will inevitably be one tightass and one slob--and that's what food-stealing really is, sloppiness, a flagging of discipline vis a vis personal boundaries. It actually has very little to do with milk or house rules or who bought what.

There are two ways to deal with this, which I'll share with you but ask you to keep under your hat, because I'm putting this into my book on Psy War for the Urban Guerrilla.

The first way is to treat your home as a place for negotiated rules and conflict resolution, like the workplace, where there are procedures for all disagreements and careful records are kept. This has the advantage of being ethical, but the disadvantage of being boring and a pain in the ass.

The second way is to try always to have two roommates. Since you are aware that the tightass/slob pairing is a natural dynamism of the social animal, you can remain noncommittal until they've fallen into whichever roles they're going to fall into. Then you can be as sloppy or as tightassed as you want, and you'll never be blamed for it.

Just for the record, using another person's stuff without express permission is plain stealing.

01:48 / 30.04.05

(a place for negotiated rules and conflict resolution, like the workplace

Or Barbelith...)

11:33 / 30.04.05

I think I hate you Nightclub Dwight.

Anyone can help themselves to anything of mine. Milk, bread, eggs, etc are bought for the people to be used by the people.

unheimlich manoeuvre

12:02 / 30.04.05

I barbecrush Nightclub Dwight.

Sorry to disagree with you Qalyn but I don't think the Tightass/Slob dialectic is inevitable.
I've always lived with friends and they're welcome to use my stuff.
A 24 hour petrol station is only five minutes walk away.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

12:26 / 30.04.05

I don't mind when people use things we've discussed and labelled communal - beer in more than sixpack amounts, butter, bread, juice and eggs, milk. I certainly do mind when people don't buy anything communal, ever, because even though we don't have a schedule for buying these things (because, come on... who wants a bread-buying roster? eh?) it's polite to take turns. I hate buying juice, then the next day, when I want juice, there's no fucking juice. And then there's no fucking juice for the next two weeks, until I buy some fucking juice.

[threadrot - sort of]Also irritating are people who leave food around in the kitchen and don't take simple steps to clean up - wipe up your teabag drippings before they set solid and stain the table bright orange, or the tiles, which we'll have to pay for proper cleaning/lose bond on/whatever.

DO NOT LEAVE YOUR BOLOGNAISE SAUCE IN THE PAN WITH BITS OF MEAT IN IT TO GO MOULDY WHEN NOONE ELSE IS AROUND FOR A WEEK THEN "FORGET" TO CLEAN IT FOR ANOTHER WEEK.

As I really don't want to go near your pan of blue mould covering some sort of decaying organic matter. It smells bad and I should not have to deal with it.

Also, there's a weekly schedule for cleaning the bathroom. Weekly seems like a lot, I know, but when you lose more hair in a day than I grow in a year, it's important to keep the damn thing clean. One week is not the same as a month.
[/threadrot]

Housemates are awesome.

16:59 / 30.04.05

Sorry to disagree with you Qalyn but I don't think the Tightass/Slob dialectic is inevitable.
I've always lived with friends and they're welcome to use my stuff.

I absolutely agree. I'm sorry, but a lot of you sound awfully difficult to live with! As far as I'm concerned, my roommate(s) and I are almost a de facto family, and families don't parse every item in the house and regulate usage of said items. I mean, you can do that, but why put yourselves through the stress if you can just share everything and still come out equal? I understand that wouldn't work with a total jackass of a roommate, but that's why I don't choose to live with a total jackass.

It may be because my mom was an obsessively uptight person to live with that I am not at all. She was a freak about every crumb, spoon, number of chips in the bag, and there was this super high level of stress in our house at all times... I just feel that stuff is not worth getting wound up over.

Right now I live with my boyfriend and another roommate. Of course the roommate buys separate groceries, but if I need a tablespoon of butter or he wants a little grated Parm on his spaghetti, we pinch from each other without asking. We just don't do it to the point of seriously depleting each other's supplies. I can't even imagine separating pots and pans - we share a kitchen! Recently my roommate broke an irreplaceable glass from my antique minibar while washing the dishes. I was upset that I was down a glass, but I wasn't upset AT him - it was an accident. Not to sound all hippie-dippy about it, but why be precious about material goods at the expense of getting along with the people you share a home with?

