Where’s The Bathroom?
“My wife’s four friends had stayed over after a party because they lived pretty far away. I was in the kitchen making coffee in the morning and one of her friends came up the basement stairs into the kitchen wearing nothing but her underwear. She didn’t say anything to me, she just shuffled past and went back into the spare bedroom. I was curious what she was doing down there so I went and I checked.
It turns out in her inebriated state, she couldn’t find either one of the bathrooms upstairs on the main level so she went into the basement and crapped beneath the stairs all over the floor. When her husband came out of the bedroom, I told him that he had a mess to clean up and directed him to the basement so he could find his wife’s surprise. That’s when he decided to use our clean bath towels to smear her crap all over my basement floor, then he just tossed the towels into the laundry tub. I never spoke to either one of them again. One good thing did come out of it though. We now get to say that ‘poop the basement wasted’ is the top of the wasted meter.”
Never Clean
“My (now ex-) husband and I rented a room to one of his coworkers. His coworker never washed his hands so there would be dirty hand prints on every railing or door handle from the front door up to his room.
He never showered but he would have a bath roughly once a week. This left my white bathtub a grey color with a black ring all around the top. He never flushed, so this left my white toilet a nasty brown color. The first time I saw the bathroom after he had been there for a week or so I cried. He smelled awful. He played hockey a couple times a week but still would just have a bath about once a week, so it was very hard to be around him if he wanted to spend time out of his room.
He never cooked, he just ate chips or fast food in his room and left the garbage in there until my husband would tell him it was time to clean it out before we got bugs. It was awful.”
The Worst Sister
“My half-sister is the worst house guest! She and her brood moved in with my dad and stepmom. She is 48, married, has 4 kids, and a dog. She’s also extremely lazy!
She doesn’t do laundry, cook, clean, or even clean up the crap her dog takes on the rug, all because she is a guest. My dad’s house now smells and looks like an episode of Hoarders.
I invited my dad and stepmom over for dinner a few days ago. They showed up and less than a minute later my sister and her kids (just the 2 not in college) were on my front porch. She followed my dad to my house and decided she was having dinner with ‘us.’ She then proceeded to call me a horrible cook, housekeeper, and parent. My house was critiqued by her, and well, my family, my house, and I failed her standards test.
For some reason, she decided to bring up my oldest son’s medical condition – an ultra-rare, but treatable condition. She said if he was her kid she wouldn’t have been able to handle having a sick child. She would have let him ‘go’ instead of selfishly keeping him alive. My son is four-years-old and he got sick when he was two. He has a few medical needs but he is 100% normal and okay.
My stepmom went off on my sister. She told my half-sister that she didn’t have to see my son fighting for his life in the pediatric ICU like she did. She didn’t realize how it’s a miracle my son is alive, and that we met several people in the PICU whose kids died. She told my sister that she isn’t a strong enough person or a good enough mother to go through what I have. So she should just keep her fat mouth shut!”
Thanksgiving Nightmare
“My in-laws lived in a different state and decided to come to stay with us for Thanksgiving. Despite my family inviting all of us to share Thanksgiving together (my parents lived less than a mile away), they insisted we do our own Thanksgiving. That’s fine because we never see them and it’ll be nice to have time with just them.
Well, my dad’s cousin, who was more like an uncle to me, dies right before they come. His funeral is scheduled on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
My in-laws arrive on Monday and not long after, my sister arrives and drops by with her kids. This turns out to be a big deal for the in-laws who request that she leave. She obliges, it’s not like she was going to stay for long and I didn’t see the issue but, it is what it is.
The next day is the funeral. The in-laws act like it’s a huge inconvenience. My family member died. I’m going to their funeral. At this point, I’m at the ‘highly annoyed’ level of their stay but I apologize and remind them that I need to pay my respects on time.
I come home to my turkey thawing out in the sink. Since we ‘don’t really have time to spend with them,’ they decided we had to do Thanksgiving a day early so they could actually leave on Thursday, instead of Saturday like they had planned. I am livid at this point but I bite my tongue and say, ‘ok, we will have Thanksgiving a day early.’ Crap. My husband took the entire week off of work for their visit but we will accommodate this plan too.
