How to Deal With Your BKC Moscow Flatmate From Hell

This blog post comes courtesy of one of our anonymous contributors.

So! You hate your flatmate. Get in line at BKC Accommodation! And prepare for this to happen: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!  This is what happens when you complain about your flatmate:

Step 1: You send an e-mail to BKC Accommodation.
Step 2: You get no reply, so you phone BKC Accommodation and e-mail again.
Step 3: BKC Accommodation sends both you and your flatmate a form letter, telling you both that you need to get along.
Step 4: Your flatmate ignores the e-mail and continues whatever it is he or she is doing to annoy you.
Step 5: You send BKC Accommodation another email, and start to get VERY UPSET.
Step 6: BKC Accommodation invites both you and your flatmate in to "discuss the issues." Your flatmate might not even show up.
Step 7: You are given a choice: live with your flatmate and stop bothering BKC Accommodation, or move to a distant flat, far away from your schools. No matter who is to blame, no matter how much evidence you lay at the table of BKC Moscow, unless you are literally or figuratively in bed with BKC Moscow, BOTH OF YOU MUST MOVE OUT OF THE FLAT.
Step 8: Repeat steps indefinitely.

You MIGHT have a chance at getting BKC Accommodation to place you in a flat with a person who is not crazy or disgusting or evil - that is where a little thing called "bribery" comes into play.

• Ply the BKC Accommodation Manager with the following: chocolates, vodka, and, if you're very desperate: an envelope with 1000 rubles. Make certain that you use the words "gift" when you do this. Enclosing a card may seal the deal. 
• Compliment the BKC Accommodation Manager on her beauty. If you are a female, then tell her how pretty she looks today, and where on earth did she buy that lovely dress? 
• If you are a male, imply to the BKC Accommodation Manager that you would like to sleep with her. Make positive references to her body parts, including her breasts and ass.

Final Steps to Take When the Above Actions Fail

• Fight fire with fire. What exactly is the issue with your flatmate? Does he leave his dirty dishes all over the place? Put them in his room. Does he leave his dirty underwear in the bathroom? Get some plastic gloves, remove the items and place them directly on his bed, with a sign that says, "These are a health hazard, you disgusting moron."
• Does your flatmate stay up all night and make a lot of noise, making it impossible for you to sleep? Arrange to spend the night at a friend's flat. Set up your clock radio to blast rock music starting at 1 a.m. 
• Does your flatmate leave the toilet dirty? Get a jar, and pee into it. When your flatmate is out, enter the flatmate's room and spill your urine over all her clothes and bed. This is best done when the flatmate has just left the apartment. When the flatmate returns, she will find that her entire bedroom smells like piss, but the wetness should have dried by then. 
• Does your flatmate steal your stuff? Carry all your valuables on you at all times. Then enter the flatmate's room when he or she is out, and steal whatever you want. BONUS TIP: Steal things that look important, such as paper with phone numbers on it, directions, phone cards, and so forth. Toss them all in the garbage. 
• Call the militia and tell them you have an illegal immigrant living at your flat. (This only works if you or one of your friends speaks Russian). TIP: If you do this, make sure you LEAVE the flat after you do this, before the police arrive, otherwise you might end up having to pay a bribe to the militia.)
• Is your flatmate a truly psychotic person? Do they talk to people who are not there, scream at the walls, or scream at you? If this is the case, THEN YOU ARE TRULY FUCKED. BKC Moscow doesn't care how crazy a teacher is, as long as they show up when they're supposed to. If you or one of your friends speaks Russian, it may be possible to get the authorities involved and have the crazy flatmate carted off to jail or to the mental hospital. 
• Other possible remedies for a psychotic roommate include 1) attempting to drug him or her with sedatives by dissolving sedatives in his/her beverages 2) screaming along with them when they start to go crazy 3) inviting your friends and students to visit your flat and make fun of your crazy roommate 4) get a video camera or your cell phone, and videotape your roommate as he or she is "acting out." 5) post the video on YouTube with the tags "BKC Moscow" "roommates" "crazy" and your flatmate's real name. 

Good luck to you, BKC Moscow Teacher With the Flatmate From Hell! You are not the only one in your position. Many have come before you, and many will come after you. (Your flatmate might actually really come after you -- think about investing in a lock on your door. At the very least, barricade yourself in at night if you feel that they will become homicidal.)

BKC Moscow Accommodation Strikes Again

One of our anonymous contributors writes on BKC Moscow flats. One of many teachers on the "BKC Moscow Hit List"

After arriving in Moscow, I was taken to my apartment by a member of the BKC Moscow staff.  It was located at the end of the metro line, and in an area I was later told by veteran teachers was one of the worst parts of the city.  The staff member kindly walked me around the area.  She informed me that she lived nearby.  She then told me to be very careful because there is not a lot of foot traffic around and that it is not safe.  She told me to NEVER walk by myself when it is dark outside. I told her that I would have to do that as my teaching schedule had me working into the evening hours, and she reiterated that I should be very, very careful.

Even as we were walking in broad daylight, we were followed by several men and she told me not to speak to them and to BE CAREFUL.  The nights I did walk home by myself, I felt very unsettled. There were no sidewalk lights and I could barely see two feet in front of me.  In the wooded areas surrounding the sidewalks, I could hear drunk men shouting and bottles clanking.  I felt extremely vulnerable and unsafe.  I knew that I could not live like this for a long period of time.

