The Laundry Room Shuffle

Here we are a traveling and experiencing something that we are blessed to not have to do in our regular life. Share a public laundry-room. Even now, we are blessed that we have the option of using this facility without having to pay for the washing and drying itself, save for the detergent. I am witnessing an interesting phenomena. The leavers and the stayers. I am a stayer and I am glad to be. When I came into the laundry room, there were no people in here, however 2 of the 4 washing machines were in use. When I say “in use” I mean one of them is broken and the other has someone’s abandoned laundry in it. Seeing as how there was no one else, I grabbed up the remaining 2 washing machines and got started on my vigil. Then enters Chatty McChatterson (whom I have given this name because I cannot remember how she introduced herself to me but I AM enjoying her company) and finds that there are no available machines. This is where I insert a ‘facebook quiz’ type question. Are you a person who, empties the machine of abandoned clothes and refills it with your own, leaving the wet clothes in a pile on the next machine over? Or do you check the time and come back in a little while to see if the machine has been cleared? Or do you give up all together and go back to your room with your dirty chonies? I won’t ask you all the random facebook questions to determine your answer to this survery such as, “What color is your hair?” “Where did you attend school?” and “Do you like green tea or black tea?” I’ll just leave you to answer the direct questions. Mrs. McChatterson is a ‘take the wet clothes out and pile them onto the neighboring machine’. I am a ‘come back and check in a little while’ (in the wet department that is). So this is what she did. That was over an hour ago, and the pile has since been moved to another neighboring machine and still sits abandoned. Now, my first load wash finished and I was able to snag a free dryer and start another load of wash in the machine I freed up. When my second load of wash finished, it was my turn to decide. Dryers are a wee bit different. Do you, empty the dryer onto a neighboring machine and leave the clothes to get into a wrinkly pile? What if they are still damp? Do you remove the dry clothes, get your load in and then fold the abandoned clothes and leave them neatly on top of said machine? It was my turn to have to make this decision. Thankfully, the clothes in the dryer I wanted were all–the-way dry, and they had been there over an hour taking up valuable dryer space. So I pulled them out, put mine in, and folded the abandoned clothes neatly on top of the machine. When Chatty’s washing machine was finished, she set about finding herself a dryer. And once again, here is one stopped for at least 30 minutes. She claimed it. She talked about it first of course, “oh the people are probably going to be upset about this, but they’ve been done….” She took this particular pile of clothes and put them on a folding ledge or something for the person to come and claim when they decided they cared about their laundry. Well, Mrs. I-only-care-about-my-own-dirty-chonies came in to find her pile of abandoned dryer clothes sitting on the ledge and she was none too happy. Chatty McChatterson says to Dirty Chonies, “Oh – they had been finished for some time, so I put them up there.” Dirty Chonies was clearly unhappy about this situation, “Are they even DRY??” Chatty responded, “MMhm.” And then, “Are they still damp? I will remove my stuff so you can put them back in. It’s just that all the machines were full…” Ms. Chonies actually made Chatty empty her things out of the dryer so she could put hers back in. And she didn’t even say thank you. Then later she even suggested that there are OTHER laundry rooms here. Yes there are 5 laundry rooms in this building of lodging which houses at least 100 rooms. FAMILY rooms. I am learning that it is not my job to always correct people who are clearly (in my opinion) in the wrong. Dirty Chonies is being much more diligent about her laundry (to include throwing some of her clothes in MY DRYER WITH MY CLOTHES) (They are gone now.) However she is still being unbelievably rude to poor Chatty McChatterson. Tell me this, when you are utilizing a community, free, laundry facility – do you have the right to monotonize the machines while not tending to them??