I get up at the crack of dawn and start cooking. I cook and cook and cook. Does my mother-in-law help? No. Does my father-in-law help? No. Does my sister-in-law help? Nope, not her. I cook the whole meal from start to finish. My in-laws sit outside and ignore me the whole time, spouting off that the oven makes the house too hot.
I set the table. Nice dishes, serving trays, the whole nine yard, because hey, I want it to be nice. My niece decides she wants to sit in my seat, next to my husband. Uhhh… that’s not how this works. That’s my seat. I just cooked this whole meal. She proceeds to throw a fit and say how it’s not fair because I’m closer to the food if I get to sit in my seat. Fine, I’m over arguing, let’s sit down and eat. Oh no, my mother-in-law has finally had enough and a screaming match ensues between my niece and my mother-in-law to the point where my mother-in-law stomps outside to retrieve a switch in which to spank my teenage niece with. More screaming. Stomping. Tears. My husband is trying to wrangle the situation but he is losing the battle. Finally, everyone sits, sniffling, angry and huffy but they sit. I realize that not only have they been terrible the whole time they’ve been at my home, they are ruining my Thanksgiving. So I make my plate and I say a prayer and I tell my kids we are going to go around the table and say one thing we are thankful for.
When it gets to me, I look at them lined up across from me and I say, ‘I’m thankful that you all are leaving tomorrow.’
I didn’t even bother getting out of bed the next morning to say goodbye and I still resent that whole visit. I could go on and on about my in-laws but I’m trying to move forward and not dwell. I just really don’t have anything to do with them anymore.
And we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my family on Thanksgiving day, so all’s well that ends well.”
Unreturned Generosity
“The worst houseguest we ever had was my younger brother’s friend from high school. Before he moved in with us, he seemed like a fine enough kid from a less-than-ideal home situation. His mom jumped from boyfriend to boyfriend and decided to move across the country midway through his junior year of high school. If he went with her, he would have ended up delaying his graduation by six months to a year, so my parents offered to let him stay with us.
This kid was the worst type of houseguest. He was incredibly possessive of his space, which he would basically block off whenever he was gone, even though his room was the only way for us to get to the hot water heater and boiler. He behaved like a neat freak but he was secretly a huge slob. He hid half-finished Bud Lights underneath the bathroom sink for a year and the types of bugs that gathered pretty much ruined the lower floor of the house. He would sit on his bed and smoke so much pot, and then completely pretend that it didn’t happen, even when we found a lit bowl sitting next to him.
He would ask my parents for money constantly because his mother decided he needed nothing at all since he wasn’t her problem anymore and then spent it on illegal substances or on building a thousand dollar gaming PC.
Here’s the awful John Wick, Old Yeller bit of it all: he constantly ate chicken wings and would leave the bones on the floor next to his bed. Persistently, for months, even after my mother asked him not to. One morning, he dropped his 10-piece wing bones and they were scattered around his bed like a Santeria ritual and my dog found them. He was downstairs getting ready from school, saw my dog choking, and just walked out to the bus. He didn’t tell anyone. My mom found my dog’s body about 30 minutes later. He never apologized; he never even acted like it was his fault. He just stopped talking to everyone in the family and ignored us to our faces. He moved out in the middle of the night, stealing the mattress he was sleeping on to go to his aunt’s house.
Two years later, we found him extremely inebriated and sleeping on our porch, covered in his own vomit. When I told him he had to go right now before someone found him & called the cops, he shouted, ‘hate you’ at me, threw up all over the floor and my shoes, took his vomit jeans off on the deck, and wandered away.
His name is basically a swear word in our house. It has been years, and honestly, I cannot find it in myself to forgive him. He killed my Buster, and he didn’t even have the decency to own up to it.”
The Cheap Millionaire
“My aunt and her brother (let’s call him AB) came over to visit my family. He was notoriously cheap (like he brought a rice cooker to a public bathroom to use the water and electricity to cook rice cheap), although he was a millionaire. He had also been trying to set his daughters up with my brother, which is why he came over.
