What Would You Do If Your Roommate Forgot His Keys in the Apartment Door?

I have not had the best of days today.

The cause

I slept in a strange position last night and in the morning I was kissed awake by the mother of all headaches -- probably caused by a tight neck, as per usual...

I tried to massage the pain away.

- It didn't work.

I tried to stretch the muscles in my neck.

- It didn't help.

And finally, I decided to just ignore the pain. 😬

- That last ditch effort kind of worked, but my mental performance and my mood were not the best they have ever been throughout the day... Nevertheless, I managed to leave the bed and the house eventually and do my work.

The consequence

After about three hours of working outside and covering a good distance, I returned home. When I wanted to enter the house which I live in, I realised that my keys were missing.

My first thought was that I must have lost them while working outside. In my mind I thought about where they could have fallen out of my pocket.

I rang the doorbell -- hoping that my two roommates would still be home.

- Nobody answered.

Then I tried to call them. One didn't answer her phone at all, the other did answer and hung up immediately on me without saying anything...

I thought that might have been an accident and tried calling her again.

- No, it wasn't an accident. She hung up on me again without saying a word...

The search

I tried to think about where the keys may be now and how I could get into the apartment. I was sure that I had my keys when I left the apartment, because I forgot something and had to go back up and get it before I actually left.

Therefore, I concluded, I either forgot the keys in the door or in the apartment when I went back up -- or I lost them during my outdoor work. I assumed it would be highly unlikely that I forgot my keys in the door as one of my roommates would probably have seen the key stuck in the door lock when they left the apartment and notified me about that.

I was faced with choosing between two options:

1. Searching the keys along the way which I went during my 3-hour-trip outside. That meant searching the key on a path through the city of around 8 km or 5 miles. The chance of finding the key is virtually zero if I lost it while working outside.

2. Getting into the apartment and searching the key there, probably not finding it and then searching it outside (as in option 1) with almost zero chance of finding it.

I was already making an estimate of the cost for exchanging the locks in all the doors I had keys to as I was pretty sure that I would not ever see my keys again.

Getting in

As I had to get to a bathroom soon and there is one in the basement of our house that I could sneak into for emergencies, I rang the doorbell of one of my neighbours. Luckily, she was at home -- even though most other people went outside to watch the soccer game. After she opened the door, I went upstairs to our shared apartment and to my surprise, my keys were in the door lock. I was extremely happy to find them there and assumed that my roommates must have been in a rush and somehow they must not have seen my keys when they left. I couldn't quite understand how that was possible, but ok, it must have been like that.

I notified my roommates in our group chat that the matter had resolved itself.

To my surprise one of my roommates answered:

Yeah, I left your keys hanging there

You saw that I forgot my keys when you left the apartment and didn't think it was a good idea to notify me about that? You thought it was a good idea to leave the apartment with the keys hanging in the door lock? Anyone could have entered. Anyone could have stolen whatever they want out of our apartment. I could have searched my keys outside for miles if I had noticed not having them earlier. And then you didn't even answer your fvcking phone for two fvcking seconds to tell me about that when I called you?!

Needless to say, I'm fvcking pissed about the whole thing. I want to point out that my roommate is not stupid. She is quite intelligent. Usually, at least.

Your opinion

So what do you think about this incident?

Was it malicious behaviour on her part? Or am I making this a bigger deal than it actually is?

I kind of think it shows her egotism and disregard for other people in general or for me in particular.

If she had forgotten her keys, I would have called her to tell her about it and would have made a plan how to give her the keys. I used to think that that's what anyone would do for another. Apparently, I was wrong...