Woman listens in on roommate's zoom therapy session, says, 'I literally had to.'
When this woman is angry at her roommate, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for refusing to leave the room during my roommate’s online therapy appointment?'
I’m 21f and have a roommate, Tasha, who’s 20f. Tasha has a lot of mental health issues and has trouble leaving our apartment for appointments, so she does online therapy appointments.
We live in a one room studio, so because of doctor-patient confidentiality, I have to leave the apartment whenever she’s doing her appointments.
The main problem is Tasha won’t tell me about these appointments until 10 or so minutes before they start. I’ll just be doing something random, and then she’ll turn to me and go “oh, by the way, I have therapy in 10 minutes” and I’ll have to get all my stuff and go somewhere on that short of notice.
She has ADHD and can be really forgetful, so I understand it on some level, but it’s pretty inconvenient. The appointments aren’t on a consistent/set schedule, so it’s not like I can predict when they’re going to happen and plan ahead either. This has happened 5+ times.
The last time this happened, which was about 2 weeks ago, I sat Tasha down and explained that she needs to give me at LEAST 24 hours notice before her appointments so I can plan ahead.
I said that it’s very inconvenient to have to pack up all my stuff and get out within 10 minutes, especially when I’m in the middle of an assignment or something.
I warned her that if it happened again, I wouldn’t be leaving and she’d have to find somewhere else to have her appointment. She apologized and said she’d set alarms so she remembered, and I thought that was the end of it.
But lo and behold, it happened again this morning. Tasha told me she had therapy in 10 minutes and she forgot to set the alarms. I told her that, per our talk 2 weeks ago, I wouldn’t be leaving the room.
She started arguing with me and said it was “just this once” and it wouldn’t kill me to go to a cafe or something for a couple hours. I was working on an assignment, and I can’t really concentrate anywhere but the apartment, so I still refused to leave.
Eventually, she just took her laptop and stomped out of the apartment to try and find a place.
But 20 minutes later, she came back and blew up at me saying that she couldn’t find a private place to have her appointment, so she had to cancel it. And because she canceled on such short notice, she wouldn’t get her money back.
She yelled at me saying I wasn’t being understanding of her ADHD and it wasn’t her fault she was forgetful, and I was being petty and ableist over nothing. I reminded her that I warned her this would happen, but she wasn’t having it and has now refused to speak to me for hours.
So I just thought I’d come here and get more opinions on if I was TA.
Let's find out what Redditors had to say.
aggressivecup writes:
NtA. You also pay rent so have equal rights. And 10 minutes warning means she doesn't respect your time or your schedule.
I'm assuming her therapist gave her tips and recommendations on how to best cope with her ADHD si that she can still have a productive life. Even after your warning she's still not making adjustments. So she's making her problem into your problem.
This is not you being abliest, it's you setting boundaries and expectations and her showing what she's incapable or unwilling to respect them. NtA.
usernametake7 writes:
NTA. Therapy appointments are scheduled in advance, so she had plenty of time to tell you about this one.
She had two weeks to give you notice, and she didn't. So now she has to pay for an appointment. These are the consequences of her actions.
Her ADHD isn't her fault, but it is her responsibility. That isn't being ablest, it's being realistic.
sweeper1985 writes:
NTA. You gave her very fair warning and she has a responsibility to manage her affairs better than this, ADHD or not.
I'm actually a therapist and I would challenge a client who asserted it is 'ableist' for their roommate to request notice of appointment times if they are being required to leave for them.