The last time we talked with the Best Roommate Ever, he just wanted to find a place to live in San Francisco.
One month later, he’s broadened his horizons.
After his profane Craigslist ad detailing his virtues as a roommate went viral, the Best Roommate Ever lost his San Francisco job offer. That same day, he lost his current office job in Alabama—also thanks to his ad. After that, Wade Cothran said he had no need to keep his name a secret.
“Anyhow, if you’ve been following my story, you know that the company I was interviewing with in SF rescinded their job offer because of my Craigslist post. Want to hear the kicker? Two hours later I’m sitting in my cubicle when my current boss decides that it’s time I “seek other opportunities,” he wrote in The San Francisco Egotist.
Cothran, a professional social media marketer working for a larger marketing firm, understands why his personal social media campaign might irk both companies.
“I totally understand why I was fired,” Cothran told the Daily Dot. “My post was vulgar and could make them look bad.”
“But,” he added, “It’s still a big problem that I got fired not for anything I did wrong at work, but for an idea I had in my free time.”
Now Cothran, 25, is jobless and homeless—but it may be the best thing that ever happened to him.
He’s got an inbox full of “book proposals, radio interviews, television spots” and job offers—all as a result of the ad. And he wants to travel the world to check them all out.
He’s taken his “cult-like following” and used it to spur him onward to new cities and dozens of new roommates.
“I’m packing up my shit next Tuesday, and I’m driving my nomadic ass to San Francisco. No job. No home. Little money. I’m counting on my fans to follow through with promises of couches, bathtubs, garages and handjobs,” he wrote.
He told the Daily Dot that so far, his plan has worked.
“I’ve been traveling around asking if I can crash and people have definitely come through. I just woke up on someone’s couch and I’m not entirely sure where I am, but they threw an awesome party last night,” he said.
For the past two weeks, Cothran has been documenting the cities he’s visited and the roomies he’s stayed with on Twitter (he has 14,000-plus followers) and his Facebook page. In his latest update, he wrote he’s staying with four young women in Salt Lake City, Utah.
While the post has brought him fame, Cothran said he never should have been fired for his post because it happened outside of work. And he thinks this is part of a much larger problem.
“When we’re at work, we can’t talk about anything beyond the nine to five,” he said. “.We have to create false personas and live in this little work bubble. It’s bad for the human psyche and bad for society.”
He hopes he can show “what things could be like if we stopped perpetuating bullshit in the workplace,” he wrote. “If we stopped lying about ourselves for one moment and embraced our differences… maybe things could be different. Maybe I wouldn’t be fired because of an idea.”