Okay so I want to preface this by saying I have never met someone so unreasonable as this one. She doesn't know how to organize or clean and the moment we ask her nicely to do something she flips out, throws a fit, and yells at us for all this stuff that really is ridiculous. She always wants the last word and literally only ever talks to us about boys--which, well, none of us nerd girl really bother to talk about boys because we are surrounded by testosterone in engineering classes and we really don't need more. It takes us more time to reload the dishwasher after she kind of tosses them in amazingly inefficiently and if she every puts things away it's a scavenger hunt to find them. She buys all this food and then leaves it to rot in the fridge until it's really nasty and then when she cooks once in a blue moon she lands half of it in the stove which she never cleans. And there is plenty more but I won't bother getting into that.

She's my roommate who has been giving the rest of us (it's 3 vs 1) a tough time. Now, I finally finished analyzing her confrontational style after the third argument we had as a group and was able to successfully counter part of it in the middle. She has this terrible tendency of taking everything ridiculously personally and then starts yelling about how unfairly we've treated her (pfft yeah right) and so even though we start the conversation on the offensive and being very polite about it, the rest of it is spend scrambling around on the defensive. Now, I've already resolved the issue (had that annoying talk today) and was able to keep her calm the entire time by constantly reminding her I wasn't her enemy but even then she goading me and just trying to provoke me into a full blown shouting match. But I called her out on her behavior every time (exhausting) and so it ended up alright--and I got to walk away feeling like I had won for a change.

But I'm frightened that she'll have another fit since we still have half the semester in school to go and since it's midterm season up till finals and she's particularly temperamental (like a 5 year old jeez). The other time we had an argument she left passive aggressive notes all over the common area. How has she even survived this long without having had to deal with confrontation in an adult manner? She's also at least 3 years older than we are. I just. Why???

Everyone of my roommates is exhausted and doesn't want to deal with her and I'm on my last leg. Does anyone have any advice?

Well, I would say the fact that she is three years older may indicate she hasn't had a typical path up to now, which may be part of the reason she doesn't understand basic cleanup habits.

I've realized some people do better with writing- like an email, some do better with reminder notes on a white board.

Some actually start to get the hint when you disallow them to use your stuff anymore and either ignore their dirty dishes or place them in front of their door/on their desk, etc... but that has only been after having explicit conversations.

Sometimes just explaining expectations in a meeting where everyone agrees on what ar appropriate expectations- kind of like startind over with an "apartment plan" on how to deal with dishes, chores, etc... could help. If there is no finger pointing but more "so how do we address cleaning up the kitchen on a consistent basis?" "how do we adress the fruit fly problem [which you may or may not have because of food being left out]" things like that... addressing the issue as a shared problem to sort out rather than "this is what you are doing wrong/that is upsetting us"

Um. Sorry, it's late.
She may not have had a lot of responsiblity before now and is simply not used to doing any of the things that are expected of her.
I don't know if y'all are cleaning up after her, eventually, but if you are, it's not going to help to demonstrate there are consequences.

Roommates are difficult, in general. Sorry you are having such conflict.

ETA: I've also found that, sometimes, pointing out hwo unproductive a person's communication style is can be helpful.

As in: "Everytime we want to discuss an issue in the apartment there is a lot of yelling and defensive talk and it gets extremely tense, how else could we ALL address these issues?"

I mean, you don't want to have to hand hold, but you kind of have to be a guide if you want a decent roommate sometimes.

Originally Posted by JosieTheGirl

Well, I would say the fact that she is three years older may indicate she hasn't had a typical path up to now, which may be part of the reason she doesn't understand basic cleanup habits.

I've realized some people do better with writing- like an email, some do better with reminder notes on a white board.

Some actually start to get the hint when you disallow them to use your stuff anymore and either ignore their dirty dishes or place them in front of their door/on their desk, etc... but that has only been after having explicit conversations.

