Guess why we fight!?! (in Contests)

I just thought of a fun little contest idea for all you happy CB'ers out there! For no fee, any interested person gets one guess as to why I had an argument and almost got in a fight with a roommate last night! We came within half a foot of pushing each other down a flight of stairs! So let the guessing begin!

Oh, and if you really must have a prize, here:
1,360 Slayer Bolts [18x2] (+2) 3,805

It's not much, but they are a rare item, so there ya go. Good luck.

I'm going to guess that you fought because there was only one computer available to use your BA and you both either had a lot of BA or it was maxed out.

Toilet paper was out and he didn't want to buy?

You do not like each other

Nope,
Nope,
And nope. Although that may have been a minor contributing factor.

Your roommate's latest "friend", along with your roommate, has been keeping you awake rather a lot lately. Aggravated by lack of sleep, things got ugly fast.

Nope.

And just to be more clear, the I'm looking for an answer that could be said in one word, although anything close or including will be accepted.

stealing.

One guess... One word...
Alcohol?

One word Bills(like phone bill or something like that)

Your roommate didn't do the dishes again and you finally had the last straw;)

Um, fascism?

cause of a text-based game called cb2! =P

borrowed clothes that weren't returned?

a girl?

Didn't give you you're messages?

Homosexuality?

You have sick mind, stephen. 8^)

I would guess it's college basketball game argument.

You "had relations" with his woman?

food

You drank his beer.

He drank your beer.

You misplaced his Kelly Clarkson CD.

He lost the remote.

You ate the last of the Spicy Cheez-its.

Jealousy (could be linked to Stephen's guess :)

Congrats! I'm going to have to give this to Logan! The magic word of the night was dishes! Although it happened in the opposite order. Not being much of a cook, I subsist largely on sandwiches, tv meals, ramen noodles, and whatever else I can microwave. And fastfood. But yeah, I don't make many dirty dishes so I hardly ever do them. Things escalated when he demanded I clean the sink and countertops full, and push came to shove after while.

Thanks everyone for playing! Maybe I'll get inspired one of these days for a bigger contest. I guess we'll see.

That is actually pretty funny.

That must have been someone else suffering lack of sleep for all his roommate's amorous activities. ;)

Do be careful, Vaynard, it's a small step to true Odd Couple rows. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11471503/

Let me think back to the last time the policy, "I'll do my dishes and you do yours", worked... ... ... alright it never worked... ever.

This is the fundamental problem:
1) People don't recognize how many dishes they really make. Even I underestimate the quantity all the time. A plate here a cup there. Even when you're ordering out all the time or eating ramen soup you still accumulate dishes.
2) It is an inevitable fact that someone will clean some other person's dishes. Eventually a person needs to clean another person's dish in order to prepare a specific meal. Everyone likes to use a particular pot or plate or cup and, even though they could resort to another dish sometimes, they are willing to clean that one dish if it is dirty. Some people are even inclined to do a whole sink of dishes sometimes, just to be nice or because they can't stand to see things pile up.
3) When number 2 happens people make note of it. The worst is that they will conveniently remember every last dish that wasn't theirs but forget what happened to the ones they made themselves. Point number 1 makes it easy for a person to think that they in fact do all of their own dishes AND have cleaned up other people's messes. Usually this is not true, but the disparity between the dishes you think there are and the real amount of dirty dishes makes it possible for everyone to think this at the same time.

Eventually the good china hits the fan and all hell brakes loose with everyone thinking that they are in the right.

The root of the problem is that your plan relies on a clear separation of labor that is impossible to maintain in real life. The truth is, people do not recognize every dish they ever made and they simply can not be expected to if dishes are allowed to heap up in the sink in the first place. The plan promotes an ideology that says, "everyone is responsible for themselves". When you look at a sink full of dishes, and don't recognize any of them to be yours, what you think is, "everyone ELSE is responsible for this mess". When a problem becomes everyones responsibility, it becomes nobodies responsibility, and nobody does nothing about it. I've seen it happen again and again and again.

The first thing you need to do is change the household policy NOW. You could start a policy that says that people should do their dishes right after they make them, but this is just as flawed and won't work. Sometimes you just don't have the time to do dishes. Sometimes you leave a dish in your room or forget one of them in the living room. Later on someone will collect all these and pile them into the sink. Now your back to square one.

My suggestion is to stop slitting each other's throats over this issue. Everyone should do dishes and they should do them regardless of who made the most or not. Stop whining when you have to do them as well. Personally, I think you should have just done them rather then fight about it. I don't mean to be harsh but your approach was that of a child. My other suggestion is to stop thinking of it as labor. I like to do dishes mostly right after work. I approach it as therapeutic. It's a good way to get your hands wet, relax, and simply do something that doesn't involve too much thought.

I've had many a fight with a roommate/s that had to do with the dishes. I've found that it usually isn't really about the dishes though. I mean, I actually like doing the dishes (and I even have a dishwasher that I neglect to use), and yet I've fought about it. The dishes were just an insignificant topic to fret over in the end-- there were deeper issues at hand. I no longer live with those people. Oh well.