Okay, real talk — usually it’s the sh*tty and deplorable landlords of the world that ruin our lives and blame us for our festering pest problem even though there’s a gaping hole in the side of my roof and they’re just trying to shift that blame onto someone other then their guilty AF selves. I’m not angry, you’re angry! But I digress.
Sometimes though, landlords get tenants that are truly evil, disgusting, and downright creepy. It’s probably wildly difficult to maintain a house or apartment unit for multiple people, so I feel for them, I really do. And I can’t even imagine what it’s like to walk into a recently evicted rental and find rotting hot dogs in the microwave because the people you kicked out wanted you to suffer in moldy hot dog disgust.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all landlords weren’t raging a**holes and all tenants were clean, respectful, and friendly? That would be so f*cking nice, y’all. But alas, we live in a world where jilted tenants leave dead fish rotting in the walls and call their sweet old landlady at midnight on Christmas Eve because there was a spider in the bathroom. How do people like that even exist? So while I try to figure out how to take care of my raging pest problem, just remember to keep it chill when renting a home. I mean, do you really want to be remembered as the tenant who left a foot of trash and moldy mac and cheese frozen dinners strewn across the living room floor? I don’t think so.
These 19 landlords had to put up with some of the most insane tenants ever:
1.
I had a tenant remove the kitchen island and bring it outside by the pool because they needed an outdoor serving area.
2.
We had one tenant who wouldn’t pay rent. We followed the protocols to evict him but he kept getting the judge to agree to an extension. He ended up staying rent free for 7 months. He also complained about anything and everything. “The neighbors are too loud” “Someone’s car alarm went off across the street”, “one of the neighbors has a cat and I’m allergic.” There is literally nothing I can do to remedy those situations. When he finally got evicted he left the apartment in shambles. Holes in the walls, curtains stained with what I can only assume was doo doo, and the rug was littered with cigarette burns.
3.
My parents had some tenants when I was probably 7 or 8 that never paid the rent and they wound up getting evicted. My parents decided that they would save some money and we would just clean the place up ourselves. This was their worst idea ever. I didn’t know what a lot of the stuff I saw that day was until much later in life. The first thing I saw when we walked in the door was a fish tank full of dead, exotic fishies. In the bedroom we found used condoms, used tampons, and used needles. Like, just laying around. Once we saw that bedroom my parents gave up and hired a cleaner but I heard what else they found. They found a cat shoved into the toilet of the master bathroom. It was terrible.
4.
Used to have a job that involved cleaning and minor repairs of rental apartments and houses between tenants. Usually it was easy enough, but the ones who were evicted often made it a point to wreck the place on the way out. One particular asshole decided to pack plumber’s putty into the sink and bathtub drains, then turn the taps on before he left. They had to get professional contractors to fix most of it, but I got to rip out a bunch of stinky wet carpet and water-damaged floorboards.
Laura is a freelance writer for TFLN. She likes to write about what she knows best — dating, sex, and being awkward, but usually in the opposite order. She is the Assistant Editor and videographer for Peach Fuzz, a sex-positive nudie magazine in ATX.
