Man Threatens to Charge Roommate $10 for Every Tech Help Request After Constantly Relying on Him for Basic Tasks

Mar. 15, 2025

A man uses a computer in a stock photo.Photo:Abel Mitjà Varela/Getty

Abel Mitjà Varela/Getty

A man is sharing his frustrations with his roommate’s technological inabilities after repeatedly helping him with basic computer issues that the roommate refuses to learn to fix on his own.In a post toReddit, the man, 27, writes that he and his roommate, 31, are “good friends,” attending college together and playing card games in their spare time.The man writes that he considers himself to be “pretty good with technology” — “nothing crazy but comfortable enough to do some pretty neat stuff with it.” His boyfriend, 33, is also pretty “sharp” with computers and has an IT job. The couple loves playing video games together, especially “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” where thousands of people can join and play together online.

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The man ran into trouble recently when his roommate wanted to be included in the video game fun.

The poster writes that his roommate is “terrible with technology to an inexcusable level. And to make matters worse, despite knowing how to google things or use trial and error, every time he runs into something challenging with technology, he’ll just say he doesn’t know what to do and sit there waiting for someone to fix it for him.”

People play video games together in a stock photo.Shutterstock/Shakirov Albert

Shutterstock/Shakirov Albert

The man writes that his frustrations with his roommate have reached a tipping point, and that he’s started to “get harsher in telling him he can either google it or log off because I’m not helping, I am so tired of this.“His roommate’s excuse for not figuring out his tech issues?“He tells me he never had a computer growing up and simply never got good at using them. But I think that’s ridiculous as I didn’t have a lot of things growing up that I know how to use now,” the poster adds.

The man gave his roommate an ultimatum of three options for when he and his boyfriend are playing video games:“1. Don’t join. 2. Join and google stuff and stop being a chore for others to deal with because he’s too lazy to figure it out on his own. 3. Pay $10 per occupancy of incompetence and asking for help until he gets tired of wasting money and figured it out himself.”

source: people.com