This is not directly about how high rent in Berkeley/California is, but about personal responsibility in the context of a lease agreement with a former roommate.
I happen to have a pretty awesome living situation-- we live on the second/top floor, I don't live with women, I have the master bedroom/bathroom to myself, there are two TVs (one for video games, one for cheap extended cable), and a comfy sectional couch that I bought for only $100. Not only that, I pay less than all of my roommates, who live in smaller rooms and share their own bathroom. I lucked out, but not without a fight.
When I signed the least last May, it was with four others for a four-bedroom, two-bath apartment. I had agreed to share the master bedroom/bathroom with a roommate I'll call Jane, and though she was hesitant to share, I assured here that since I am a workaholic I will hardly be home and will make every effort to consider adjusting to her emotional needs.
I commuted all summer long between my hometown and Berkeley, and hardly stayed in Berkeley more than once or twice a week-- I rarely saw Jane save hearing her when she got up for work. Nevertheless, by October she wasn't happy living with not only me in a shared room, but with the three guys. Five people just didn't do it for her. Given Jane's extreme emotional distress, we were very sympathetic to her plight and agreed to help her find a replacement roommate while she looked for a studio apartment. What was originally "helping" her became "doing it ourselves," but our efforts were not particularly fruitful at that time of the year and for that type of living arrangement.
Then she stopped paying rent.
I was more passive than I should have been, but it hadn't occurred to me that Jane's oversight might not have been so innocent-- she simply thought that she could up and leave her lease. I paid out of pocket for her delinquent rent twice and sent emails to the effect of "just letting you know, I paid your rent so that you wouldn't be charged the late fee," hoping that would inspire her to reimburse me, especially since I was using loan money for tuition to pay. When no "Oh, thanks, I appreciate that" responses came, I knew we had a problem.
The roommate search was exhausting -- who knew how many scams and crazy people try to live with you on Craigslist? --and I had decided that, since it was Jane's legal responsibility, according to state and city law, to replace herself if she wishes to leave a joint and several lease, I would cease the search.
I'll save you the agonizing details of how she got mad at me for this (and for not paying her rent anymore) and sent me a particularly cute piece of stationery with my reimbursement check saying "I should have never lived with you. Find a damn roommate. Disdain." The summary of it all is, she was playing hard to get so we threatened to sue for the delinquent rent and damages to the wall from her seventeen billion picture frames. And she made no efforts to keep in communications with us, so we had no way of knowing whether we were getting through to her or whether she just wasn't getting the messages on her voicemail/email.
She ultimately paid the remaining months' rent and has since not spoken to us. Jane took the hard way out, one that was more expensive for her (there were late fees involved, as well as lawyer consultation fees), and it didn't make her look any better in the end. In fact, I think less of her now than I ever did before. I had handled things from a purely business perspective: I just wanted her money because her name was on the lease. She took it as a personal offense, that I was intentionally failing to find a roommate. Many of the reasons she cited for leaving included "having her own business card but not her own apartment" and "wanting more independence, responsibility, and professionalism," but the entire ordeal of leaving us (the immature ones) was the most immature, irresponsible, unprofessional and exhausting four months of my life.
And what of progress? What does it mean that people can be so wrong about their responsibilities to other people? It completely mystifies me that Jane believed she could avoid penalty by just leaving us with an extra bill to pay, and makes me wonder whether others like her exist in the world. How do parents teach responsibility to others and themselves to their kids?
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I have a "friend" and I use the word friend in the loosest sense possible, who is the most unreliable person you will ever meet, but he used to be Johnny on the spot, but all the sudden will just completely flake on who used to be his friends when he says he will be somewhere at a certain time.
Your friend seems like a real character. I cant understand how some people think its okay to just jump ship and expect other people to pick up their dead weight. grr... Well at least everything is good now. Just kinda sucks you were forced to be the bad guy even though it was obviously justified.
The best part is, she had always told us that she "always does/gets what she wants." I admired this youthful quality in her, because it freed her from feeling obligated to obey a lot of mundane jurisdictional rules in student government (she was the Elections Chair in that fated ASUC post, but at least she wasn't the Attorney General). We just never thought she'd dick us out like that.
Unreliable people bug the hell out of me. One of my quasi-staff members always shows up late, or on the wrong day, or in ripped jeans and a hoodie, and he always has some excuse. lksdf. It just makes it worse that he knows it's wrong.
I hate feeling like I've let someone down. Like if I'm a couple minutes late to work I'm apologizing even when it doesnt really matter. One time I wrote down the wrong time for my schedule because we have a retarded system where we have to write down all our shifts on a piece of scratch paper instead of getting a typed out schedule. Anyway I got a phone asking where I was because I was 40 minutes late and then I basically floored it to work and had that horrible feeling like I was going to die.
I just cant understand people who can flake on other people and be so indifferent, they just dont care at all.
I don't think I've ever had a typed schedule.
I went to the wrong job once by accident, and to be polite I keep my cellphone on silent in my bag while I'm working... I missed six calls from my other work, the last voicemail of which said they were ready to call the police because they were worried I had gotten in an accident or something.
I felt so awful...
And I hate being late, mostly because my mom is always late. My mom is also a packrat, which is why I don't have any stuff.
Sometimes I think I have too zealous of a sense of personal responsibility. Others I think it's just Catholic guilt. Then I remember all the people whose sense of personal responsibility is too lackadaisical.
Ugh. I just started my new job. I dont think they hand out typed schedules either. Kinda lame. But at least the pay is good. Its too bad a lot of times college kids work so much they lose focus on school. I've been that busy before, where I almost didnt know where I was going. Usually something ends up conflicting with whatever thing I totally forgot about and I have to cancel something. Shucks to my disorganization. And shucks to my assmar.
Okay, okay. Get this.
I'll be in Utah. Utah. For three months. May 20-August 20.
At least I'll have fun, though my full-time paycheck works out to about $.50 an hour. Yes, there's a period in there.
Gotta love the theater.
How is that possible? I am confused. What are you doing? Theater?
Doing box office and marketing for the Utah Festival Opera. Stipends are great for employers, because they can basically ask employees to do whatever they want for however long they want, and it doesn't matter.
On the other hand, if I'm not getting paid hourly, I'll probably be less motivated to work efficiently, so summer will go by more lazily? I certainly work harder at the jobs I get paid more for-- not because it's a great deal more work, but because I feel like I should earn that $11 by doing a little more than what I get for $8.75. That's probably bad work ethic, but I got really apathetic and tired lately once I compared exactly how much I was getting paid for the demands of each job. Plus I like the boss who pays me more, better.
I always forget to hit reply.
Well thats lame. My first job was getting paid very little to do a lot or nothing depending on the day. And the store owner was crazy.
The job I just started now is okay. Its really physically demanding working in a home improvement store but the pay is pretty good. I like hard work though, as compared with sitting around. Although that would be nice if I could study for school at work. That wouldnt go over too well though.
My first job was working for my dad for very little to do a lot all the time, which really wasn't so bad. I learned that I never want to work in the food service industry again, learned how to fire people while they are high on ecstasy, and I filed my first income taxes when I was 14. Plus I got a kickass Christmas bonus every year.
afraid i will end up having a roomate like this! I hope it turn out better!
Em <3
I should probably post the happy sunshine rainbow story of my other roommate though, because it's misleading to think that all of my roommate experiences have been bad.
Just the ones that involve people with very little consideration for others or basic respect for the law.