Contents edited for clarity. There are these things called common sense and manners. If only they were as common as we think. There are so many people who don't know how far is too far. If you've never had the pleasure of entertaining a house guest that was without any brain cells or manners, read on!
People these days. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Good Riddance!
“A former friend of ours called us and said that her house caught on fire, so naturally we offered a soft place to land while she was dealing with the fallout. So we went and picked her up, brought her home, and got her set up for the night.
The next day, she grabbed what she could from her apartment and brought it over to our house. My wife washed all of her clothes, which by the way smelled the way you’d expect from being in a house fire. Unfortunately, that scent is really hard to get out, so our house smelled of fire for a long time as my wife was washing the clothes multiple times.
Eventually, we realized she was not trying at all to get her life back in order. She also wasn’t helping at all at our house, with getting her things together. She apparently just decided that she was going to just stay with us and coast I guess? Ultimately she then started being really critical of anything we did, tried to start drama, and was generally unpleasant to be around.v What finally broke the camel’s back was that I returned one day to find her and someone we had never met before smoking on our front porch. Not really a big deal, but it was odd that she didn’t let us know that she was inviting anyone into our house. The next day I went to take my medication that I had just filled and noticed that there were like five left from the prescription. She and her friend had helped themselves to my meds!
After that, she announced that she was going to stay somewhere that she was ‘welcome,’ and that we could throw the clothes and items away that we had at our house because she didn’t want them anymore because they smelled too much like smoke. The best came after she moved out, we read a story about the fire in the newspaper about the cause of the fire. She had caused it by smoking on the back deck of her apartment by carelessly not putting the smokes out.
We never really saw her again, she tried to make contact but we just noped out. She ended up moving in with some of our other friends, which we tried to warn them about and ended up almost accidentally killing their dog due to carelessness before being kicked out by them. Long story, kinda short, they explained that their dog, who was the sweetest American bulldog, that was completely deaf, would chew things up if you left them out. I know, that’s not great, but you get to know your dog and you don’t put them in situations they don’t excel in. They would keep him in a crate if they couldn’t watch him and keep him out of trouble.
She would let him out of the crate, which is super nice, but then would just leave and he would be unsupervised. The first time she left a towel out laying on the table, they caught him and re-stated their request. Next, she left something else out (don’t remember what it was), the same thing happened. Finally, she left both a towel and a curling iron out and he chewed them up. The cord to the iron got wrapped around the towel and caused an obstruction which resulted in emergency surgery.
This was on top of the other awful stuff she did to them. They finally booted her too. These are two of the most patient people I’ve ever met in my life!”
“It Was a Nightmare”
“There was this old ‘friend’ I had that was staying with me while he was in-between jobs. I went on vacation for about a month. They said they would walk my dog and take care of him and stuff. I told them my room was off-limits unless to leave the dog in there. I ended up coming back a week early due to work needs and didn’t let anyone know (not on purpose I just didn’t think it’d be a big deal.
I walked into my apartment to a freaking grocery cart in the living room. A full size metal grocery cart filled with clothes. I was so confused, like what is this. I knocked on his room door but it was closed. I smelled smoke but it was coming from my room. So I walked into my room. Holy freaking cow. The guy was in my bed with some girl smoking. There was food and trash everywhere and my dog was in a cage in my room with rancid goo souping up the bottom of it. In-between gagging and losing my mind, I managed to say enough words to let him know he needed to leave right now.
That’s not even where the nightmare ends. He wouldn’t leave. So I called the cops. They came and threatened to give me a fine for having a grocery cart in my living room and told me I’d have to evict him. So I went to the courthouse the next day and did so. Took two months for him to get out. My dog was so sick and there was no way I could afford what the vet was asking for treatment so I had to put him down. I’ve never even considered having a friend stay with me ever since. It was an absolute nightmare.”
She Used It All
“A woman I met on a dating site drove from South Carolina to Ohio to stay at my place for Labor Day weekend. She seemed normal until she used the toilet.
Every time she took a dump, which was twice a day, she used an entire roll of toilet paper. And let me be clear, she did not just use a lot of toilet paper; she used all the toilet paper I had.
The first night, she just stared at me and stared and repeatedly said things like, ‘God you’re gorgeous,’ (I am average-looking) and telling me all the things she wanted to do to me.
Finally just to shut her up I initiated some hanky panky. As I was about to put it in, she looked me dead in the eyes and said in a demon’s gravelly voice, ‘If you put anything in my butt I will literally kill you.’
