BEING woken at 3:30 a.m. by the ear-puncturing sound of drunks screaming, “Hot Pockets! Gotta get me some Hot Pockets!” is not fun.
Nor is watching some tight-fingered cheapskate eat a feast you prepared and then complain that you used his avocado without asking.
You shelled out $5,000 for a half-share of this?
Perhaps it’s not surprising that solitary New Yorkers, who can indulge their quirky food habits all winter long, clash with summertime roommates in a house where a misplaced grain of rice can trigger hissing fights.
And don’t try to get between a drunk and a mound of cheap pastry dough crammed with a nondescript filling.
“I’d be sleeping soundly and I’d be woken up by these drunk idiots coming home from the bars yelling, ‘Hot Pockets!’ ” complained Tamara Noble, an advertising strategist whose East Hampton house last summer became the battlefield of an uncivil war.
Sometimes the fight is less about food and more about money.
“The guys in my house asked us to kick in $100 each for a big lobster feast,” said a 32-year-old Internet consultant.
“They spent the money on alcohol, and all we got was two bites of lobster. It came to like $50-an-ounce for those bites.”
It works both ways, though.
One house in Sag Harbor was populated mostly by happy rich folk – except for one guy who complained when his avocado was appropriated for communal guacamole.
“It was the only thing he’d bought all summer,” said food writer Carolyn Carreno. “He wasn’t invited back.”
Mostly, though, food problems are a question of lifestyle.
For every summer renter who wants to drink Pimms cups and snack on cucumber sandwiches there’s a housemate who cherishes the feeling of the business end of a beer bong being rammed into their mouths as a gush of Yuengling cascades into their gullet.
Laine Fast, an ad agency project manager, signed up for share in Fire Island a few years ago and quickly found out that different people have different notions of nourishment.
“There were two fridges – a ‘kegerator’ with just a keg and another one with nothing but frozen burritos,” said Fast, 30.
It’s not always age that determines who will be a crummy housemate.
There are 22-year-olds who lovingly prepare sumptuous Saturday night feasts of heirloom tomatoes and line-caught Montauk bluefish.
And there are many 40-year-old bankers reliving freshman year, pounding beers and scarfing 7-Eleven hot dogs at 5 a.m.
Sometimes, the tension could make you break out the Prozac – but there have even been fights over pill bottles.
“I walked into my Fire Island house and the first words I heard were: ‘Is this my Prozac or yours,’ ” said filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi.
“The girl was accusing this guy of stealing her medication. These were not people I wanted to be around. That was the last weekend I spent in that house. To hell with the money.”