Living with a roommate is already a high-stakes gamble, but one college student just hit the absolute bathroom jackpot from h£ll. We have all heard stories about roommates who leave dishes in the sink or forget to take out the trash, but imagine walking into your shared apartment and being hit with a smell so foul you actually thought the pipes were leaking toxic gas. This isn’t just a story about a messy living situation; it is a deep dive into what happens when “cultural heritage” is used as a shield for a literal sh!t-show.
The OP is a nineteen-year-old college student who moved into a new apartment with a girl she had already known for some time. When they were using community dorm bathrooms, everything seemed fine. But once they got their own private space, things took a turn for the pungent. After about ten days, a horrific odor started drifting from the bathroom. The OP went on a cleaning rampage, scrubbing every tile and counter, yet the stench remained. She even submitted a maintenance request, convinced the sewer was backing up.
It took another week of living in an “unbearable” stench before the OP decided to investigate the cupboard under the sink. What she found wasn’t a plumbing issue. She opened the door and her nose was “violated” by a scent she compared to a porta-potty baking in the July sun. The trash can was overflowing with brown and yellow stained toilet paper. Naturally, she marched straight to her roommate’s room to get some answers about why the plumbing was being ignored in favor of a cabinet full of waste.
The roommate’s defense was that in Mexico, the septic systems can’t handle toilet paper, so everyone tosses it in the bin. While that is a real thing in many parts of the world with older infrastructure, there is one glaring problem with the roommate’s argument: she has lived in the United States her entire life and has never even set foot in Mexico. She is essentially cosplaying a plumbing crisis from a country she hasn’t visited, all while her poor roommate is gagging every time she brushes her teeth.
When the OP politely asked if she could start using the actual toilet—seeing as American pipes are, in fact, designed for paper—the roommate pulled the “disrespecting my culture” card. She claimed the OP was being insensitive and has been acting rude and standoffish ever since. It is a bold move to act like the victim when you are the one keeping a hidden collection of used bathroom tissue in a small, unventilated cabinet under the sink.
The emotional commentary here is just pure disbelief. Culture is about food, music, language, and shared values; it is not a free pass to create a biohazard in a shared living space. If your “culture” involves a practice that was born out of necessity due to weak plumbing, you don’t need to carry that practice into a building that has modern pipes. It feels less like a cultural tribute and more like a bizarre habit that she is refusing to unlearn.
It is a total bullsh!t excuse to claim someone is being “r@cist” or “insensitive” because they don’t want to live in a house that smells like a literal sewer. The OP isn’t asking her to change her religion or her language; she is asking her to use the toilet. The fact that the roommate is doubling down on being “offended” shows a massive lack of awareness for how her actions affect the person she lives with.
Let’s be real for a second: the OP is being incredibly patient. Most people would have moved out or called the landlord the second they saw that overflowing bin. The roommate’s refusal to acknowledge the “horrific stench” is the most baffling part. Does she not have a nose? Or is she so committed to this “tradition” that she has become immune to the smell of her own waste?
This story is a vital reminder that “respecting culture” does not mean you have to endure health hazards. If the roommate wants to keep up this practice, she should move into a house with a septic system from the 1920s. In a modern apartment, it is just plain gross. The OP has every right to demand a clean, non-smelly bathroom, and the roommate needs to realize that her “culture” shouldn’t involve making her friends vomit.
So, is the OP the ahole? Not in a million years. She is a survivor of a bathroom situation that would break most of us. We hope she gets the maintenance man to explain how toilets work to her roommate, or better yet, finds a new place to live before the summer heat makes that cabinet even more dangerous.
What would you do if you found out your roommate was secretly “collecting” used paper under the sink? Is this a cultural misunderstanding or just a total sh!t-show of a habit? Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever had a roommate with a “habit” this extreme!