We did not do the deed that night.
She then asked me to give her an advanced warning of when I’d be going to bed.
‘Why?’ I asked her.
This was when she revealed that she is bipolar and would ‘literally never sleep’ if she didn’t take her meds an hour before bedtime. It didn’t matter. I woke up alone—and hopeful that she had left. Nope. Turns out she (in her own words) ‘stood bare in front of the living room window all night, sobbing.’ I live in a second-floor apartment in front of a sidewalk. You’re welcome, neighbors!
The second day was me trying to avoid her in my own apartment and posting updates to Facebook during her two-hour-long poos and post-poo wipings. ‘I’m okay, still alive!’ was one such post.
I asked her to leave that afternoon and she did, but when she got back to South Carolina she sent me an email asking if we didn’t do the deed all weekend because I was gay. I assured her that I’m as straight as the day is long, but that I don’t usually prefer to get down to business under the duress of physical threats, and that after realizing how much toilet paper she used that no one would ever want to go near her butt, anyway.
Her final email reply said she respected me for being brutally honest with her.”
Caught Red Handed
“I had an incident with a paid sitter. Our dog walker – of five years – was squatting at our place every time we left town. These were four to five-day trips once a month, at some point in year three she excitedly declared she could do ‘stayovers’ for an extra $25/day instead of twice a day visits for potty and feeding. I happily paid her that extra $$, like a fool. We never found out she’d been there all along, until later on.
When COVID hit and we went on lockdown, we were living in a high-rise loft with increasing positive cases and shared ventilation. My husband got spooked, so we went to an Airbnb out of town for the rest of lockdown. Turns out, she was staying at our loft the whole time. She had the front desk believing she was house-sitting. She had a key, they knew she was the dog walker, so it raised no eyebrows. I dropped by to check on things unannounced and she had flat out moved in. Clothes in closets, toiletries organized in drawers, pantry filled with her staples, the whole shebang.”
Keep Walking
“A friend from childhood ‘Amy’ asked to come to visit with her new boyfriend ‘Jay’ and daughter ‘Ruby,’ I had not met yet. They lived in the south of my state about five hours away.
They unloaded a bunch of dirty clothes and sticky toys. Their daughter ran amuck, touching everything, terrorizing the cat, and screaming when she was told ‘no’. Their little girl screamed and had so many fits and they would rush to give her whatever she wanted so she’d stop. They also left her with me without asking me or telling me. I would find out when Ruby kept screaming and Amy wasn’t rushing in to give her what she’s screaming for to stop her tantrum or I’d wake up to Ruby screaming next to my bed because they left before I even got up. One day they went to the lake and left her and they wouldn’t answer my calls. When they get back Amy was surprised at my anger and frustration, ‘You’ve raised two of your own, what’s the big deal, it’s like riding a bike,’ she said.
I’d listened to Ruby scream all day and have tantrums because I didn’t rush to let her have her way. I took her to the park (no you can’t push kids off the play equipment, no you can’t throw sand at people) and to the water toys (no you can’t hit the other kids, yes you have to take turns) and then to the McDonald’s playland (no you cannot hit or push other kids, no you cannot grab food off other people’s tables). I never bribed my own kids and hated having to do so with Ruby. Nothing helped.
Amy offered to help with cleaning (wow how awesome of you to help me clean up after you, your boyfriend, and your holy terror). She broke so many dishes ‘helping,’ broke the vacuum, left diaper football’s everywhere even the garden, front yard, and driveway, dirty clothes everywhere, food containers left everywhere and bags of dollar store stuff, bags of odds and ends from various stores. There were so many bags. Her offer of help cleaning was always short-lived and usually just made more work for me. They then started asking me to buy things on my trips to the store, diapers, snacks, drinks, smokes, etc.
After a couple of weeks, I was mentally and physically exhausted and asked what the plan was because I was running on fumes. ‘Oh, we’ll get a hotel, no worries,’ they said.
There was nothing said for another few days. I asked again. They didn’t have the money to get a hotel. Mind you, they were both on unemployment and between them had $900/week! I can be very blunt but am mostly tactful and diplomatic. When I’m very stressed or my emotions are high I am not so tactful. Luckily she had known me, and I her, most of our lives so she didn’t get as offended as her boyfriend. I told her if they have $900 a week and couldn’t afford a hotel then they shouldn’t be shopping and eating out when I had been as gracious as I could be but I was burnt out and they needed to have their own space, hotel, Airbnb, whatever.
