This was a couple months ago back in May.
I had been living in an apartment with 3 other roommates (so 4 of us total) for about 8 months. We are all women in our 20s. I barely interacted with my other roommates at all, just between our jobs and classes we never saw each other. We all had our own rooms as well.
For some context- on May 5, my fiance and I were planning to move into a new apartment together, so by the evening of the 4th I had just about all of my belongings packed up.. more on that later.
Though I barely interacted with my roommates, I felt like we coexisted well and we never fought or argued about anything, except for some very minor instances with “Vicky” and “Cara”. Those two were friends, and Vicky was definitely the messiest of the 4 of us living there. She would leave her clothes in the dryer for days, pile dishes in the sink for more than a week before cleaning them, and often forget food in the fridge until it would rot.
Maybe 5 times throughout my time living there, I would get a text in our group chat from Cara saying something like “hey op I talked to the others and they said the dishes in the sink aren’t there’s so please clean them”. This was annoying but it happened infrequently enough it wasn’t awful, and I figured Vicky lied to Cara about messes since it was just easier to throw me under the bus rather than own up to it herself.
On the evening of May 4, so the night before I was planning to move out, Cara sent a very long and scathing text to our group chat. She went on and on about how she is tired of “my” messes, hates all “my” stuff strewn about the apartment, and also personally attacked me, calling me disgusting and inconsiderate.
Since I was leaving literally the next day I didn’t see any reason to start a fight so I just said it was her lucky day and I was actually moving out the next morning. She replied “Whatever you say, just take all your stuff and leave”
Now the malicious compliance: as I had mentioned earlier, I had packed MOST of my belongings already, but technically not everything. The 4 of us all moved into the apartment at about the same date, but I moved in a few days earlier than the others. This means I had bought a lot of the communal items myself. I was planning to leave these out of kindness despite them being worth ~$400, however, once I got that text from Cara I decided I would in fact take ALL of my stuff and leave.
These communal items included: -all trash cans in the whole apartment ($100) -the wifi router ($150) -a large metal shelving rack (probably the one that hurt the most) ($150)
The shelving rack was likely the most devastating loss for them since they had TONS of stuff. For reference, the kitchen had 10 cupboards and 8 drawers, of which I used 2 cupboards and 1 drawer to store my items. The cupboards I used were also the ones above the microwave and the fridge since I am the tallest and wanted to be considerate. All the rest of the cupboards, drawers, and the entire metal rack (which had 5 large shelves) were filled to the brim with my roommates stuff. Essentially, there was absolutely no way they’d be able to fit it in the amount of space I left behind without buying another rack or putting it on the counter and floor.
I was careful to keep all their stuff from the rack organised and neat when I removed it, and everything from the rack completely covered the counters, kitchen table, and coffee table in the living room.
I moved out peacefully with ALL my belongings the next day and have been happy in my new apartment with my fiancé. A few days after moving out, Vicky texted in the group chat that “fyi, the wifi isn’t working any more” (I wonder why..) and at that point I left the chat.
I’ve wondered how long it took Cara to realize that it actually was never me that was making messes in the apartment, but I guess I’ll never know.
TLDR: My roommate was very rude to me right before I was planning to move out, so I took all of the communal belongings I had planned to leave behind (trash cans, wifi router, and a storage shelf they heavily relied on)