As we grow up, we’re often taught of the importance of first impressions. Whether you’re on a date or a job interview, starting school or meeting a partner’s family for the first time, it’s inevitable that their first impressions of you count for something. Of course, in a long-term relationship, like with in-laws, you can gradually change a person’s impressions of you, but in a short-term meeting, like an interview, you have no such chance.

This means that the kind of person an interviewer or a first date sees when you shake hands or say your name at the beginning is something that they’ll hold onto as they’re silently judging you, determining if you’re a good fit for them. It sounds scary, but if you are a warm and open person, or a very knowledgeable team member, you really have nothing to worry about.

The real problem comes when you make a bad first impression. Not just being a little timid or cracking an awkward joke to break the ice – we’re talking really bad stuff here. Saying something inappropriate, staring, dressing far too casually, swearing, injuring someone else – all these are reasons to believe that the first impression you made was poor, and to learn from that.

The guy in this story was keen to make a good impression on his new roommate, particularly since he was feeling low in his own self-esteem. But the first thing the new roommate said to him was a bad sign for things to come, with everything getting considerably worse from there.

Read on to find out what happened.

Bad roommate: enough is enough

A few years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I moved in with a friend – we’ll call him Bob.

Bob was a bit of a heavy drinker and partier, but mainly did so outside the house, so it was really no inconvenience. It was me and my (long since ex) girlfriend also living there.

I had lost my job and had been out of work for a while (not for lack of trying) in a very small town with not much to do for work.

Bob worked two jobs (he loved money and alcohol so much, he didn’t mind if he hardly had a life to get to enjoy it) and my girlfriend worked in a nursing home during the day.

Let’s see what kind of place this left the guy in this story in.

I felt pretty worthless, since I was no longer the breadwinner anymore, but did what I could to help out.

I got food stamps to take on the food situation for the household, cleaned, cooked and did whatever I could to keep anyone needing to do a thing once they were done working for the day. It was literally the least I could do given the circumstances.

About a month or two into our living arrangements, Bob suggested his old high school buddy (we’ll call him Rick) move in. Bob explained that he worked on the boats and he would be gone for a month at a time and back for two weeks. Dry, rinse and repeat.

My girlfriend and I thought, shouldn’t be a problem right? WRONG.

Uh-oh. Read on to find out what the issue with Rick was.

From moment one, day one, Rick was a major passive aggressive *******. Bob walked him over to introduce us and he shook my hand in a manner that he was obviously trying to crush my hand and intimidate me.

I could tell from how he looked and acted like an entitled *******, but what he did and said immediately after confirmed it: “So, you don’t work and live here rent free? Must be why Bob asked me to move in. Sure is nice for you huh?”

Before I could say anything, Bob spoke up and clarified that while I didn’t work, I kept the house clean, cooked and kept the fridge stocked, I was not mooching and was doing my part.

Rick proceeded to say,” But his girlfriend works while he stays at home all day? That’s totally not cool, it should be you taking care of her. Not the other way around.”

Let’s see what he had to say to Rick’s mean comments.

While I totally agreed that I’d rather be there for her than the other way around, I didn’t need this ******* commenting and making assumptions that this is what I wanted or needed to hear.

“Look, I don’t enjoy being the one who stays at home while everyone else works. I’d rather be out there working, contributing and doing something worthwhile. This is not something I chose. If someone called me and offered me a job right now, I’d take it in a heartbeat. I’d prefer it if you stopped inferring that I’m just a lazy bum,” I said as politely as I could, despite how angry I was.

Rick looked at me like I grew a second head or something and told me to calm down, like he hadn’t said anything that was the least bit insulting, even though he clearly had.

He didn’t apologise of course, and he eventually met my girlfriend when she came home.

But what happened when Rick was introduced to this guy’s girlfriend was even worse.

Rick was very polite, but proceeded to make passive passes at her. “We need to find you a working man” or “You could use someone like me to treat you right.” My girlfriend was less than enthused by this, and told him it was none of his business and she was more than happy with me.

So, from the get go, neither of us liked Rick at all. We resolved to keep as much space between him and us as possible.

Unfortunately, Rick had about as much social awareness, social cues, personal boundaries and proper etiquette as a rock. He constantly came barging into our living area, even after being told to either knock and be acknowledged to enter or not come in at all.

Also, Rick turned the upstairs half of the house into a two week long party central when he was home.

Yikes! This guy was truly out of control.

It was loud, between having over a dozen people all drunkenly stomping around and being loud, he was BLARING music so loud that the entire house was vibrating. His parties were also causing a huge mess in both the house and yard, as well as damage.

Rick and his buddies were also cleaning out the cupboards and fridge of all the food for the rest of us, effectively leaving the rest of us with nothing and having to re-buy the food out of pocket.

Bob was almost never home, he was either working or at a girlfriend’s place. Even when he was home, he came in so drunk that he would pass out so hard he couldn’t hear any of it.

He also woke up hungover and rushing into work, so he hardly noticed all that was going on.

So the couple decided to take matters into their own hands.

My girlfriend and I sat down with Bob and explained the situation to him. We explained that we had tried talking to Rick and telling him that he needed to quit coming into our living area all the time, and to either politely keep it down so my girlfriend could get some sleep for work or take it elsewhere.