It took calling her parents, explaining the situation, apologizing profusely for calling as I know her daughter is a grown woman but I was at the end of my sanity. Her mom got them a hotel and they left.
They stayed five weeks in total. They left but didn’t bother to clean up anything or even offer, they left their bedding piled on the floor just rancid and dirty and all the packaging and trash from their purchases everywhere.
In the end, I had to throw out blankets, a couple of pillows, some Tupperware containers they’d left food in and tucked away under furniture and in piles of laundry, and a pan she had scorched something plastic in it. I had to have the plumber come to unclog my toilets (Pulled out toys and very large wad of shop towels). I called a handyman to come put the screen door back on because they had managed to break it off the frame but never did have a definite answer as to how and also to repair some holes in the wall that were most likely from their daughter throwing toys when having tantrums.
It took me over a week to get everything back to normal. Her boyfriend made a point of telling me I was a poor host as they were leaving. Whatever man, keep walking.”
Not Your Caretaker
“This is a pretty good story. So I had a really old/good friend call me and tell me they needed a place to stay for maybe a few days or a week when I lived in the Pacific Northwest. I of course said yes. Then she told me her girlfriend was coming too. Ok, great.
They showed up, and when they got to my porch she told me her girlfriend has strep throat. At first, I thought ok, whatever. But then I stopped and thought isn’t that highly contagious? But they were already here. So I just kind of started thinking to myself that I would have to somehow keep them in my spare bedroom and sterilize everything really well. But then I was just wondering why my friend didn’t tell me in advance, or if they didn’t know how contagious it is. Like if my girlfriend had strep, I’d go get a hotel and not subject my friend to that.
After about a day, my friend told me via text she had to leave. Which at first I was relieved, but then she asked if her girlfriend could just stay at my place. I didn’t know her, I had never met her in my life. I told her I had another couple that needed to come and stay with me (which was true) and that I was not comfortable housing someone I didn’t know who is sick. She said that was fine, but then when she came to get her stuff she acted upset and said, ‘Well see you sometime, maybe.’
And I didn’t hear from her for a long long time after. It was messed up that she put me in that situation to be honest. She was a long-time friend who I cared about. I obviously wasn’t going to put up with her trying to leave me with her sick girlfriend, but I was willing to help her out because she was a close friend. If she was gonna be mad about that, I wasn’t going to try to rectify the situation. She moved away with that same girlfriend and we never talked again. And for some reason, her girlfriend thought I was after her romantically, which wasn’t true. So I just never tried to be friends again.”
Smart Or Stupid?
“My roommate started seeing a guy who didn’t have a car and lived in the town over (about a twenty-minute drive). She would pick up him from his house and bring him to ours but she didn’t always want to drive him home the next morning because she would have to work early. This quickly turned into him staying at our apartment full time, despite protests from my second roommate and me.
After about two weeks, I noticed over $100 was missing from my wallet. He and I were the only two in our apartment all day. My wallet had been in my bedroom while I was watching TV in the living room. He’d been locked away in her room all day, but I also couldn’t see down the hall that led to all of our bedrooms from the living room. So it was easy to figure out that he had snuck down the hall and gotten into my wallet. But she refused to believe me.
I kept my bedroom door locked for a while and kept my valuables inside until I was able to get a camera set up. Then I left my door unlocked one day with a small amount of cash in my wallet in front of the camera to lure him. It worked like a charm and I got him on camera stealing from me again.
Showing them the video got my roommate to believe me, but he still tried to deny it. He got dumped and kicked out but I lost about $150 that I never saw again.”
A Dumb Boy
“My brother had a friend who was banned from our house too. These were my brother’s football buddies so they were mostly big dudes, this guy in question was one of the guys on the front line of the field so he was extra big. He had a horrible habit of leaning back in chairs, often too far back. He broke nearly every kitchen chair and most of the plastic patio chairs. My mom took those in stride, those were her boys after all, everyone called her mom.
One day he decided to sit in the recliner in the living room. He tilted a little too far back and the next thing you know, he was flipping over backward through our floor to ceiling window. This was not a good neighborhood and I was about six and my baby brother was maybe one, so obviously, we needed the window replaced as soon as possible. When presented with half the bill(my mom was too kind to ‘her boys’ in my opinion), his parents scoffed and refused to pay towards it at all. I was later informed that chairs were not the only thing he had broken over the years. He was no longer invited over.
