Roommate Opportunism

At the beginning of this year, I moved into my new apartment with 3 friends. I was mistaken regarding the data which the semester started, and I ended up on campus a week earlier than my other roommates. Another one of my roommates was even more confused, and ended up moving in a day earlier than I did. However, my roommate chose one of the smaller and seemingly less desirable rooms in which to live. As a result, I was able to claim the largest room for myself. I thought this was odd, and confronted him about it. It turns out that he preferred the natural sunlight that lit up the room to extra space that he most likely would not use. 

In this case, my roommate acted in a way that he thought was opportunistic and I did not, due to our differing preferences. Where I preferred to have the biggest room, he preferred the room lit with natural sunlight and a beautiful view. One way to have allocated rooms effectively was for all of my roommates to have ranked our room preferences and rebalanced our rent payments to fairly allocate all the rooms. The New York Times offered a Rent Division Calculator to help roommates to determine who gets what room for what price. Using a method like this tool offers would thwart opportunistic behavior, as those with certain preferences would be charged for increased benefits. Instead, using a first-come, first-served method like is usually the case enables early movers or the misinformed, like my roommate and myself, to acquire value by acting opportunistically, and avoiding the cost. 

When my third roommate arrived, he chose the 2nd largest room and my last roommate was stuck with the smallest and darkest room. He thought this was unfair, as we all paid the same rent and received different value from the apartment. As a compromise, my roommates and I agreed that we would take turns paying his cover when we went out. This method, while imperfect, was our way of balancing an imbalanced situation. 

My second roommate gained another benefit by sacrificing room size. My apartment is oriented such that one bedroom and bathroom are very close, and the other three bedrooms are very close to the second bathroom. He was able to acquire the bedroom-bathroom pair, effectively allowing him to have his own bathroom while the rest of us shared one. This was an opportunistic act, and something that the rest of us felt strongly about. We ended up allocating the bathroom to my second and fourth roommates in order to ensure a fair distribution of bathroom space, while effectively giving precedence to the closer roommate due to proximity. 

Another case of opportunism is regarding apartment supplies. As an apartment with 4 people only really needs one set of cooking and cleaning supplies, most roommates can free-ride while one ends up shouldering the burden of the cost. However, none of us acted opportunistically because we are friends, and acting opportunistically in that situation violates unofficial friendship rules. In response to the situation, we devised a rotation for purchasing temporary apartment supplies, like soap, paper towels, and toilet paper. 

While there are many opportunities for roommates to act opportunistically, this violates social rules, which can act as a deterrent. While most of us would gain by taking advantage of such situations, the social repercussions of taking advantage of friends and people that you live with are severe. Essentially, being overly opportunistic in this scenario is not being a "good citizen", especially to people you value like friends.