We worked together for the first time yesterday, she seems really nice, and like she’s fitting in well! She joined a couple weeks back in the food truck, and started picking up cafe shifts on the weekday

I had asked her about her past coffee jobs and she told me about her FIRST barista job working in MEGACHURCH STARBUCKS which is NOT the wild part of the story but still wild

She’s from Oklahoma.

So at some point i asked, you know, where she as from and she told me, and I asked her how long she’d been in Philadelphia and she said 3 weeks

So, wow! She JUST got here

Said she just really wanted to get out of Oklahoma (understandable) and had visited relatives in Philly as a kid so she kind of knew it

Proceeded to tell me how she found her roommate on Reddit

To which i said to her “WOW, BOLD”

Friends, it lives up to that.

She proceeds to tell me about how she found this guy on Reddit, had a little back and forth, the talked on zoom

And so, she moves to the city, with this place lined up.

She shows up, and this man

(Important detail, he is about 50)

Failed to mention to her that his apartment is a one bedroom, so she arrives and she has to SLEEP ON THE COUCH

oh

my god

Yeah

ohhh my god

He apparently has since, given the bedroom to her, but now HE SLEEPS ON THE COUCH

but on the other hand like. as someone who also quit oklahoma. i FULLY understand

And also, his kids, who he has partial custody of, come to stay with them on the weekends.

i was just here thinking like, is she exceptionally brave or is oklahoma just that bad

MY QUESTION TOO

it's just that bad

I would have walked right out the door

I mean, i am not saying that as a judgement of HER

source: left oklahoma drove to the west coast and slept on a couch LMAO

Maybe she’s just braver and/or more trusting

as someone whose divorced dad had roommates that is so awkward for the kids too

RIGHT THAT WAS WHAT I THOUGHT

hold on does he make the kids sleep in the living room also, what

She said that it has been nothing but bad and intensely uncomfortable for her and she goes home as little as possible

like, where are the kids sleeping when they're there?

I guess the kids have some kind of pull out bed or something, but it’s like, child sized

at least she's physically in the city now which should make finding a new roommate somewhat easier

ALSO; SHE PAYS

$700 A MONTH

this all feels like uhh something a custody agreement would Not like

FOR THIS HELLISH SITUATION

good god

what........ surely she can find somewhere else for $700????

the good news is, one of our fellow coworkers’ partner had a friend wh was immediately looking for a roommate

So, the happy ending to all this is she has a new place with a vetted roommate lined up for April

GOOD

But i was FLABBERGASTED when she told me this story

I knew it couldn’t be good when she said she found her place on Reddit, and it really lived up to exactly the living situation you’d expect to find on Reddit

thank goodness but WOW

Yeah...

I learned a lot about

How desperate some people are to not live in Oklahoma

she sounds pretty lucky that the situation wasn't WORSE fdsjlf glad she's out of oklahoma, though. good on her ;;

that was my thought too....

oh thank god re april new place

it says a lot about living in ca that I did not understand $700 a month was not supposed to be a steal

but also this is wild

yeah tragically you cannot even rent a room in someone's house for that amount in miami

Sani_Caranza: I mean, it kind of is, which is presumably why she put up with it, but like, I WOULD STILL NOT PAY 700 TO SLEEP ON A COUCH

Philadelphia is probably one of the last “”coastal”” American cities to have even like, halfway affordable rent though. It’s a BIG reason we moved here from Boston. but even then....I give it about five more years, because everyone else also had the same idea as us and a LOT of people are moving here

OOoo that makes sense

(I know Philadelphia isn’t a coastal city, it’s just within an hour of the coast so i think it counts in that general category)

it's on the acela it counts

this is a wild story tho i cant ever imagine moving in with like. a middle aged guy

a STRANGER

We actually bought a house here because it’s also one of the only major American cities where you can...do that and not be a millionaire. It ended up being more cost effective for us to by a row house than find a place that we could afford for rent (in part because we have three dogs, so even places we could afford with like another 100 per dog)

whitticus: YEAH. I would not...have done it. I don’t know if she is just a very optimistic person, but my brain sees ‘middle aged man stranger looking for a roommate with a 20 something girl’ and goes DANGER

yeah real bad

was it like an optimal neighborhood or something?

I’m glad things worked out for her though

I actually didn’t ask what neighborhood? I know it’s nearby, because she doesn’t have a car, and the one other person she mentioned she could have stayed with was a 40 min bus ride away

I honestly think it might be in or around Manayunk, which if that’s the case, it IS a bargain