My apartment complex’s laundry room has six washers and six dryers. A little over two hours ago, I threw a couple loads into the wash, and 45 minutes later, dutifully returned to transfer them to the dryer. All six dryers were occupied — stuffed to the gills, actually — with someone else’s clothes.
(How this came to be the case, when all six washers and at least three dryers were empty during my initial trip, is perhaps a question best left unasked.)
I’ve been checking back every 30 minutes for the past hour and a half. Same deal, same clothes. I don’t want to leave my clothes sitting wet in the washer for too much longer, but I have no idea when (or if) this asshole is going to come pick up his things. Normally, I’d empty two of the dryers and set the clothing neatly on the folding table. About a month ago, though, the management in its infinite wisdom removed said table, leaving the floor as the only remaining flat surface in the room.
I thought about putting his clothes (or hers; laundry jackassery knows no gender, but I’m assuming a man for the sake of this post) in my laundry basket while I dry mine, but A) he’s got the dryers so stuffed that I doubt my basket would hold the contents of one, let alone the two I need, and B) he’s an established jackass, so I might well get my basket stolen for my troubles.
Off the top of my head, the only question I really have left to ponder is how long I wait before I throw this dude’s shit on the floor. If anyone has any better options — or advice as to the floor question — please advise.
The washers and dryers are set into the wall. As for why I don’t just dump the clothes now, the floor of the laundry room contains, by my estimate, at least eighteen strains of deadly pathogens and/or parasitic creatures, and homeslice only currently deserves maybe twelve of them. Of course, I’m willing to be swayed on that point.
[QUOTE=PurpleClogs]
It’s not worth starting a feud with a known jackass who might keep retaliating.
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Yeah, there’s that too, although there are enough people in these apartments that I doubt he’d figure out who I was. (For that matter, I have no clue who he is either.) The dryer-to-dryer transfer is a nice idea, but he’s got every single one of them crammed full enough that even opening the door is a dangerous endeavor.
I don’t fancy the idea of a campout, but it’s a valid option. Think I’ll try Googling around to see if there’s a laundromat anywhere nearby that’s open late. If there is, maybe I’ll tape an invoice to the dryers for the price difference and gas…
If someone fills every available washer/dryer, they better damn well be there to get their shit out in a reasonable and timely manner. Five minutes grace period, tops. This is 2013, we all have access to egg timers, clocks, and what have you.
Put his clothes in garbage bags, put your stuff in the dryer, be done with it.
I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I’ll be making my half-hour rounds shortly and bringing a couple of Heftys along. Thanks, Tony. For my ego’s sake, I’ll go ahead and maintain that I eventually would’ve thought of that myself.
All others, please feel free to post revenge fantasies and/or suggestions of capitulation as originally scheduled.
It’s perfectly acceptable etiquette to remove clothes from a finished dryer cycle and put them on top of said dryer. Are these wall-type dryers that you can’t put a load on top of? If so, if you have any shopping bags you’re willing to sacrifice, maybe do that. You could also use a trash bag as a tarp and put the clothes on the floor on top of that. You could put the clothes inside the trash bag but that may be too strong a message, plus if they’re not totally dry putting them in plastic can be icky.
I can’t tell from the OP whether the dryers are still running and the culprit is just being missed by the periodic checks, reloading the cycles when you’re not there. If so, I would camp out in the laundry room to find out what’s what and have a chat with whoever it is. Some people just don’t know stuff, and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt before getting pissy. For instance, the fella who’s dryer load I had to move and also inadvertently discover about eight dryer sheets in with his stuff. I gently explained to him why he shouldn’t do that.
I did have an incident a few years ago, where some clueless college student and possibly a roommate or two really had no idea how to deal with a shared laundry room. There are several 3 and 4 bedroom units in my building that always have students rotating through with varied experience living on their own. Ultimately, after a couple days, I ended up emptying two dryers plus taking additional loads from the tops of those two dryers, and dumping all of it on the floor in one huge pile. I was glad I did, because that pile was still there for another three days! Never did meet whoever left all that laundry in there, but they sure didn’t do it again.
For the curious, I ended up going the trash bag route. So densely had he packed the dryers that emptying two of them filled five Tall Kitchen bags. As another side result of this, which brought with it some therapeutic schadenfreude, his jumbo-sized clothesballs were done to a perfect Pittsburgh rare: burnt to a crisp on the outside, cold n’ juicy in the middle. Gonna be a field day for mildew spores everywhere if those bags sit there all night, and I see no indication they won’t.
