Another Golden Moment

I had to go to the laundromat yesterday.

I washed three loads of clothes in my apartment complex's laundry room only find them in pools of water when I went back downstairs to put them into the dryer. Seething, I called the maintence guy who had me pry into the workroom with a butter knife (the room is "locked") and flip the curcuit, which has apparently been going out whenever anyone does laundry.

Now, it seems to me it would be easy enough to put a sign up in the laundry room saying something to the effect of, "Hey, if you do more than one load, it might trip the circuit and leave your clothes in a pool of water. You might want to wait until we get it fixed."

But no. There was no such sign or directions on what to do if that happens. Rather than wash them again and not know if they'd actually rinse and spin, I just dragged them all the Oakely laundromat. Being that they were all wet still, my two baskets weighed about 900 pounds and I liked to killed myself dragging them in there.

And let me tell ya, the Oakley laundromat on Saturday was packed. Misery loves company.

But there was a bit of sweetness in the suffering.

Everyone's baskets were too heavy, so someone would hold the door. The washers were all full, so everyone took care to move their stuff as soon as possible.

It was pitiful really. The Oakley Laundromat is like any laundromat in Anywhere, USA for the most part. Dirty and sagging and sad, with washers that remind people not to put their kids in them.

There was a sign that said "No Pets," but a ridiculously small dog shook and skipped behind its owner who was walking around with a bucket collecting all the coins from the machines.

Lucky bastard. The place is a gold mine.

I called the worthless but genial rental girl and let loose a string of obscenities on her voice mail venting my frustration with having to piss away an entire Saturday doing laundry - twice. I feel kind of bad about it now. Sort of. This is the same girl who knowingly rented me an apartment that floods and never bothered to do much to fix it.

That's their thing. They know when things are broken, they just don't bother to mention it. So like I said, I feel a little bad, but not much.