She loved all of her boys, even with their faults. ‘He’s just a boy. A dumb boy but still just a boy,’ she would say. She still went to every game and cheered him on as well as the others, she still invited him out to the after-game dinners, she still invited him on camping trips, etc. He just wasn’t allowed in our home anymore because she simply couldn’t afford it. To his credit, he did show up to help clean up the mess the next day. He didn’t have money but he’d gladly help out with labor.
She showed more excitement for his graduation than his own parents did. She was the mom who brought cowbells to games and treated the entire team like she did her own son. If anyone got injured on the field, she was the first to their side(which ended up saving my brother’s life at one point). She still raves about Otis and the others and this is probably 20 years later.”
The Blame Game
“We had a house-sitter once who wanted to bring their own dog for the week. They assured us the dog was well behaved and housetrained. This was a pretty close friend, and their house is nice and clean so we believed them. We came home to find every rug in our house destroyed. The house smelled funky when we walked in, and I immediately found wet spots on our living room rug. I lifted it up and it had more stained areas than not. Same with the kitchen, hallway, bedroom, and guestroom rugs. I’m guessing this dog didn’t pee outside a single time it was there.
This was someone we paid to watch our house. Their house was all hardwood and had a dog door. I guess the dog just let itself out? Or maybe it does pee inside and they clean it up? Maybe the dog was freaked out in a new place? I honestly have no idea.
I didn’t confront them. We had a lot going on at that point in our lives, and just felt it was best to silently sever the relationship and learn an expensive lesson. We were planning a cross-state move and a wedding. All our small rugs went through the wash. The living room rug went right into the dumpster it was so bad. We tried to clean the bit office rug, but it ended up trashed too. We replaced the living room rug fairly cheaply.
They tried to blame it on my dog and kind of acted like they hadn’t noticed. Which I do not for one second believe either part of. My dog has had two accidents since we got her six years ago. Once on the day, we brought her home, and I told her no firmly and walked her outside. She got the idea and just asked to go outside from then on. The only other time was when she was recovering from anesthesia from surgery, and she kind of dribbled on herself. She’s got a bladder of steel and the best temperament and weighs 15 pounds. This other dog was a solidly 75-pound lab mix. Based on the sizes of the stains, it was not the 15 pounder. Weirdly, there was no evidence of poop in the house. So I really don’t know what was going on.
No, it does not appear that they made any attempt to clean up the mess. The rug downstairs was literally dripping wet.
We paid via Venmo before we got home. Yes, I’m a spineless wimp. No major justice to be found here.
Luckily all of my smaller rugs cleaned up well in the washing machine. The living room rug went right to the dumpster. We didn’t bother asking for money to replace it. Just figured it was a costly lesson in who we can’t trust to house sit. The rug wasn’t that expensive, I think it was $300 to replace. We found a really wonderful house sitter not long after. She’s a friend of a friend who has a lot of roommates and loves an opportunity to get paid to live with our dog for a few days.”
He Had A Special Rag
“I lived in a one-bedroom, one-bathroom with my then-boyfriend. He begged to let his best friend stay with us while he gets in his feet(moving from several states away). My ex explained he had some interpersonal issues like anxiety and told me how he was a bit traumatized from an involuntary stay at a mental health ward as a teen but was otherwise harmless.
He was a lump and did nothing for a couple months and I don’t know why I let him stay after learning about his special rag. A few days after he was living there I asked my boyfriend what was up with the rag draped on the side of the tub because it looked and smelled gross. He went beet red and stormed out. There was lots of yelling by my boyfriend saying, ‘You promised this wasn’t going to be an issue again,’ and stuff like that.
He had a single rag he used to wipe his butt after pooping. He didn’t want more than that single disgusting rag and he cleaned it by running hot water through it and ringing it out to dry. No soap because those unneeded chemicals could damage his precious. (Remembering the smell did make me vomit when my ex explained all this to me)
I don’t know what they worked out after that. I never saw the rag again and I didn’t ask(yes I was scared of the answer). As disgusting as that was it wasn’t evil or dangerous and I don’t even want to know the real reason why he used it. The last straw came after months of him doing nothing but playing our gaming systems, he used my game pre-order codes(back when they gave you stuff for that) while I was at work. Sounds petty but we were both done at that point(and I’m still ticked about it as I was never able to get that gear from my favorite franchise at the time). His hygiene/smell was the worst and he didn’t cook, clean, or pay towards anything.”