We decided to buy three family size Popeye’s sets and three gallons of orange juice for an eight-person lunch, thinking we’d have at least one set leftover for my aunt to bring home for my uncle. Between my family of four, we maybe ate half a box of chicken, half of the sides that came with it, and half a gallon of juice. AB proceed to eat two full boxes of family sized Popeyes, ate all the sides that came with it, and drank two gallons of juice. His wife had to stop him because he was eating so fast that she thought he was going to choke and AB was giving dirty looks to people who went back for a second piece of chicken. After all that was consumed, he went to our bathroom and completely destroyed our toilet. Poop everywhere. On the toilet seat, under the toilet seat, the rim of the toilet, on the ground around the toilet, and on our bathroom vanity side, which was next to the toilet. He also clogged the toilet and tried to unclog it I guess? The plunger was covered in feces and toilet paper on the ground. He walked downstairs like nothing happened and didn’t say anything. He then proceeded to eat half a platter of fruit I just had served, I guess it was probably three oranges, two apples, and a quarter of a watermelon?
I was very taken back when I went to the bathroom and had to discretely grab my mom to show her. I end up having to clean it up because my mom didn’t want to make a scene of it. I’m still a bit traumatized. He wouldn’t leave until we ordered a huge dinner for at least 12 people and proceeded to take all the food once it was brought home. He was never invited back to our house.”
Unexpected Visit
“There was this guy (I’m a girl) I was friends with in high school, but he moved away between my junior and senior year and we more or less lost touch. We’d still Skype every couple months or so, but that was pretty much the extent of it. Let’s call him Theo.
I moved to Seattle for college. Partway through my second semester, out of nowhere, I get a call from Theo. Before I can even say hello, he says, ‘Hey, I came to visit! You’re in the dorms, right? I’ll be there in ten minutes!’
Well, I’m a bit stunned, but back then I didn’t have much in the way of a spine, so I just mumbled an okay and went to meet up with him. I don’t even fully remember what we ended up doing that day, I think I showed him around and we caught a bus into the city to go to the aquarium or something. I just remember that it was a little awkward seeing him unexpectedly after so long, but since we used to be close, I figured maybe he was just homesick and wanted to reconnect with someone familiar since he’d just gone off to college as well. He was talking about how he apparently had a serious boyfriend now, which surprised me since when we’d been closer, he’d been, uh, pretty ‘free’ to say the least. He’d identified as bi for a long time, but now insisted he was gay. Cool, okay, good for him.
As the day wears on, and he makes it clear he intends to stay with me since he can’t afford a hotel and his car is too small to sleep in. Alright, fine, I clear it with my dormmate and she’s okay with it. I only have one set of bedding and my roommate doesn’t have extras, so I tell Theo he can crash on the floor and take the pillow and blanket, and I’ll sleep on the actual bed and use my towel as a blanket. Well, about fifteen minutes into this arrangement and he’s dramatically tossing and turning, groaning, and complaining about how the floor hurts his back. Meanwhile, I’m freezing because it’s early March in Seattle and I don’t have a blanket. He asks if he can crash in the bed with me, and mostly to shut him up, I say sure. I’m aware this probably seems extra weird, but our high school friend group was comprised mainly of those super-touchy-feely goth/scene kids, so that type of thing wasn’t as unusual as it would be for most people. I still wasn’t thrilled about it, though.
He gets in bed, I start to drift off again, and then all of a sudden he’s clearly trying to feel me up. Like, zero to sixty in five seconds. I shove him away and ask what the heck he thinks he’s doing, he says he thought I was coming onto him all day. I put the kibosh on that immediately and tell him if he pulls that nonsense again, he’s sleeping on the floor. He pipes down for a minute, then wakes me up again to talk about how his boyfriend gave him herpes and whips his junk out to show me one of the lesions. At that point, I give up and I sleep on the floor. He gets the hint. Praise be.
The next morning I wake up to Theo coming back into the room from the showers, wearing my towel and shower shoes, and telling me that he didn’t like my shampoo because ‘it’s gritty.’ It turns out, he used up most of the bottle of my expensive medicated face wash/scrub, thinking it was the shampoo for some reason. For some reason that was the final straw, and I told him I was going to go get a cup of coffee and he’d better be gone when I got back. He thankfully was, but I discovered everything in my drawers had been messed with and rearranged. I had the foresight to bring my purse, wallet, and laptop with me, at least.
Later that day, I get a text about how it hurt his feelings that I was so judgmental and unwelcoming. I kindly requested he lose my number.”
