Imagine living in an old apartment building where the water gets cold if more than one person takes a shower at the same time.

If you were living in this apartment building with roommates, would you think it would be a good idea to take showers at different times so everyone can have hot water, or would that be too controlling?

In this story, one woman has a rule for her roommates that they don’t shower at the same time so the water doesn’t get cold, but one of her new roommates thinks this rule is too controlling.

Is she right? Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for asking my roommates to wait before they shower?

I (21f) moved away from my family 3 years ago to study and since then I’ve been living in a flat that my parents own.

The flat has 3 bedrooms so I decided to get roommates so that it wasn’t as expensive, and also to have some company which I find better than living alone.

I’ve had the same roommates for the past 3 years and we very quickly became best friends but they both left to go study abroad.

It didn’t take too long to find new roommates.

I looked for new roommates and found these two girls that I’ll call Mary and Haley. They both moved in about a month ago.

We got to know each other and I became good friends with Haley, but not as much with Mary because she’s more reserved so she tends to stay in her room.

The roommate rules aren’t that complicated.

I have 3 rules for the flat: no loud noises after 11pm on weekdays because we all have school or work; if one of us is not sleeping at home she tells the others (so that we don’t worry); and when someone is showering you have to wait for the end of their shower before you can take one.

That’s because the plumbing in the flat is old and doesn’t work super well so when two people shower at the same time the person that was showering first gets cold water.

And then obviously, keep the place clean, but that doesn’t really have to be said.

I’ve had these rules with my previous roommates and everything went well.

Mary doesn’t follow all of the rules.

Mary doesn’t really respect the shower rule.

Normally, what we do is we scream “shower” before getting in, and then we scream “over” when we’re done.

But there were a few times when Mary went into the shower before the other person was done.

I completely understand that she wasn’t really used to the rule as much as I was so it probably wasn’t intentional, and it was really hot so taking a cold shower wasn’t a problem, so I just casually reminded her but I didn’t really say anything.

Mary strikes again!

Yesterday, I was coming home from work a bit late and it was raining really hard so when I got home I went straight to the shower. I really wanted a nice hot shower because I was really cold and tired, but not even 2 minutes after I got in the shower the water turned cold.

I had shampoo in my hair so it wasn’t ideal.

I got out to see why it was cold and I heard another shower running, it was Mary.

I had to wait until she was done to go back in the shower and finally have hot water.

Mary thinks she’s too controlling.

Today I sort of confronted her about it and told her that it was kind of annoying and that it would really be better if she followed the rule.

She told me that I was controlling and was trying to monitor when they showered and everything they did.

I asked Haley if she felt the same way and she said no, and I also don’t feel like I try to control anything, or like the rules that I have are unreasonable.

Mary left right after the argument and hasn’t been responding to our texts.  I really want to fix it but I’m also not sure if I’m in the wrong or not.

If Mary doesn’t like the showering rule, she can find somewhere else to live. OP isn’t being controlling. Nobody wants to take a cold shower.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

She could give her a taste of her own medicine….or cold water.

Here’s a similar suggestion.

This is a good question.

It’s not like she didn’t know the rules.

If she doesn’t like the rules, she can leave.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.