Raise your hand if you like doing laundry. Hello, anyone?
Unless you’re part of the 1 percent of the population that finds this chore therapeutic, you’re with me and the other 99 percent that just want to get it done.
So it’s established that doing laundry isn’t fun, but for those of you that have the ability to knock it out at home…at least you have that.
A good part of the community, which includes newcomers staying in lodging and folks like me, who live in an apartment without washer and dryer hookups, have to rely on our community laundromats.
As my “Washers-In-Arms” will attest, doing laundry in these facilities is a whole different experience altogether.
Lately, it seems that the proverbial second sock isn’t the only thing that gets lost in the wash, but also common courtesy.
To appropriately highlight this experience to those who don’t use the laundromats, I first have to introduce you to the cast of characters. There are typically three types of people you can spot washing their clothes in our laundromats: The “Dump and Pumper,” the “VIP” and the category I fall into…the “Complainer.”
The “Dump and Pumper”: Due to the convenient location adjacent to the Panzer gym, many customers of the laundromat like to multi-task. Their laundry gets dumped into the washers and dryers, and they head across the street to work out.
The problem is that time obviously works differently in the gym than in the laundromat. After the cycles on the machines have completed, sometimes 20 to 30 minutes elapse before they return to take it out, inspiring much frustration and discussion among the “Complainers.”
The worst of the “Dump and Pumpers” actually get upset if they come back and their items have been taken out. My response to that: If you’re going to do laundry…do laundry.
No one wants to wait for you to finish your third set of squats before they can finish their wash. When you leave the facility, you also leave your right to be upset when your clothes are in a pile on a folding table when you return.
The “Complainers” picked up the role of being upset in your absence.
The “VIP”: This is the individual that got lucky enough to get into the laundromat at a slow time, which is good, because they’re washing a whole department store. The problem arises when other customers come in behind them and can’t get a washer or dryer because the “VIP” loaded every single machine. Common courtesy in this situation would dictate that you sacrifice one or two of the available machines, but that rarely happens. Anyone that comes in after gets bottlenecked until the VIP is done washing their red carpets.
And finally, the “Complainer”: This one is simple; you’ve read this, so you get the gist. Just imagine a couple hours of this verbalized and intertwined with grumbles and eye rolls while you’re doing your laundry. Here’s my final “spin” on this: Doing public laundry can be tedious and frustrating, but a little teamwork and courtesy can go a long way in making it less painful.
2013-03-06