Adventure: Doing Laundry

I tend to think that I'm pretty good at doing laundry. I have extensive experience doing laundry at home, in a laundromat, and in places without washing machine. Laundry is a mundane task which at the best of times means you put the clothes in the washing machine and then in the drier... and then after that it gets folded. Ideally this happens within your own home so that you can accomplish other tasks at the same time.

I enough time between jobs (I waitress in the morning sometimes at a local B&B) to go into town to do my laundry. Now the reason why I don't like to do my laundry here is because it's the worst laundromat on the face of the earth, seriously I'd rather go back to Benin than use this one. There are only a few machines which are working in the place, I found two and put my clothes in them. I waiting for them to be done. When I got them out the washing machine hadn't spun them out enough, so they were all soaking wet. More time in the drier. Awesome. So I put each load into a drier (2 driers) for 40 minutes each (total of  $4). I then sat and waited, hoping that the family who manages the worst laundromat on the face of the earth had at least paid their oil bill and the driers were spitting out hot air instead of cold (which has happened before).

I got comfortable and while reading noticed that there was a bright yellow/ orange piece of laundry in one of my driers. Now, I don't own anything this color. I then saw that it wasn't a piece of clothing that someone had left but instead it was flames.

Yes, that's right. the drier was spitting out FLAMES through the vent in the back. Effectively drying my clothes via blow torch. I immediately stopped this nonsense and decided I'd rather have really really wet clothes and hang them over every surface I had in my home instead of no clothes because they were burned.

I then went to the manager of the hotel where the laundromat was and told him of the problem. I didn't blame him for the lack of safety within his establishment, after all it could have caused a major fire burning down his entire hotel instead of a load of laundry. He then explained to me 'this is how all driers work. There is a flame in the back which you can't see which heats the air and then dries your clothes' I then told him 'If its working properly than yes, this is how it would work, but shooting flames into the drier is NOT how a drier works. I've seen enough driers in my life to know there is a serious problem.' He wasn't apologetic but rather got angry with me (thanks for the customer service) and said 'Well I don't know what to tell you.' I said that because I didn't feel comfortable drying my clothes that I would like my $4 back that is now in his machine. He then explained to me that $4, even split between 2 machines was way too much no wonder why your clothes burned! Clearly this person rarely does laundry, especially within his own facility. With a quarter for every 5 minutes in the drier a full load of wash is going to take 35 (if you still want damp clothes) to 40 minutes (a short drying time in any other drier)

I did finally get my laundry dry and my $4 back but this is it. LAST time I go to the worst laundromat on the face of the earth. I think I'd rather just go with dirty clothes for a few day rather than wash them there.