I'm going to go right ahead and say that this wasn't the coolest thing I have ever done.

I was living in a room in an apartment above a restaurant in Cambridge, MA. One of the rooms in the apartment opened up, so I had my little brother, an undergraduate in electrical engineering, come move in with me.

We had a third roommate, we were all “tenants at will,” there was no lease, and this guy was just a professional victim. He was always contacting the landlord about this or that problem, but our rent was so low, so I always preferred to just fix the problems myself by replacing things that broke with identical units, because I didn't want the landlord to raise rent.

This difficult roommate’s family lived a little west in the beautiful town of Newton, and I could tell that what this person wanted was freedom from living with his family, but he had nothing on the line— if he is evicted, he goes and stays back at home in Newton, just down the street. If I get evicted, my little brother and I head over to the Salvation Army in Central Square until we can find a new place.

In any case— this guy was difficult to live with. I was usually out at work in the Longwood Medical Area, but my little brother (college student with a loose schedule) let me know that the third roommate was usually home and cooking in the kitchen, or playing music very loudly.

Personally, none of that mattered to me. I just needed to microwave a little bowl of Campbell's soup for dinner every night at ~8:00pm, otherwise I got my food at the hospital cafeteria.

What mattered to me was, at this time, I was doing a lot of early-morning Guinea Pig blood draws to support ongoing vaccine studies. This procedure is a bit difficult, as you need to draw a relatively large volume of blood via the vena cava— which is a large vein that rests right next to the heart.

Any mistake during a blood draw and you will strike the heart or other vasculature. The Guinea Pig will have cardiac tamponade, will bleed to death internally, and there is no way to know this had happened until the Guinea Pig is found and sent for necropsy. What follows is paperwork. I've only made this mistake once and I felt awful for it.

The point is, I had a lot of stress regarding this, but this guy would play Call of Duty (the video game) all night long. I spoke to him about it, he stopped for a night, and then he just continued again.

As this continued, my patience ran thin. Passive aggressively, since he wouldn't be respectful, I would switch off the circuit breaker to his room, shutting off all of his electronics. I would stand by the breaker for him to come out and then just say “woops, I think something happened with the breaker.” He was a bit odd, and didn't want any trouble, so he would just go back into his room, wait for me to go back to bed, and then turn the breaker back on. Cue Call of Duty explosions and noise all over again.

Then, finally, we get a letter. Indeed, it's a rent increase. The issue was that it was still, from my perspective, below-market.

I indicated to the third roommate that I was interested in accepting the new rent, and I would cover my little brother ...