The Roomate Saga Part 3

Earlier posts: Part 1 and Part 2.

In my last post I described how my roommate Sleazy Chick left sent me a text message indicating a stranger was moving in with me, then dodged my calls for a week.

She finally called back, saying Jack was a "student" who wanted to move to town 6 or 7 weeks before school started, so he could "settle in." Okay. She also said she planned to move her personal belongings out of her room before he moved in, but would return at the end of the lease to take her furniture and dishes. (This second part later turned out to be a lie).

While I was out of town for the weekend, she moved everything out of her room, but left a lot of shopping bags and trash in the apartment, outside of her room.

When I came back, the French subletters told me they had tried to ask her about Jack (which they had every right to do, since they were being forced to live with him as well), but were brushed off rudely. This only made me more nervous.

I know, "appearances can be deceiving," but it was hard not to remember my ex-con suspicions when I finally met Jack. He was older than your average college student, very burly, very tattooed, very very scarred and drove a very beat-up car. He looked like a man that had been at the wrong end of a broken beer bottle many times.

Luckily, I was able to move into my new apartment early, and didn't live with Jack long. He was probably rather nice, but living with an unknown man wasn't a chance I wanted to take.

Crisis averted, right?

No. After this, Sleazy Chick ceased all contact with us. Our landlord insisted we turn in all our keys together, so I kept calling her to ask when she was moving out, and if she could give me her keys. (We had apartment, room, closet, pool, exercise room, and mail keys, and would have been charged $5 for each missing key).

She refused to respond, even when I called again the day before our lease was up. I told her I assumed she was coming on the very last day to move out, and I left the envelope with all the keys on the kitchen counter, for her to turn in with her keys. I explained the situation to the landlord, and said my procrastinating roommate would come on the last day.

Remember Sleazy Chick's promise to remove the ridiculous amounts of junk she accumulated over 3 years? It didn't happen.

The landlord called me several days later and said Sleazy Chick never returned. The landlord was "appalled" at the amount of furniture, trash, knickknacks, dishes, food, etc. still in the apartment. It took 2 people 4 hours to move everything out and dump it. On top of that, there were damages in Sleazy Chick's room. The landlord had called Sleazy Chick before, without response, and was not dealing with her again.

Thus we -- yes, WE -- were being charged $800 for Sleazy Chick's crap.

Our deposit didn't even cover the full amount. On top of the money I handed over when I moved in, the landlord wanted me to pull another $100 out of my outlet-store, student-budget jeans, to cover her designer-clad ass.

That was what really galled me. I suspected I wasn't going to get my deposit back, but to have to shell out more money for someone else, in order to avoid my credit being ruined, seemed incredibly unfair.

I'm going to try to wrap things up in Part 4: Chasing the Money.