Random Thoughts, Notes, & Incidents

My Pet Peeve: People who take your clothes out of the washing machine without giving you a chance to come take care of it yourself.

Alright, we all have to do it sometime (at least, all apartment dwellers, the rest of you have no idea what I'm talking about). But I make sure I've given whoever may own the clothes a decent amount of time before I take them out and leave them on the counter. I make sure the person has really abandoned their laundry first, before handling it. I don't want other people messing with my clothes, and I certainly don't want to mess with theirs unless absolutely necessary.

So this morning I'm doing a wash, and 45 minutes after I put it in, I go down to move it to the dryer. I waited 45 minutes because three years of experience with the machines in this apartment complex tell me that 45 minutes is how long it takes. I walk into the laundry room and my clothes are all over the counter, still dripping wet.

Anybody who reads this blog often has probably already figured out that my patience is at an all-time low. I'm under-employed, and possibly soon to be unemployed, and I'm on a very short fuse. So I wasn't pleased to find my clothes treated like this. But I put them in the dryer, checked my watch, and went back upstairs.

Sure, I had fantasies of doing something rude to that person's laundry to get even. I thought about spitting (or worse) in the machine, or just leaving it open so the load wouldn't run, or adding trash it, or (you get the idea). But much as I'd love to, and can certainly write about such things, I just can't actually bring myself to do anything like that.

Maybe it's because I'm too nice, maybe it's because I'm chicken-shit, I don't know. But I just keep my violent, nasty fantasies to myself. But still, I was also hoping to accidentally run into the offender and tell them how rude it is to throw people's clothes about without giving them a chance to claim them, and how they must be the biggest damned asshole in the building.

I go back into the laundry room 1/2 hour later to get my stuff from the dryer (the dryers run for 40 minutes, but I wanted to be sure I got down there before they were done), and it turns out the offender was the building manager. She was all sweetness and light with me, talking about the upcoming weekend. I just mumbled some "yeah, right, weekend" bullshit, packed up my clothes, and left without saying a word about the incident.

As Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "I may not know much, but I know the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit."

But, in this case, maybe it's for the best. Leslie wouldn't like it if I got us evicted over wet laundry.