We told him about the food, the major mess he was making and the damage to the house. Bob was livid. He told us that he’d have a talk with Rick and fix it. We hoped that would fix the issue. WRONG.

This clearly, like everything else, didn’t get through at all. And from there, it only got worse.

The intrusions into our living area were more frequent, ruining our personal lives when Rick was home, and the parties got even bigger and more out of hand. A couple of times, the neighbours actually called the cops on Rick’s parties and he still wouldn’t calm down. It was a living hell.

After going through all this, it became clear that they were going to have to figure things out for themselves.

We now knew that the situation would never improve and further complaints would only make it worse than before. We couldn’t move out given our financial situation and between us and Rick (being Bob’s oldest and best friend), we didn’t want to risk getting kicked out for causing issues. So I began finding ways to get back at Rick silently and without a way to try link it to us.

Firstly, he had to do his laundry downstairs since that’s where the washer and dryer were located, in our living area. So whenever he had to put his laundry in the dryer, I’d stop it and pee in it before starting it up again. All his clothes and bedding smelled like straight up urine and he couldn’t figure out why (Rick wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed).

Secondly, whenever Rick was gone, I’d go upstairs and dump out 75% of the alcohol out and replaced it with water. This reduced how loud and rambunctious he’d get, with the added bonus of having to go out and get more alcohol in the middle of the night. Effectively, we cut down the disruption by 50%, but it still persisted.

Thirdly, I would also, just for fun, put his toothbrush in the dirty toilet while he was out and put it back. Rick started complaining that he constantly tasted **** every time he used his toothbrush and that he couldn’t understand why. This was just icing for me, but he actually had a lot of trouble hooking up with anyone because of it.

But when all of this didn’t make much difference, they came up with an even more elaborate plan.

Eventually, despite all this, it didn’t rid us of either his presence or behaviour, and it was still taking its toll on my girlfriend. This had continued for a few months before I concocted a way to get him out of the house longer.

Rick always left on the last Sunday of his two weeks off in the morning to return to the boats. He also had a big fancy truck with HUGE custom tires on it. These tires typically ran about $300 to $400 a tire and were special order tires, hard to find outside of ordering them online.

So, I started putting nails under a couple of his tires before he left, so they’d puncture his tires when he left, but they wouldn’t go flat immediately. He’d get to the boats fine, but his tires would be flat.

Rick would have to stay a week or even the whole two weeks special ordering or tracking down new tires while he was stuck in the town he was in at a hotel. My girlfriend and I would either have just one week of misery or the whole thing being peace and quiet. It was glorious.

Finally, things started to look up.

This continued for about two or three months before Rick finally couldn’t take all his misfortune anymore. He told Bob he was moving out when he got back and that it was because everything was going wrong since he moved in.

This was especially funny because Bob told us afterwards that he was planning to ask Rick to move out because he was trashing the house, driving up the utilities, eating all the food and refusing to pay the difference.

Rick finally showed up a week late from the boats because of the tire situation, so there was no time for him to relax, between finding somewhere to put his stuff, somewhere to live and move everything. This took him all of his final off week to do.

Finally, on his last day, Rick came busting into our room and started being rude and saying he was leaving because everything had been going wrong and felt off since he moved in, clearly wanting sympathy or something.

Let’s see how they responded to Rick’s attempts at garnering sympathy.

We just nodded and said that’s tough while going about our business. Rick just kept going on and on about everything, despite the fact that we weren’t paying him any attention and you could clearly see that we didn’t care about anything he had to say.

Finally, we both got fed up and just looked him dead in the eye and told him he had been a terrible roommate who had no respect for anyone and that he deserved everything that was happening to him, plus some. He stormed off and we never saw him again.

Bob did tell us that he had been couch surfing since he moved out and that nobody would let him stay with them because of his behaviour. It was glorious and it brought a smirk to my face every time I heard it.

I’ve long since moved out and am no longer with that girlfriend, and my life is in a much better place. I lament to myself that maybe I was being too underhanded and vindictive, but this guy was toxic and in all honesty, he got what he deserved. I just hope no one else gets stuck rooming with this guy.

Wow, you’ve got to feel sorry for this guy going through this experience.

Sure, some of the things he did to Rick were a little mean, but sometimes when you’re a horrible person to others, you have to stop and wonder if all the awful things that are happening to you are just a coincidence.

Given everything he put them through, he should probably look at it as karma.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person was delighted with the revenge plot.

Though others took issue with one aspect in particular.

Meanwhile, this Redditor pointed out that his actions could have had dire consequences.

When someone is ruining your life week in, week out, like Rick was, sometimes perfectly reasonable people can be driven to do something crazy. And there’s no question that these unhinged revenge strategies were crazy – it’s just a bonus for the couple involved that they did, indeed, drive their horrible, disruptive housemate to leave.

But some of these pranks could have been downright dangerous, with Rick getting seriously ill, or his damaged car driving a stranger off the road. That really wouldn’t have been okay, and could have actually landed the housemates in serious trouble. But as it was, all’s well that ends well, and their constant, irritating schemes drove this menace of a housemate out of their lives.

It is absolutely not recommended to follow any kind of strategies like these. Instead, the tenants need to take up the issues with their landlord – in this couple’s case, Bob. But for the guy in this story, at least all this drama is in the past. No more Rick. It’s good to know that he’s got his life together now – and hopefully he will never cross paths with this disrespectful loser again.