Roommates Tried to Accommodate a Friend’s Brother Who Moved In Without Their Consent — It All Fell Apart Over a Japanese Omelet
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When you care deeply about someone who is disabled – either mentally or physically – it can be really difficult to see how challenging life is for them. Because the majority of our world has not been built with disabled folk in mind, and our daily routines – going to work, trips to the grocery store, even meals at restaurants – can present all sorts of unexpected issues that disabled people and those trying to care for them have to problem solve at any given moment. And that’s before you even consider the way that other people can treat someone whose disability they either don’t or won’t understand. It’s heartbreaking to say the least.
The guy in this story has no issue with disabled folk whatsoever, and has tried his best to be welcoming to his friend’s neurodivergent brother. But the trouble is, he never agreed to live with him, but he seems to have just turned up and been accommodated by his brother, without the other roommates agreeing to share with a fourth person. But the real problem is that, given he showed up without warning, the roommates have no idea how to deal with the brother’s neurodivergence, and instead of helping them they’re just getting yelled at for allegedly being mean.
Read on to find out what happened here.
AITA for calling my roommate at work?
I’m renting an apartment with my friend from college, Matt.
Another friend from college, Andy, hit me up a few months ago and asked if we knew of a place he could stay, and we said we could rent a room with us.
It was cool until we found out he’s bringing his older brother Kevin who’s on disability, and they got bunk beds.
Let’s see how the situation living with Andy and Kevin was.
Andy was telling us Kevin need a change of scenery, and Andy would be taking on the bills related to him.
But Kevin has been an issue since day one, starting in common spaces because the tv is larger. Kevin wouldn’t let other people play on Matt’s PS5 not even Matt. So Matt had to put it in his room.
This caused an issue, and Andy was telling everyone that we are picking on his neurodivergent brother, but his brother was making it so that we couldn’t even be in the common areas of our own house.
Then, things got even worse.
On Thursday, Matt made Japanese omlets for breakfast, and I was working from home that day. There was screaming in the kitchen, and it turns out Kevin doesn’t like the smell of the omlets and throws them in the sink.
Matt told Kevin to stop acting like a jackass. Kevin got mad and started throwing all of the pans in the trash.
I called Andy, and Matt called him too. No answer. So we looked up his work’s emergency line and got ahold of him.
I was already missing a meeting because of Kevin, and I told Andy to get home right now. Andy said he couldn’t, but Matt said if he didn’t, he would call the police on Kevin.
Read on to find out what happened when Andy got home.
Andy got there ****** and yelled at everyone about how we are mistreating his brother – and both Matt and I said he’s got to go now.
Matt told Andy he had the weekend to figure it out, or Matt would get a restraining order on Kevin.
It has gotten around to mutuals what’s going on, and now people are ****** off thinking we are trying to make an neurodivergent person homeless – but the only reason Kevin can go back to his parents is because Kevin doesn’t like the rules at his parents’ house.
AITA?
Honestly, living with a neurodivergent person can be difficult at times, but it can be made easier through honest conversations about what triggers them, and through boundaries put in place by all parties.
But unfortunately these two original roommates were never given the opportunity to gain that understanding or learn how to help support Kevin because they didn’t even know he was moving in with them until it was too late.
And now he’s making their lives more complicated, restricting what they can and can’t do, and even preventing them from being able to work – when they didn’t even agree to live with him in the first place.
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Let’s see how folks on Reddit reacted to this.
This person thought that it wasn’t their fault they weren’t equipped to deal with Kevin’s disability.
While others thought that Andy was the problem here for bringing Kevin without mentioning it first.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who steps in to stop illegal driveway construction for friends down the road.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that the situation didn’t seem to be working for Kevin either.
It’s clear that Andy deeply cares about his brother. After all, he seems to have taken on responsibility for Kevin after it wasn’t working for him to live at home with his parents. He’s trying to give his brother a better life, paying for everything for him and even trying to bring him into an adult house share with other men, maybe to give him the social experience that he feels his brother was missing out on, and is defending him in the face of adversity. He’s even agreeing to sleep in bunk beds, just to give him a nicer life. Andy, in that respect at least, is a good guy.
But Andy is failing in a lot of other respects, particularly his duty to his friends and roommates. Because when he agreed to live with his friends, no one ever mentioned that Kevin would be a part of the equation. But now they’re stuck at home on their days off, trying not to trigger Kevin, whose behaviour is challenging for folk who aren’t trained to deal with it. And they’re not unreasonable for feeling that way, or for wanting Andy and Kevin out of their home. It’s not that he’s neurodivergent, it’s that they never agreed to this.
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