The apartment itself was (apparently) a typical Soviet-style flat that left much to be desired.  It was also filthy.  The staff member even washed her hands after touching something and made a remark about the lack of cleanliness.  Only two lights functioned when I moved in and I was left living in darkness for several days until the repairman could come. 

My first week was spent feeling scared, disgusted and isolated.

I called the BKC accommodation manager and begged to be moved to a new apartment. She gave me one option, which I gladly took.  I was moved to a more central location and much nicer, cleaner apartment. 

BUT, I was sent to live with an older woman that BKC had never been able to successfully place a flatmate with.  This woman had lived in that apartment for years, harassing anyone placed with her until that person asked to be moved.  She successfully did this for over three years and was successful time and time again without BKC Moscow accommodation managers stepping in.


Immediately upon meeting me, I was given a lecture.  I was told we would not be friends.  I was shown what I could use and not use in the apartment.  I was given many rules which she expected to be followed. I did not want to move back to the first apartment, so I decided to try to live in peace with her and keep to myself. 

This did not work.

- She banged on my bedroom door almost nightly to yell at me about anything she could think of.

- She monitored my actions in the apartment and posted a cleaning schedule that she wanted me to sign and date.

- She removed my food items from the refrigerator because she did not want to share it with me and told me to "be creative" as to how to keep my food cold.

- She told me if I had a problem with that, to contact accommodation. I did. 


Finally, we were both requested to meet with the accommodation managers to try to work out our problems.  I showed up, but my flatmate did not.  We received an email the next day saying that we needed to make a compromise or else we would both be moved.  We decided to give it another chance.  Our compromise lasted about three weeks before I was locked out of the apartment at night.  She had imposed a curfew on me, and I broke it. 

The next day, I contacted BKC accommodation again and said that it was not working out and that something had to change.

My punishment for not getting along with this woman was to be moved to another apartment which required a 90-minute commute to work, which goes against BKC Moscow's "guarantee" that no commute would be longer than 1 hour.  After months of struggling with accommodation issues, I decided to terminate my contract.

The Flatmate You are Given by BKC-IH Moscow

New teachers quite often fill out a short form that asks preferences of the following types of lifestyle choices:

Are you a smoker?

Do you drink? Occasionally or frequently?

What is your level of cleanliness?

The Flatmate BKC Moscow Gives You May Be the Opposite of You

Current teachers have a theory that BKC Moscow takes those forms you filled out and simply tosses them in the bin. There is no other logical reason, since here are the facts:

• Smokers and non-smokers are frequently paired together in the same flat.
• Although cleanliness is subjective, there are some teachers who are cleaners, paired up with teachers who are filthy slobs.
• Teachers who simply work and study are paired with very young teachers who spend the majority of their time and money on liquor - and throw the necessary late-night loud parties that accompany this.

What to Do If Your BKC Moscow Flatmate Is Crazy?

Some more true stories from the field of BKC Moscow's World of Disgusting Flatmates:

• In 2009, a teacher attacked his flat mate with a knife, because his flat mate had an annoying habit of bringing home prostitutes and causing a lot of late-night noise.

• A female teacher in her 30s recently remarked that her 20-ish flatmate dirtied every dish in the kitchen and refused to wash them. The flatmate also soiled the toilet and refused to scrub her own shit stains from the toilet bowl.

• There are occasional stories of flat mates sneaking into the other's room to use personal computers, read diaries and snoop around.

• A male in his mid-twenties told a group of teachers that his 30-ish flat mate's room actually smelled, and the smell permeated throughout the flat. This person also had a tendency of leaving shit-stained underwear in the shower room, as well as leaving moldy plates and food inside his room.

• A female teacher reported, with horror, that her flatmate had not only snuck into her room to use her computer, but also left trash and dirty dishes behind.

• A male in his late twenties invited his long-time girlfriend to Moscow for a weekend. The girlfriend mopped the floors (in addition to cleaning the whole flat), and asked her boyfriend's flatmate to refrain from walking on the floors for a bit. The flatmate off-handedly remarked that she was a "bitch." The boyfriend was not happy about this at all.

• A brand-new teacher, who had been in Moscow for just a couple of months, was saddened when his flatmate did not invite him to a dinner party. The problem is that the dinner party was in their shared flat. The new teacher hid in his room until finally making a getaway to meet other new teachers at a club.

• One infamous woman, who has been with BKC Moscow for about 4 years, boasts that she has managed to make every single one of her flatmates leave. This older woman greets her new flatmates by immediately telling them, "You and I are not going to be friends." Then she shows the new flatmate around the flat, explaining, "This is mine, and you are not to touch it." She then begins cleaning and throwing things around between 3 am and 5 am. She knocks loudly on the new flatmate's door, and screams at them for not cleaning enough. She locks her roommates out of the apartment. Multiple female teachers have gone to BKC Moscow administration to ask for help. These teachers are told to move to another flat. The problem here is that in most cases, these teachers are forced to move further away from the schools they work at. The old, crazy lady? She is friends with the accommodation manager, and so suffers no punishment at all. Just a slap on the wrist and a "tsk, tsk." BKC Moscow doesn't care whether or not you leave because of this crazy person.

But we shall discuss BKC Moscow management and administration at a later point.