Freshly laundered
I have a confession to make.
This morning, I went down to the laundry room to collect my clothes, on the way thinking how wonderful it is to have laundry facilities in my building, and how fortunate I've been to have almost always gotten an available washer when I needed one, despite there only being two washers and two dryers in a building with 40 units (then again, maybe that's appropriate? I don't know).
Standard practice in my laundry room (perhaps all? I don't know) when you discover a machine whose cycle is over but still contains clothes is to put the clothes in a spare laundry basket (which are plentiful, despite the few machines) so you can use the machine. Seems like it would be a risky thing to do in a laundromat, but my building is a friendly, social co-op, so it's perfectly acceptable to touch a fellow co-op member's clothes if they're in the way of you doing your laundry.
Anyway, back to today. I arrived in the laundry room to discover that my clothes had been removed from both dryers and deposited into baskets, and the dryers were now in use by another member, who had started the machines and then gone about their business elsewhere. All standard, except, my clothes were wet. Usually there's a sock or pair of pants that didn't dry all the way, and so I hang those and fold the rest, but we're talking 75% of each load was still too damp to fold and put away. I had timed my return to the laundry room to coincide with the end of the cycle, but then realized I had garbage to take down, so that delayed me by a few minutes. This was apparently long enough for someone to take out my wet clothes, put in theirs, start the cycle, and skedaddle.
Upon reflection, I suppose the right thing to do was hang everything I could and wait until the cycle was over to start a new one for the rest. After all, I was late to retrieve my clothes from the laundry room, and it's not the next person's problem that my clothes were still wet. It would have added 1-2 hours to my laundry-doing, but in all honesty, I had the time to spare.
But no, that's not what I did. I was pissed that my laundry now sat in baskets, damp, and there was no available dryer. The NERVE, I thought. I took a minute or two to weigh my options, and then I took action. I removed the other person's clothes (linens, actually) from the dryers and put them into baskets. I then ferreted out the few dry items of my own, hung up the towels and sheets, and put the rest back into the dryers on the other person's dime. I ran upstairs to get quarters to reimburse the person, and my book and phone, and came back down and folded the dry clothes. After about ten minutes had gone by, I opened each dryer again, fishing out more clothes that were now dry, which was most of them. Finally, when few enough things were still wet, I took those out and hung them, and redeposited the other person's laundry in the machines.
I thought of leaving a note. I wrote two drafts in my head: a snarky one and a diplomatic one, but in the end I wrote neither. I knew what I was doing was morally questionable and didn't want to leave any evidence of it. I didn't even leave the money. I decided it was better to hope the person just wouldn't be the wiser. If my stealing dryer time caused the clothes not to be completely dry by the end of the cycle, I hoped that the person would just figure it was because they were drying a FUCKING BATH MAT. Honestly, it had been in there for five minutes when I removed it, and the lint trap was FULL. And PINK.
At this point I just want to say that I tried hard to resist using gender-specific pronouns in this post despite the fact that I have a pretty good idea who it was, and this person is a SHE.
All told, I think I stole about a half-hour from her (times two). If she does catch on, there might be problems, because she may deduce who I am in the same way I think I've identified her. On the other hand, maybe she'll make the same choice I did: to avoid a conflict and, if there is any action to take against me, to take it sneakily.
This morning, I went down to the laundry room to collect my clothes, on the way thinking how wonderful it is to have laundry facilities in my building, and how fortunate I've been to have almost always gotten an available washer when I needed one, despite there only being two washers and two dryers in a building with 40 units (then again, maybe that's appropriate? I don't know).
Standard practice in my laundry room (perhaps all? I don't know) when you discover a machine whose cycle is over but still contains clothes is to put the clothes in a spare laundry basket (which are plentiful, despite the few machines) so you can use the machine. Seems like it would be a risky thing to do in a laundromat, but my building is a friendly, social co-op, so it's perfectly acceptable to touch a fellow co-op member's clothes if they're in the way of you doing your laundry.
Anyway, back to today. I arrived in the laundry room to discover that my clothes had been removed from both dryers and deposited into baskets, and the dryers were now in use by another member, who had started the machines and then gone about their business elsewhere. All standard, except, my clothes were wet. Usually there's a sock or pair of pants that didn't dry all the way, and so I hang those and fold the rest, but we're talking 75% of each load was still too damp to fold and put away. I had timed my return to the laundry room to coincide with the end of the cycle, but then realized I had garbage to take down, so that delayed me by a few minutes. This was apparently long enough for someone to take out my wet clothes, put in theirs, start the cycle, and skedaddle.
Upon reflection, I suppose the right thing to do was hang everything I could and wait until the cycle was over to start a new one for the rest. After all, I was late to retrieve my clothes from the laundry room, and it's not the next person's problem that my clothes were still wet. It would have added 1-2 hours to my laundry-doing, but in all honesty, I had the time to spare.
But no, that's not what I did. I was pissed that my laundry now sat in baskets, damp, and there was no available dryer. The NERVE, I thought. I took a minute or two to weigh my options, and then I took action. I removed the other person's clothes (linens, actually) from the dryers and put them into baskets. I then ferreted out the few dry items of my own, hung up the towels and sheets, and put the rest back into the dryers on the other person's dime. I ran upstairs to get quarters to reimburse the person, and my book and phone, and came back down and folded the dry clothes. After about ten minutes had gone by, I opened each dryer again, fishing out more clothes that were now dry, which was most of them. Finally, when few enough things were still wet, I took those out and hung them, and redeposited the other person's laundry in the machines.
I thought of leaving a note. I wrote two drafts in my head: a snarky one and a diplomatic one, but in the end I wrote neither. I knew what I was doing was morally questionable and didn't want to leave any evidence of it. I didn't even leave the money. I decided it was better to hope the person just wouldn't be the wiser. If my stealing dryer time caused the clothes not to be completely dry by the end of the cycle, I hoped that the person would just figure it was because they were drying a FUCKING BATH MAT. Honestly, it had been in there for five minutes when I removed it, and the lint trap was FULL. And PINK.
At this point I just want to say that I tried hard to resist using gender-specific pronouns in this post despite the fact that I have a pretty good idea who it was, and this person is a SHE.
All told, I think I stole about a half-hour from her (times two). If she does catch on, there might be problems, because she may deduce who I am in the same way I think I've identified her. On the other hand, maybe she'll make the same choice I did: to avoid a conflict and, if there is any action to take against me, to take it sneakily.