Spoiled by a Competing Laundromat!

I had to go to the Laundromat yesterday. I hate going to the laundromat near my apartment. It's nasty and dirty. It's dark inside, like the owner is afraid of using too much electricity or something. Forget about the washers and dryers, let's save electricity by keeping the lights set to "mood." I had no choice yesterday, however, or at least no viable choice - one of the cats horked on my sheets. They're lucky they're soft and cuddly, because otherwise, any reasonable person would have made them into a nice hat-and-gloves set by now.

And the worst part is that I've been spoiled by another laundromat. I was staying with my sister-in-law, and went to the local laundromat, just whatever was closest to the apartment. It's pretty swanky. Big, high ceilings, fully-lit lights. Not one, but TWO change machines. About a hundred old magazines and whatnot for customers to read. And a suggestion/comment box, with complaint cards and everything. There's a cafe next door, and benches outside to sit on.

I had unwittingly run out of dryer sheets, and opted to buy some from the dispenser mounted to the wall. I was a little concerned that there was no price sign on the machine. There was one of those sliding coin acceptors, with slots for two quarters. Using my powers of deduction, I figured they were $.50. I put in my coins, and nothing. I tried two more quarters. Nothing. Well, fuck that, I'm no fool. I just said "to hell with it," and did my drying without the softener. But I filled out a complaint card. Nothing nasty, just the facts of the matter, and the comment "Please put a price on the soap machine!"

Within about 72 hours, there was an envelope in my mailbox with a dollar and a nice letter. I checked, and they did, in fact, put up a price sign. It was $.50, but apparently had run out of product before I got there.

And there was even entertainment, of a sort. Despite my general disregard for arbitrary rules, there are certain social conventions that I support. For example, posted on the laundromat's change machines are signs stating that "These Change Machines are for Rainbow Wash Customers ONLY! If You Need a Large Quantity of Quarters, please Visit Your Local Bank!" I fully support these signs. I mean, I've changed a buck in a laundromat's change machine without doing a load, but I see people get ten, twenty dollars worth of quarters all the time, and it pisses me off. There's no attendant - if the machine runs out of quarters, the store is fucked, because people can't run the machines off of good intentions.

I had just put my clothes in the dryer, and coincidentally had emptied one of the change machines - the red light that says "Out of Service" started blinking as I got my quarters.I was sitting on a bench, waiting for the dryer, and a lady came in. No laundry bags, so I knew she was just going to get change and leave. I watched her as she approached the machines. She pulled out a plastic baggie, whipped out a Ten, and started trying to put it in the Out-Of-Service machine. The one with the blinking red light. The one RIGHT NEXT TO another fully-functional machine. No luck. The machine was rejecting her bill. She kept trying to put the bill in, but failing. She looked around, lost. She backed up, furrowed her brow, looked at the machine closely, and said, "Ohhhhh!", like she finally figured out that the machine was out of money. And then, instead of using the other change machine less than three inches away, she put her money back in the baggie and walked away.

I used to think I was trainable, but now I'm not so sure.

"What trait do you have that would be valuable to this company?" Anyone who's filled out a job application has encountered this question or something similar, at some point on their life. My go-to answer has always been that I learn things quickly. It's true, too. Got a huge cash register with 217 buttons? Gimme four hours with it, and we're golden. Retail bookkeeping and inventory management system? No problem. But I'm starting to wonder if I'm slipping.

I've been cooking at home a lot in the last six months. All of my meals, in fact, or nearly all of them. I've gotten to know my oven and stove fairly well. I know its quirks, how quickly it heats up, etc. I think it might be missing some kind of heat shield between the oven and the stove top. One of the unit's "quirks" is that when the oven is heated past about 400 degrees, the back of the stove top gets quite hot, even though the burners are off. Really hot, actually. I've been known to leave a metal pot on the stove, and had it get hot enough to burn me. More than once. You think I'd have learned.

The other night, I roasted some chicken. It's my favorite dinner, and I make it almost every night. After the prep stage, I really didn't have a clear place to put a few empty pans, so I put them on the stove. I was very careful to make note of them, and I remembered not to touch them, because they get hot. I made myself a salad while the chicken was cooking. When I was done chopping up the lettuce, I set the cutting board on top of the dishes on the stove. The plastic cutting board. It's made of extremely thick, tough plastic, but it's still plastic. Forty minutes later, I walked in to find a pool of plastic in my nicely-seasoned cast-iron skillet. Stupidly, I didn't take a picture, I concentrated on stopping the house from burning down, but I did snap this of the aftermath : 

The deep impression was flowing into the skillet, which luckily contained most of the mess. And I was even able to salvage the skillet, it just needs to be seasoned again.

Have I learned anything? I guess. I've added the burn unit to the list of emergency numbers next to the phone...