Always kind of a weird situation. I stood their thinking, "Do I wait, or should I move the clothes and do my laundry"? Then the another thought occurred to me. "These clothes could just be sitting here. Who knows when their owners might return?" I've been in this situation before and moved the clothes without incident.
This time was different....
The couple came back to find I had moved their laundry to the clean laundry table in the room and proceeded to harangue me about not following "The Rules".... blah blah yadda yadda.
Back and forth we went - to neither sides' satisfaction.
So I took the question to the masses.
I went on the air about it and asked the Boston Radio Listening Public to weigh in.
Listen to My Story:
Comments
get angry at the slightest thing, like flipping people off in traffic or honking the horn the instant the light changes. We also see this online, where comments go from mild disagreement to rude outrage in a matter of seconds. So, one thought is that sad to
say, people getting angry in a laundry room is part of a wider issue in society where courtesy is just not as common as it once was. But there's a second thing. I used to be a counselor, and I wonder if one of both of these people was having a miserable life--
I mean that sincerely. I certainly have bad days, when the slightest thing seems really really annoying, as opposed to other days when I could simply laugh off the same thing or ignore it. So, maybe this was a couple that is having a difficult time in their
life or marriage or whatever; maybe they are already frustrated and short-tempered and the slightest thing set them off. Or maybe they were having one of those bad days and sadly, it got taken out on you. Also, there are some people who feel they are not given
respect, not noticed, whatever, so they set up rules to make sure people do things their way-- we see folks like this in offices, worrying about how many paper-clips got used or yelling at some underling who didn't follow a protocol that absolutely no-one
even knew about. Maybe one or both of these people in the laundry room feel they have set up certain rules (which they may or may not have shared with the rest of us), but as they see it, it's their job in life to enforce these rules. Truth is, even if you
moved something and accidentally put it in the dryer the wrong way (whatever the wrong way is), you didn't mean it. It ain't cancer, it ain't famine, it's just a minor annoyance... unless you are a truly unhappy human being for whom a laundry room is a place
to show who's in charge. How sad for people who feel that way. When I run into people like that, I generally decide it's just not worth the energy to argue. Clearly, there's more going on for these two folks than just a dryer and a laundry room. Hope it didn't
ruin your day... because if it did, they won.