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Going to college can be a really exciting time for so many reasons. But it can also be scary, nerve-wracking, or anxiety-inducing for many of the same reasons, and all of these emotional responses are totally justified and okay.

Because for many students, living at college is the first time they’ve been away from their parents. And while some folk might do plenty of chores and have had a lot of independence growing up, others might have had a very different upbringing. Perhaps they haven’t done any chores in their life – because someone else has cooked and cleaned, done the laundry and taken the trash out, all while driving them around to friends’ houses and extra-curriculars.

So while we all arrive at college at different levels, the experience means that we can learn together – usually after a little bit of a bumpy start. Because it takes a while of living in filth before you realise that in fact, you do have to do the chores yourself now. It’s a normal adjustment period, and that’s okay.

What isn’t okay though, is jumping from your parents doing everything for you to assuming your roommates are happy to do the same. Because let’s be honest, they’re not. They’re still figuring things out for themselves, too.

And this was exactly what happened for the roommates in this story, who for the most part got on well – all except for one girl, who routinely refused to pull her own weight.

Read on to find out what happened here.

Turning my roommate’s room into the dump

In college, I lived in a shared house (each room in a house was rented separately).

For the most part, it was wonderful and I made great friends with my roommates.

There were four rooms upstairs and one large master suite downstairs.

But there was just one issue.

The girl who lived downstairs absolutely refused to take out the trash. The rest of us had no problem with it, and if we were the one who noticed, we took it out.

We talked to her several times about filling up the garbage and leaving it, and she always swore she’d help out, but never did. (Somewhat related sidenote, in general, she was not fun to live with, although I wouldn’t say she was absolutely terrible. Just very self-centered)

Anyway, she graduated and was getting ready to move out, and so was going through things and tossing them out.

One night, another roommate and I cleaned up the downstairs area, including taking the trash out, and went upstairs to hang. The next morning, we came down and the garbage was not only full, but had a separate bag and boxes stacked next to it. We were floored.

Let’s see what happened next.

Turns out, she had gone through her kitchen stuff (including food!) and room, and didn’t want to take the trash out. She was also still in bed, and had a habit of sleeping in.

I was so livid that I methodically took every piece of trash out of both bags and the boxes and carefully piled them in front of her door. Her bedroom had French doors, and I made sure to completely block both. I even wrapped some around the handles for good measure.

The pile was about 4-5′ tall, and her doors opened inward, so when she woke up later that day and opened her door, the trash fell into her room, and the only way out would be to move or clean up the garbage.

I told my other roommates that hopefully she’d get the message, and it appears that she did. For the remaining couple weeks she lived there, she didn’t fill up the garbage. She also didn’t speak to the rest of us, but, well, we counted that as a win.

What goes around comes around, and this lazy housemate certainly got what was coming to her.

It sucks that these students had had to take responsibility for the trash for so long.

It must have felt good to finally get their revenge!

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

This person enjoyed the story.

While others had taken similar actions.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought she might have inadvertently done her roommate a favour.

It’s quite normal for college to be a time when students learn to clean up after themselves. Sure, some students might turn up already knowing how to do all the chores because they had a lot of responsibilities growing up, but for others it’s a time when they can develop those independent skills, and that’s totally okay.

But what isn’t okay is sticking your roommates with all the chores because you either can’t be bothered or refuse to learn how to do them. And spoiler alert: there isn’t much skill to taking out the trash, which means that this roommate literally just could not be bothered. It shows a complete disregard and lack of respect for the people she lives with – who have clearly been stuck doing her share of the chores for too long.

Well surprise! Your trash is back – because your roommates aren’t your mom, nor your trash collector.