No “Thanks” Needed
“Some years ago, a friend of mine visited me in the city I lived in at that time. We slept at my boyfriend’s place where he lives with a roommate. She was rude the whole time, making stupid jokes about the guys and said they couldn’t cook just because they used powdered chicken broth as an ingredient. I kicked her to the rail station the next morning but she forgot her phone charger and we hadn’t enough time to get it before the train arrived. So my boyfriend rushed with his bicycle to bring it to us. She never once said ‘thank you,’ not for the food they cooked her, not for the provided bed, and not for her stupid charger.
After one year passed, I decided to invite her again, because my boyfriend and I moved in together to a beautiful and amazing apartment. She came with a new lover we had never heard about and her untrained dog. I didn’t say anything about the dog as it climbed on our couch drenched in rain from outside, but what made me furious was that she didn’t bat an eye as her dog started to dig its claws into our couch. Not only doesn’t she respect other people or their effort for her and their belongings but she is fully incapable of raising and training an animal or caring for it.
Her visits were the straw that broke the camel’s back to end this friendship. I couldn’t take her personality any longer.”
Constant Emergencies
“My now ex’s brother stayed with us for a week. He had been in an accident and had a cast on his foot and the bottom of his leg. Before the accident, he was an addict who would stand in a Walmart trying to sell his food stamps.
We actually had a spare room that he could stay in with a bathroom right across the hall. Nope, he wanted to stay on the couch. He never moved from the couch either, unless it was to use the bathroom or go outside to smoke. He was only supposed to stay the night there, but my ex’s parents decided that they didn’t want him. So they left him at our place. While he was there, we watched what he wanted to watch. If you tried to turn it off, he would get all angry about it.
We took him to the emergency room several times because he was in so much pain. One night he ‘tripped’ and hurt himself. We were both there and he took a poor looking dive. Of course, we had to take him to the emergency room. The next night, we had an ice storm. In the middle of the storm, he needed to go to the emergency room. We refused to take him since the roads were horrible. So he just left. My ex left to go look for him and found him. She ended up taking him to the emergency room again.
Saturday rolls around and he once again has to go the emergency room. We’re waiting for him to go back and he’s begging me to buy him food out of the vending machine. Which I end up doing. He goes back and comes out not too much later. Apparently, they had enough of him. They tell him that he needs to leave or they’re going to call the police.
Despite being in pain, he wants to hit up Target for Christmas presents. He was telling us how appreciative of us for taking care of him. We go to Target and walk around for a while. We wait for him up front while he was going to buy a pop. He grabs one and just walks out with it. I’m livid that I spent my entire Saturday afternoon in an emergency room and that he just stole a pop.
The whole way home, I didn’t say much. He mentioned that he wanted to see some friends that night. I told him that if they’re around I’ll take him to see them. We fixed him supper, and I took him to his friend’s house. I was perfectly friendly with him when I dropped him off.
We woke up the next morning to angry voicemails and texts accusing us of being ‘mean’ to him. Apparently, sometime after I dropped him off, he started calling family and telling them how rude we were to him. Her family’s Christmas was the next week. So I got to spend the entire time being ignored and given dirty looks.”
We Need Some Fresh Air
“This happened to my friend when we were kids, but I was there when this happened. I’m from a very rural area in Vermont. There was a program in the 1990’s called ‘The Fresh Air Program.’ The program was for kids from inner-city areas to experience what it’s like to live outside of the city and experience nature. So this kid comes and stays with my friend for a few days. He’s nice and had a really nice time, we hung out all week.
Then it’s the day after he leaves and my friend called me to hang out. We lived down the street from each other at the time. So we’re hanging out for a while and I use the bathroom. When I get in the bathroom it smells terrible, I mean like really BAD. So I said something to him about it and he goes in there and he says, ‘what is that awful smell?’ We were the only ones there so we knew it wasn’t either of us. We look under the sink in the cabinet. It turns out the kid from ‘The Fresh Air Program’ didn’t know that toilet paper was supposed to be used and had been using their HAND TOWELS as toilet paper for a week. So pretty much we found a cabinet with a week’s worth of crap in it. We were around eight-years-old, but I will never forget that. Needless to say, his family did not sign up for that program again.”
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