AITA For Telling my Roommate That He and His Friends Owe me For Breaking my Things
A Redditor (gender unspecified) is dealing with a frustrating situation involving their roommate and his friends. After an out-of-control incident where their roommate, while drunk, broke several of their belongings, including a family heirloom, the Redditor asked for compensation.
Despite a long message explaining the situation, the roommate only offered a half-hearted apology and hasn’t taken responsibility. Now, the Redditor is questioning if they were wrong for asking for reimbursement for the damages. Read the original story below…
‘ AITA For Telling my Roommate That He and His Friends Owe me For Breaking my Things’
Things have gotten out of hand, and we finally talked it out, but I think there’s still some left unsaid. A lot of it over the past 2 days in specific has been about dishes, but I’m not here about that, despite the fact that a vast majority of the dirty dishes have not been mine as I have been sick and only used spoons for soup and mugs for tea.
Two weeks ago, my roommate had Pneumonia, then passed it on to me. His doctor told him “it’s not contagious” but that was obviously a lie since… well, I caught it 2 days after he found out. The last 11 days (yesterday to when it started) have been hell on Earth for me, especially since I have Asthma as well. So this was not a fun time.
4 days into me having Pneumonia (so 8 days ago now), my roommate is drunk along with one of his friends. Blackout drunk, of course. He’s pissed off cause his girlfriend broke up with him (3 year relationship, so I can understand), and cause the weed and alcohol mixed together into something fierce.
I’m sitting in my Grandfather’s recliner, that I took from my camp before I sold it, and watching him make an ass of himself cause he’s breaking everything in the room that he can. Broke my broom (it’s a broom, I don’t care), broke a random white chair that was around to which none of us know where it came from, and was breaking his vacuum at the time.
I chimed in and tried to calm him down, saying it wasn’t going to help anything and tried to talk him down out of the anger. He ignores me then smashes the glass for one of the doors on my Grandfather’s snack cabinet (which I repurposed into a baking cabinet) right in front of me.
All I got from him at the time was a half assed apology, something along the lines of “oh, yeah, I’m sorry, that’s fucked”. I bitched him out with his friend sitting there on my couch laughing his ass off, then stormed back to my room. All of this happened at 2am.
A couple days later after I had some time to think, I sat down and sent him an extremely long Discord message (that he never read) explaining that he owes me for breaking the cabinet. We talked about it today and nothing came of it, other than me telling him that he owes me for the cabinet,
telling him that his friend owes me for blowing the speakers out for my TV, and that he and his friends collectively owe me for breaking my couch a week and a half after I moved it into the place. I come from a family that has the firm belief of “if you break something that belongs to someone else,
you either pay the person so they can replace it, or you replace it yourself”. I also iterated this to him during the conversation mentioning that I broke an office chair of theirs and am currently in the middle of trying to replace it. So I ask, Am I one of the Assholes for asking my roommate and his friends to pay me back for breaking my belongings?
Check out how the community responded:
NorthPortDad − NTA. Drunk or not, heartbroken or not, if he can’t handle his emotions and becomes destructive of your property, he owes you. Just don’t charge more than depreciated value for anything that wasn’t brand new
Info_LIB − NTA Make an itemized lists of items broken and how much money they each owe you to repair or replace your items. Present it to them and ask them to venmo you the money.
LetsGetsThisPartyOn − NTA. Of course not. Your break it. You pay for it
It can be tough to stand your ground when dealing with broken trust or damaged property, especially when emotions are running high. Do you think it’s fair to ask someone to pay for damages, even if they were drunk at the time? How would you approach this kind of situation with a roommate? Share your thoughts below!