Heart racing, I will not look anyone in the eye as I run through the halls. I am fuming, snapping at any person unfortunate enough to get in the way of my wrath. I go to swipe my card to enter the building, but my hand is shaking. I am so aggravated.
No, I did not just get in a fight with a boyfriend. It’s just another trip to the laundry room.
A word of caution for those who live in dorms and do their laundry on the weekends: you better pray the swipe card reader is working, because they are not “fixed” until during the week.
I usually try to avoid doing laundry on the weekend in general, because it is usually the busiest time. So imagine my surprise when I moseyed down to the laundry room around noon on a Saturday and saw that all the machines were open.
I should have known right then that something was up.
Instead, my optimistic mind thought “Gee, everyone must really be sleeping in today!” I threw two loads in and all of my soap, but when I went to choose my machine, any button I pushed resulted in an ear-piercing siren.
This past weekend, Commons had a major laundry problem. Every card swipe machine in all of the buildings reacted with manic beeping or read “Laundry Center Closed.” I did about 10 trips to the laundry room that Saturday, and nearly ripped the card-swiping machine off the wall when I discovered it had worked momentarily for someone.
That is what is so frustrating: there is no rhyme or reason to when the laundry center is “closed.” Who has time to sit in that cramped room, swiping their card over and over until it magically works again? I gave up after a few swipes because I thought my ears were bleeding from the noise.
First attempt at washing clothes that Saturday: 12:00 p.m. Clothes finally dry and clean: 4:10 p.m.
Here are my suggestions:
First off, something needs to be done about those swipe card reader machines because I swear they are broken more often than they are working.
Second, we need more washers and dryers. If we can pack four people in a dorm room, I think we can have more than four washer and dryer machines for three floors worth of students.
Anyone who has had their clothes moved knows that we could use a few more machines. And I admit I am guilty of placing clothes on the top of the machine when I see their time is up.
Yet moving clothes for no reason is unnecessary. On top of the frustration with the card reader that Saturday, every time I had come down to check if they were working, someone had thrown my clothes out of the machine. There were three other machines empty and they were not working anyway, so what was the point of touching my dirty clothes?
My roommate had been more proactive than me and washed her clothes Friday night. However, by the time she went to dry them the machines were not working. She had to wait all weekend with wet clothes. Monday night she finally got a dryer.
When she came to pick her clothes up, she found her underwear hanging from the vent.
The laundry room situation can be stressful and time consuming. But until the situation gets better, there is no reason to throw or hang people’s clothes around the laundry room.