When you live in an apartment with multiple people, everyone has to make compromises in order to keep the peace.

What would you do if you and two other roommates wanted the bathroom door left open when not in use, but the fourth roommate refuses?

That is what happened to the tenant in this story, and finally he got sick of the door being closed and yelled at the fourth roommate.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA for telling my roommate to leave the bathroom door open?

So I am one of four people in my apartment.

Myself and two of the others generally get along. It’s not perfect, but no roommate situation will be, and I’m fairly happy overall.

The remaining roommate (we’ll call them Alex) is a bit of a different story.

Being from a different culture can make things difficult.

Throughout the few months that we’ve been living together, there have been a lot of issues related to Alex.

Most is a minor annoyance, some is a more serious, but there is always something going on. And it always seems to be because of Alex.

I’ll also note that Alex is of a different culture than the rest of us, and also is from a different place than where we now live.

We’ve tried to be understanding, but as with everything, sometimes there will be practices we disagree on.

The bathroom door is the latest issue.

About a week and a half ago, Alex started insisting on closing the bathroom door, even when no one is in the bathroom.

Apparently this is a cultural aspect for them, where it’s considered impolite to keep the bathroom door open.

I do want to note that this wasn’t an issue until months into living together?

That doesn’t make it less legitimate, but it stood out as odd to all of us that this wasn’t brought up sooner.

It is three against one, the door stays open.

All three of us have disagreed with closing the door.

It’s not about any particular cultural stance.

We have issues with that door and handle sticking, so if it’s closed, it’s hard to tell if someone’s in there or not. We don’t want to keep it closed without others being in there to avoid this confusion.

We have offered to leave it mostly closed, so it’s still mostly hidden but you can see there’s no one in there.

The problem got worse today.

This came to a head earlier today.

Alex had closed the door after leaving the bathroom.

Some time later, I really needed to take a dump.

I see that the door is closed so knock to see if anyone is in there.

There’s no response and so I try to open the door, but because the door and handle really like to stick, it doesn’t open and so I assume that someone is actually in there.

OP waited…and waited…

I end up waiting in the living room for the person to leave, all the while really needing to go and not having another place to do so.

I eventually realize no one is actually in there, when I see Alex and the other two roommates at the same time.

I run in there to release what I’d been holding, but once I got out I let Alex have it.

OP told Alex how he really felt!

My roommates were supportive of me, as this is a recurring issue for all of us and we want to leave it open.

Now, I probably went further than was reasonable and I take credit for that.

I got mad about having to hold that dump in and wanted to let it out, but could’ve handled the response more maturely.

However, I still think that it was ultimately reasonable for me to take issue with this.

OP thinks the compromise should be good enough.

We offered an option that would keep the area closed to sight while still making it easy to get into, and Alex didn’t take that.

It’s not like we’re insisting on keeping it gaping open against their traditions.

AITA?

Maybe he should have been nicer about it, but if everyone wants to leave the door open, that is what they should do.

Let’s read some of the comments on Reddit to see what they had to say.

Here is a good idea…

I’m curious about this as well.

This is a good question.

This person says to keep the door shut.

It is a simple situation; this guy was outvoted.

Getting the door fixed so it doesn’t stick would save a lot of drama!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.