Sometimes just explaining expectations in a meeting where everyone agrees on what ar appropriate expectations- kind of like startind over with an "apartment plan" on how to deal with dishes, chores, etc... could help. If there is no finger pointing but more "so how do we address cleaning up the kitchen on a consistent basis?" "how do we adress the fruit fly problem [which you may or may not have because of food being left out]" things like that... addressing the issue as a shared problem to sort out rather than "this is what you are doing wrong/that is upsetting us"

Um. Sorry, it's late.
She may not have had a lot of responsiblity before now and is simply not used to doing any of the things that are expected of her.
I don't know if y'all are cleaning up after her, eventually, but if you are, it's not going to help to demonstrate there are consequences.

Roommates are difficult, in general. Sorry you are having such conflict.

ETA: I've also found that, sometimes, pointing out hwo unproductive a person's communication style is can be helpful.

As in: "Everytime we want to discuss an issue in the apartment there is a lot of yelling and defensive talk and it gets extremely tense, how else could we ALL address these issues?"

I mean, you don't want to have to hand hold, but you kind of have to be a guide if you want a decent roommate sometimes.

Ah. Sorry when I say she's 3 years older I mean she's a graduate student and we're all undergrads so she's at least had experience living with other people (she's only in our apartment for half of last semester and all of this semester). I assume she comes from a fairly wealthy family considering how much food she lets spoil or just throws out because she dislikes it.

And whoops I forgot to mention we already established a list of things on the fridge of rules we all need to abide by. Which has helped a little but apparently not enough. I mean, I'm a pretty accommodating person so we've given her a lot of slack in terms of letting her know how it all works but she expects us to know when she has a headache or comes back from a long day of work without even telling us and so she snaps at us instead of telling us that now is not a good time. Luckily, I already confronted her on that today so hopefully it won't be like a smack in the face every time we try to talk.

I just hope she doesn't turn off the wifi (located in her room) and lock us out one day u_u

[Little Lulu]

It sounds like you are doing a good job of navigating with this person and maybe that is the best you can do. You may just need to grunt it out until the semester ends. Princesses don't relinquish their tiara's easily, if ever (I have a sister who is still wearing one at age 50 ... gheez) Go in your bedroom and close the door when you need to. Taking care of yourself is your best defense.

[mulan]

It seems like a nasty girl to deal with. It must gives you a lot of trouble. Who should do something about it is her...she should move to another place. The not cleaning, taking everything personally, get things dirty and fighting about the most little thing seems like my brother (except the part of talking about boys...but I have to hear everything he as to say about computer programs and games). It's nothing similar to your case, because I know him from years. I have a lot of patient with him. His bedroom is his place...we clean the other house divisions. I tried to talk to him peacefully over and over, but I'm pretty sure he has an hearing problem. The only way I see him change is getting alone without her sisters to done things for him. Every time he wash the dishes two times a week, he has an argument for not helping with anything else the rest of the week.
I think that you can do many things to change this girls behaviour. I would sujest for you to try to avoid her the most you can and to not fight back her arguments. If she feels that she is not welcome you have a great chance for her considering to moving. Hope I helped somehow, I would hate to have a girl like that around.

[henrydavidtherobot]

I say deal with it and never live with her again. Bad roommates don't change. This is why I live alone.

[healingme4me]

Just envision, her misery, if she were to ever marry and have kids. At some point, tossing out spoiled food and cleaning up after ourselves, plays a role in life.

Maybe mommy did everything for her? Not allowing her to develop independence. Was just having a topic of discussion with someone, from rl, and it came up, how awful of a parent her mom felt she was being, because she was having her kids get their own breakfasts'. And honest to gawd, as IF, teaching a preteen how to fend for themselves makes for a neglectful parent, but there are those out there, that raise kids like this.

Soooo....that could be part of it. If she's super sensitive to criticism, it's something about the way she was raised, and to upset mommy and daddy was the worst thing in the world. Sadly, it's for her, to sort out in therapy. In the meantime, you are all walking on pins and needles.

Hope you can make it another semester, without it affecting your studies, et al.

[Permanent Pajamas]

My solution violates PC's Terms & Conditions, but I will say this - she's never been cut down to size.

People like this have never experienced the other side of the coin, so they're clueless and indifferent to the suffering of others.

Why don't you kick her out and get another roommate?

And don't do anything for her. It will just make her worse.