19:45 / 30.04.05

You can eliminate the potential for chipped knives by getting ones with tungsten carbide edges. If there are harder substances than tungsten carbide in your kitchen, you should really look at why your flatmates are trying to cut diamonds with your kitchen knives. Maybe get in on whatever it is somehow. Could be profitable.

13:08 / 01.05.05

You have a very good attitude to life Ibis.

13:42 / 01.05.05

It all comes down to whether you've chosen the right person to live with in the first place. Sadly, most of us have chosen badly at some time or other, in fact, circumstances are often such that we are left with very little choice.
There's also those relationships that can't bear the strain of close proximity, or the friend whose faults (as a housemate) only become apparent after 6 months.

17:27 / 01.05.05

Really, why stop at the kitchen door? Since we all live together, let's lift a few dollars out of each other's wallets, give away a few cds from each other's collections, leave coffee stains on eac other's comic books. Why not?

Buk, I'll be over directly.

23:04 / 01.05.05

I'm sorry, but a lot of you sound awfully difficult to live with!

Me?!? I'm very easy to live with because I am a master manipulator. It's the other guy who's difficult to live with, not me.

01:45 / 04.05.05

"Since we all live together, let's lift a few dollars out of each other's wallets, give away a few cds from each other's collections, leave coffee stains on eac other's comic books. Why not?"

i think you wouldnt do that to them, so you dont expect it back. others wouldnt grudge you some milk, so they dont expect you to go off on one when they lighten up a cup of coffee.
it seems to me that you are not too generous, but i'm sure you feel some people just dont respect others' property.

if you needed change for the bus to get to work on time, you would be welcome to mine if there was any lying around. i'd be a bit upset at the theft of my CDs, but then its not like you can steal a small portion of it as you could with milk.
if you stained my comic books i'd prolly be quite upset, but thats because doing so renders them lesser forever.

i can understand getting fucked off at the habitual borrower; the flatmate who lives on cereal but never buys milk, or the flatmate who mysteriously stops taking sugar in his tea whn it runs out; but i reckon i would have difficulty living with someone who would need me to ask their permission to make a cup of tea for myself and guests. sure, i could go to the shop. i would think you were being mean if i had to leave my house at four in the morning and walk a twenty minute round trip to the garage just to save you twenty pence, though.

were you one of a large family as a kid?

16:14 / 05.05.05

I ask that my biography be left out of this, as well as personal slurs.

As I stated previously, my issue isn't with a slice of bread or a cup of milk. My issue is with the sense of being entitled to it, and to not only the slice of bread, but also to a reasonable portion of everything else, with what's reasonable being defined by the borrower, and the lender getting called a 'studente shitsucker' for not agreeing to that definition.

I quite agree that people need to make compromises in order to live together. I just don't think I'm an asshole for having decided that I don't want to be in position of being a perpetual lender, since the people I've lived with don't generally have foods I want to borrow.

Why must the compromises be made by only one person?

16:27 / 05.05.05

Christ on extendable squeegees! You leave a thread alone for 2 minutes and this is what happens?! People are writing in my thread. Wow.

16:36 / 05.05.05

Oh, and just for the record, I didn't choose my flatmates. I was put with them, due to an annoying situation that I am now in the process of rectifying. All the same, they are welcome to use my pans and utensils and whatnot. I'll be shot off the bastards in another couple weeks so they'd better get 'em while they can.

16:38 / 05.05.05

If you steal your roommates' stuff you should always write them a poem:

This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

22:12 / 05.05.05

How's this:

That's okay
I slept with
your girlfriend

She was nice

23:40 / 05.05.05

Persephone:

I'm so sorry
I did not tell you that I gave my girlfriend
A social disease

23:42 / 05.05.05

- a social disease
I contracted
from your cat

00:34 / 06.05.05

Oh please
like I didn't consider
whose girlfriend
this was

Charlie's Horse

02:18 / 06.05.05

But did you consider
the cat?
I did.
I still
Wake up
Screaming.

By the way -
I drank
All the water
And you
Are on fire.

My bad.

02:30 / 06.05.05

You have a message
Your boss wants to know where you are
I needed the alarm clock to time the rice pilaf

Which Maxine and I finished while you were sleeping
She borrowed a tampon
I thought you had more
but now I see
that you don't

04:32 / 06.05.05

Your couch
so new
For the stain
I heard club soda works

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