Note that this is no comment for a reason. The vast majority of you like me, and are thus biased. Furthermore, you’re reading my account of events, albeit, as impartial an account as I can write. Basically, I don’t want to have a bunch of people slapping me on the back, telling me I did the right thing, or that my roommate was wrong/psycho/whatever.
A few months back, my roommate Shannon informed Ro of a Berkeley law which entitles tenants to bank-rate interest on their security deposits. And if they don’t recieve it at the end of the year, it entitles them to 10% interest on it. She was in favor of just deducting the 10% of our hefty deposit from the next month’s rent. I do not remember, but am prepared to assume that she would also include a note stating the reason for the deduction.
Ro said we needed to hold a meeting on this. Simon, Ro, and myself immediately said “No.” I do not remember the position taken by Scott, Shannon’s boyfriend. Simon definitely wants to stay here, and has since he moved in. Ro and I thought at the time that we might be staying.
We eventually worked out an arrangement whereby we would ask for 3-4%, inform them of the 10% and leave it at that. Shannon was deeply dissatisfied with this result. Simon and Ro offered to pay her the difference, which she turned down.
Ro has a great deal of difficulty calling Shelley, our landlady, who lives in the UK near Cambridge, I think, and sends her email. Shannon frequently reminds and checks in with Ro about this. She also did a fair amount of research into berkeley law, noting valid reasons for eviction, and that this is not among them.
Fast forward a couple months. We recieve an email from shelley’s husband saying he’ll write out a check for 7%, then a letter from shelley with a check for 10%, for the whole year, more than even the penalty required of her.
During a future rent negotiation meeting, while arranging how much is paid for each room, wherein Simon attempts to persuade Shannon and Scott, who are wanting to live together in a single room, that two people living in the same room ought to pay more than a single person in that room, Simon tells Shannon “if you don’t advocate for your interests, nobody else will”. Or something very similar to that.
Shannon, upon hearing this, thinks about the security deposit interest and all the work she’s done on it. (Way more than I did, I grant. The only ‘work’ I did on it, was help constructing the plan less likely to be offensive to Shelley (our landlady)) And she decides that she deserves the “extra”. Which is to say, anything we recieved above and beyond the market rate. I’m not sure if it was a later amendment or an original part of the plan that Ro was also deserving.
Once again she calls up Ro, suggesting that she just deduct it from the pot (our household e-accounting stuff, setup by Simon). Ro recommends a house meeting. This was Monday. The day before he and I left for the meeting in LA. When we get home from work at 6, Simon’s not home, and we’re just grabbing food (me) and a nap (Ro). No meeting. At 7 or 7:30 we leave for the office and stay til 11ish. We get home at around 11:30, Shannon is up (which is unusual for you). She suggests an immediate meeting, Ro says it ain’t happening.
We leave for LA early the next morning. Sometime in the middle of the day, I get a voicemail from Shannon saying that she wants to discuss this with us individually since we can’t meet. I leave that until the evening at the den of Ken (
I called Tom up and asked him what was going on. He was like “Not my problem, Shannon called me up, was crying, etc. I’m staying out of it, I’ll let you guys handle it, I’m going along with whatever other people decide.”
That’s pretty much it until we get back from LA. Ro organizes a meeting for that evening. We sit around and talk about it. Much heat is exchanged. Shannon believes she deserves the money as a reward for work done. She feels a) that she is the reason we have any of the money (The information she provided certainly is _a_ reason) and b) that the rest of us said we didn’t care and c) none of us gave her any gratitude for the work she’d done
I point out that interest is payment for holding someone’s money, and that it wasn’t mostly Shannon’s money that was being held. I suggest that if anyone deserves more, it’s Ro (more precisely, some combination of Ro, Tom, and Simon), because I’ve owed them money since I moved in. I tell her she deserves thanks, and I thank her, and then I say she doesn’t deserve what she’s asking for.
(timing on meeting events is non-existant, though, obviously relevant. I remember what was said, but not exactly when.) I ask her to explain her rationale. I thank her for her efforts when she does, but tell her that I don’t feel she deserves the money. She focuses on me as the big baddy. She asks me “How do you feel you’ve earned this money?” In there somewhere I say “What I hear you saying is that you’re hurt and offended that we didn’t say ‘Thank you’, and now you want money.” Later… “I think you’re saying this because we’re not friends.” (I didn’t regard her as close, and was oft frustrated by her micro-accounting and neatness, but I never regarded her with hostility. I think the gestures I’ve intended as friendly overtures were never recieved as such). To which I responded “you can believe that if you like.”
I offer my little Modest Proposal (in the eating Irish babies sense). I say that Shannon is entitled to compensation for her time, at an hourly wage equivalent to what she made over the summer at TiVo. And I rapidly follow that up with asking simon how many hours he spent developing “the pot” and what he made over the summer at IBM. I explicitly make the point that many of us are making efforts for the common good here, and that nickel and diming it is just ridiculous.
Ro suggests that Shannon should feel happy about the $132 she got and leave it at that, as he did.
Shannon at the end of the meeting is hostile. Simon continues to think it’s wrong, but not worth his time, effort, or money to care about. He says she can have his money if she wants it. Ro says he’s not giving her his money. I say likewise. Scott says “I guess I agree with Simon”, to which Shannon says, clearly to him “What? … We’ll talk about that later.”
Shannon says that the meeting is getting us nowhere, which is true. (I’m eliding alot that is in a similar vein to what has been stated already. This took over an hour to reach). Then Ro brings up something from the rent negotiation meeting which he heard from me.
I’d not thought much of it, until I mentioned it to Ro: Shannon was planning on staying with Scott, but not signing the lease. Neither Shannon nor Scott feel our landlady has been good to us. Simon is indifferent. Ro and myself, the only people in the room to have met Shelly, are averse to screwing her. Ro points out that Shelley agreed to renew the lease not knowing that neither Ro nor I would be part of it. Further, he says that he may have to write a letter to Shelley saying “Stephen and I are leaving the house, but I cannot reccomend the people who are remaining as good tenants.” Simon is vaguely chagrined about planning lying to the landlady, especially when it is pointed out that she could be told the truth, and make up her own mind.
Saturday morning, I’m in the kitchen with Ro, and Shannon comes out of her bedroom to use the restroom. I say “good morning”, and she only snorts. She hasn’t said anything to me since. Gonna be a frosty month, I suspect. Ironically to my mind, Simon, who said “I haven’t thanked you, and I never will” but gave her the money, she’s chatting with.
I don’t think Shannon is a bad person. I think she really believes she is deserving of everything she asked for. I didn’t say it, but speaking as someone who has taken things not his in the [distant] past, I did it believing that, in some way, it was the right thing to do. I would like to mend fences with her. But it’s not going to involve a flow of money. If that’s what it takes, the fences can stay broken. $132 I debatably don’t deserve isn’t worth a month of housemate hostility. But I do regard her larger-than-even share as a theft-by-words. And resisting a con job is worth housemate hostility.