Roommate horror stories: What to do when sharing space goes wrong.

By Ethan Beck

Fresno, Calif. ( KFSR)— Sharing a small space with a new roommate can be challenging, especially when expectations don’t match. One Fresno State student, who requested anonymity because she feared backlash from a former roommate, described how a promising arrangement “took a turn for the worse.”

“It started out my freshman year of obviously Fresno State,” our source recalled.

Early in her first year, she and her roommates agreed to allow another roommate to have a dog in the apartment. “We said we were okay with having a dog,” she said. “But pretty quickly, it became disruptive.” She recalled frequent noise when the dog was left alone and disagreements about pet care. Tensions escalated after she and a roommate raised their concerns. “She started slamming doors in the mornings. It was a mess,” the student said.

Our source went on to say, “she just would not take care of the dog, she wouldn’t take the dog out. The dog had huge separation anxiety from her, so anytime the dog wouldn’t see her it would start screaming and crying, so it would distract everyone, including the neighborhoods, so that was rough. “

Our unnamed guest went on to describe an incident where she felt the need to step in. As she says, “The poor animal , there was specific instance where she didn’t have enough money to buy the dog food,” said our source.

“She was like ‘oh the dog’s not gonna eat for like three days’ and I was like what do you mean the dog can’t eat for three days, the dog has to eat, and she was like ‘well I don’t have any money’ and I was like well get something like food from the dining hall, steal some chicken, like whatever you can do something.”

As one can imagine, having a roommate like this would be difficult to deal with, as our source shared, “It was so stressful because I was dealing with classes and on top of that I was also dealing with a job so, it was stressful, it was hectic with having to deal with that.”

Despite all of this, our guest explained why she decided to stay in this roommate limbo. “I decided that was the best option, cause it was kinda too late into the year to move out so I decided to stay and stick with it, and move out at the end of year, and that’s what I did. So I stuck through it.”

Her advice for first-time roommates: set expectations early and in writing. “Establish ground rules and communicate a lot. If you don’t communicate, it’s going to get messy,” she said.