Imagine breaking up with your partner, but you live together. When it came time to move out, would your work together to clean the apartment to make sure you got your security deposit back, or would you just want out and not care about the money?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he planned on helping his ex clean. Then she said something that he decided to take the wrong way just to mess with her.

Keep reading for all the details.

You should have better worded your threat because I saw it as an opportunity

Some years ago, I was 25M and broke up with my 24F gf. She had cheated on me after 7 years together and where we lived, we had a 1 month notice to leave our apartment.

In order not to pay two rents, I had to wait until the end of the notice before moving out.

In the end, she kept the apartment with a new roommate but we still had to pass the landlord’s inspection to get our security deposit back.

I moved out something like 5 days before the inspection date and living with someone you dumped for almost a month can be hard. She was either trying to convince me to stay with her, either trying to make my life miserable because I dumped her.

She said something right before he left.

As you can guess, when I moved out I wasn’t thrilled to know that I’ll have to come back some days later to refill holes, repair some stuff and clean the apartment with her before the inspection. But hey, I’ll do it.

So, just before leaving, sitting in my car about to start the engine, she tells me “You’d better really help me for the cleanup. You either clean really good or I keep the security deposit!”

Maybe a bit of context was lost in translation because this discussion wasn’t in english: the way she worded it could mean either a threat or a choice.

The tone and context sure enough clarified that it wasn’t supposed to be a choice.

But he decided to take it as a choice.

Some things to know: I sure don’t love doing chores, but cleaning isn’t an issue for me.

For her, most of it isn’t either but in the 7 years we were together she never cleaned the toilets or the bathtub drain (siphon?) because it disgusted her, so I did it and she did other stuff to compensate.

Money-wise, I was a working IT engineer and she was a student. So the security deposit (~300-400€ each) may be huge for her but I didn’t care that much.

So I simply replied “OK”.

She didn’t understand at first.

She looked at me a bit confused, not understanding my answer.

I said “OK, keep the deposit and do it all by yourself”.

I didn’t wait for an answer, drove off and when I arrived I messaged the landlord (with my ex in cc) telling them to send the full deposit to my ex and none to me and I never set foot in this apartment again.

He gave up half a security deposit to force his ex to clean. That’s hilarious!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I completely agree with this comment!

There is definitely truth to this saying.

Another person likes how he handled this situation.

This is a good point!

Unfortunately, this is often true.

Time can be more valuable than money.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.