Well, not for sure, but unless more than one person decided to test the efficacy of speed-drying through the power of ten-atmosphere pressure cooking, it’s a pretty safe bet. As I mentioned in the OP, I also have no idea where this deciKMart of wet vestments came from in the first place, since there were empty dryers and no washers in use when I originally loaded my clothes, and I was there within a minute of the end of the wash cycle.
Ah, well. Hope cheesedick enjoys the free trashbags and fungal growth.
At first, I thought the garbage bags would be to put on the floor so you could pile clothes on them. Then it occurred to me that you could put the clothes in the bags. I’ll join you in a :smack:
As for revenge fantasies, how about peeing in his clothes bags?
What a fucking maroon. Why would he pack them so full that they stay dense and wadded up into a ball? Wouldn’t this special snowflake understand that there’s no way it’s all going to get dry?
You would be surprised at how catatonically stupid some people become when confronted by laundry. I had a roommate in college who spent an entire semester pouring his laundry detergent into a hole in the middle of the agitator. So it didn’t actually go into the water and he spent 4 months essentially just rinsing his clothes. He didn’t realize it until I saw him pouring it one day and asked him why he was doing that. “Oh, I was wondering why the powder was building up to the top!” :smack:
Yup; don’t explain by malice what can be explained by ignorance. The sheer quantity of laundry tells me this is somebody who has postponed doing his laundry for a looong time, probably because he was utterly clueless and intimidated by the whole notion. He probably doesn’t even know how it all works, hence the overstuffed dryers stuffed with laundry that didn’t go in a washer before, (maybe he all put it in his bath and then carried the wet stuff downstairs? And not knowing when to pick it up.
Is there a note with instructons hanging somewhere in the landry room?
If you really want to be kind AND can find it in you to do some very overdue teaching, you might hang a general note with some kindly formulated laundry instructions for dummies, also clearly but politely explicitly stating the implicit laundry etiquette rules that everyone knows, except the people who don’t and are afraid to ask.
And I would ask management if they can return the folding table. If you are annoyed, chances are other people are too by the lack of a table.
If management says that no, they want to encourage people to take their laundry back upstairs to fold it there, you might start a petition amongst the apartment dwellers. If the table just broke down, go and find an old table tennis table on Craigslist and organize a community party to pick a winning design to paint it.
My daughter’s roomie in college crammed as much clothing as she could into their washer, then dumped in some soap and turned it on. Needless to say, they had a flood. Obviously, her mother never taught her how to do laundry. I guess some parents don’t consider that their spawn will some day have to function on their own in the world…
Your clothes are wet, not covered in toxic waste, take them upstairs, drape around the place till tomorrow. Bring them back, damp or dry, and put them in the dryer for a while tomorrow.
No stress, no fuss, no chance of pissing off your neighbour and tomorrow is another day. Life is too short for stress and conflict when it can easily be avoided. Just my opinion!
[QUOTE=chizzuk]
I had a roommate in college who spent an entire semester pouring his laundry detergent into a hole in the middle of the agitator. So it didn’t actually go into the water and he spent 4 months essentially just rinsing his clothes.
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They may have grown up with a Maytag washer. My mother’s washer (it’s older than I am, and for an appliance, that’s a serious accomplishment!) has a filter screen and cup thing in the top of the agitator that wants to be pulled out and wiped off after every or at least every other load, and IIRC, the softener goes into the cup part, so yes, some agitators do more than just sit there and twirl.
Of course, I would’t expect such easily stolen bits to be found in an apartment washer.
But yes, six poxes on the dumbass who stuffed and monopolized the dryers. Where did they wash their stuff? In their bathtub?
Just last week, I was talking with my daughter on the phone while she did her laundry, and she was complaining about having to take someone’s clothes out of the dryer. Stories like this confirm my priority that WHEREVER I live, I will have my own laundry facilities. I might be willing to go without electricity or indoor plumbing for the rest of the home, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to regularly open myself up to the possiblity of interacting with ignorant/rude neighbors over something as mundane as laundry.
Crazy, crazy shit - of the kind that makes you hate your own species.
