Today, we are discussing housemates, and I wish to start off this particular piece with yet another personal story. The first element of contextual information you will need is that I am an incredibly non-confrontational penguin. I HATE causing others any sort of inconvenience, even to the point of my own expense, and I know many penguins and human beings who feel the same. The second thing is that, with flipper hands and webbed feet, I find the act of parallel parking (let alone driving a car) quite stressful. This stress is particularly heightened when in my apartment complex’s shared garage. It’s so badly lit that I have to use my phone torch to get around. What’s more, it has all the parking lines drawn so close together that the sole achievement of not bashing into my neighbour’s car requires Olympic-level accuracy. To avoid this anxiety-inducing task, I decided to start parking in the well-lit, accessible spots near the front of the garage. Now, these parking spots are technically assigned to other apartments, but at least 6 or 7 of them are empty at all times, so I felt it was harmless to use them.
Now imagine my utter shock and humiliation when I see a text on the WhatsApp group chat used by everyone in the ENTIRE APARTMENT COMPLEX with a picture of MY CAR situated in one of these well-lit parking spots. I don’t exactly remember what this message was captioned, but it was something of this essence:
‘Whoever owns this grey car and lives in apartment number 18 this is your only warning… DO NOT use my parking spot. It is not your property, I am the one paying for it. If I or anyone else on this group chat catches you doing this again this issue will be escalated to the complex owner’.
After that day, I walked to and fro my apartment door with my head down in shame. I was a nuisance to the housing community that had so graciously let me reside in its walls and let me park in its crappy garage. And now everyone will know me as the parking spot stealer rather than for my impressive diving ability, thick insulating blubber, and fantastic personality. It truly felt as though this WhatsApp message was the equivalent of gathering townspeople to stone a penguin to death, as our Blitzian so eloquently put it.
What I’m trying to say is, as someone who has been criticised in the very public, also vulnerable, setting of an apartment group chat, I do believe a tamer course of action is necessary. A housemate producing ‘washed’ dishes with obvious food still stuck on them can be a real pain in the feathers. However, sometimes self-aware people engage in not-so-self-aware activities like parking in someone else’s spot. Perhaps your housemate is simply unaware of her dishwashing deficiency. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and notify her nicely.
Post-it notes work well. Write a little message saying ‘please make sure the pans are fully clean before putting away smiley face love heart xx’, how could she ignore that? Or even better, stick up a detailed dishwashing guide with each step, accompanied with visuals, just like we had back in primary school when we were still learning how to wash our hands/flippers. Surely she will get the memo! Better than all of this, I’d opt to tell her in person in a one-on-one and casual manner. While you’re both in the kitchen, quickly mention to her that you found some pans with soap bubbles still on them sitting in the cupboard, and you were wondering if it was her who did it (obviously it was, but let’s not let her know we know). You could even show her an example of a container with food residue on it and politely ask her to please stop doing this in the future, or else the particles will solidify and go mouldy. Yuck.
This grievance resolution should not only encourage your housemate’s improvement but also avoid any unnecessary hostilities and awkwardness in your shared house environment that may arise from an angry group chat text. If your housemate is anything like this penguin right here, who now solely utilises street parking, she should course correct almost immediately. However! If nothing changes after these good-natured efforts on your part, then you have my full support and legal backing to go completely berserk.
