Gosh Darn Dumb Laundromat Customers

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

The One That Got Me...

...Was from my mom, a.k.a. The Appliance Killer. One visit a few years back, she told me the dryer wasn't "doing right," which alarmed me no end, because by the time she figures out an appliance isn't happy, it's usually nearly dead, or dead beyond all hope of repair. Sensitive to appliance needs she is not.

Upon questioning, I finally got the information out of her that "things were taking forever to dry." This was imparted to me between laments about the high cost of everything, gossip about every relative I have, and a rundown on a movie she'd seen on TCM the other night, not that she could remember its name, who was in it, or half the plot. But we finally got down to it; slow drying was the problem.

Knowing who I was dealing with, I didn't waste much time worrying about heating elements, limit switches or anything else. I went right for the lint filter, and voila! - my suspicions were confirmed. It was caked solider than solid, about the thickness of a Sears Christmas catalogue, too. So, I cleaned it, and started the dryer.

I could tell right away something wasn't right, because the door wouldn't stay latched. I looked at the latch; it was, for a wonder, unbroken. It was almost as if the door was being blown open. It took me only a moment or two to realise the door was being blown open. From the inside. From air pressure. Which not only explained the heavy boxes of old magazines right in front of the dryer door, it meant -

Pulling out the dryer and looking at the vent pipe confirmed my suspicions; it was packed with lint right at the opening. I reached in and pulled out the lint to find that there was more lint behind it. And more lint behind that. In fact, about seven feet of duct were snotted up solid with hard-packed lint, all the way to the vent cap, which was also packed so that the door couldn't swing in either direction.

Slowly, laboriously, I picked and pulled and sweated and strained until I got all the lint out of the pipe. Normally, I'd have wanted to replace everything, because it's faster than clearing a blockage that bad and because you get smooth new pipe that doesn't lint up again as quickly. But, knowing how futile explaining that to Her Madge was going to be - and being most unwilling to pay for it myself - I settled for a good cleaning. Including the inside of the dryer cabinet, which was a lint fire waiting to happen.

Finally, I got everything clean, even the vent cap's little door; I had a 13-gallon kitchen trash bag packed full of lint when I was through. I reassembled everything, tested it, found it was working exactly as God and Sears intended. Glowing with triumph, I got Mom to come look and see that everything was okay again.

"How did that happen?" she asked, meaning the problem, not its resolution; she couldn't care less how something gets fixed as long as it does get fixed and she's not the one who has to do it. I told her that it was due to not cleaning the lint filter, and that she'd need to clean it in the future.

"How often will I need to do that? she asked, with the same distaste in her voice that Victorian virgins used to use when their mammas broke it to them that their husbands-to-be had certain needs that would need attending to periodically. I told her that tending to it each load would be best.

"Every time? Oh, I can't believe it!" she said, by now working up to the aggrieved tone Southern women use for things like telling Dr. Meade they want him to stop attending to those silly critically wounded soldiers because they want help delivering a baby now. I assured her that every time would be best, and told her I had to be going.

She saw me to the door, and as I was heading up the driveway to my car, she delivered the coup de grace: "Well, I'll try, but I can't promise I'm gonna remember to do it every time!" Which meant, of course, that she wasn't going to remember to do it ever. "You may have to help me with it again!"

HELP?

I have not inquired as to the health of her laundry appliances in some little time now. Fortunately, since my dad's retirement, he keeps an eye on things like that.
 
Our Whirlpool dryer has a sensor on it that will beep if your lint filter is full and then it will shut the dryer down until it's cleaned. I wonder how many phone calls the local service techs have received from these machines?
 
Was it dispensing liquids as a Mr. Steamy would?

LOL Oh Sandy..............

My sister rented a basment apt in a private house. She has laundry privileges. The old lady who owned the house had a PLASTIC tablecloth over her dryer's top, and never used the dryer. My sister was wondering why it would'nt dry after a while. It was an RCA-Whirlpool from the mid 60's with the lint-trap droor in the custopmary right rear of the top.
It was hidden under the tablecloth.

It took all I had to refrain from saying "every dryer you have ever used had a filter. Did it not occur to you to search for one? OY VEY. "oh and the tablcloth is a fire hazard, may it be gone!" She had a look of shock........


On another note I would encourge friends to bring over their laundry when I had machines and they didn't (We were all in rentals).

You havn't lived until you have found a prophylactic partially melted to the side of your dryer's drum.

One has to wonder where the DNA went.
 
SPEED QUEEN

makes IMOP the best top loading washer today.The rest are either real cheaply made or spin too slow.The "Rustpools" with their "Cruel-Action"agitators tare up clothes and the drain and spin method lowers the load so less water is spun out and spins a lot slower than the SQs.I have SQs in our laundromat and have to watch them like a hulk so the customers do not overload them.Those who have done that and/or attempted to put 2 washer loads in 1 dryer have been nicely asked to do their wash elseware and not to return.I have written instructions in big bold letters on how to properly load and use these machines.Two of them went down from being overloaded.The first one had its trans litteraly fall apart and the second one was so overloaded that the motor overheated and burned out.The neat part that makes the customers asked to leave angry is that the nearest competitor?is 45 miles up the road!!So far,I've replaced the two SQ top loaders with front loading SQs and,even though they're twice as much to use,they're half the price to run.You can't overload them because the door won't shut.I shortened the wash cycle from 38 minutes to 24 minutes and kept the water level to a minimum.They are so popular now that people are willing to pay the additional $10 to have me wash,dry and fold their laundry for them.We're closed on Mondays so I have complete access to them with no interuption.Right now,the average income /wk is $3240.The cost per month including gas,electric and water is $935.The solar panels and water heaters realy make a difference!By 2011,we should have the rest(4 more top loaders) of the washers converted to front loaders and the residential comercial gas dryers replaced with the larger capacity window front/stacked units.
 
Laundromat Peeves

Thankfully one does not have to use laundromats that often, but here is my list of things that tick me off:

Persons who arrive, stuff a machine or machines full of laundry then "forget" they do not have detergent, and or the laundromat does not sell their brand. So off they go to the store, leaving all their cheap tat in the washing machines. Damn rude, IMHO.

Persons who leave the laundromat for whatever reason and once their load is done, aren't around to unload the washer or dryer. Worse they try to start WWIII because someone took their laundry out and left it in a cart somewhere. Hey, if your stuff falls on the floor or gets wrinkled, too darn bad, you knew how long the cycle was, and should be on point when machine stopped.

People from pet grooming,pet day care, and so forth who bring vast loads of pet soiled laundry to the public laundromat. Worse, they wash everything in warm or cold water an no bleach. Washer is now full of pet hair and god only knows what else.

People who "steal" other's laundry supplies for use and say when caught, "oh, I thought it was for all customer's to use free", or some such lie.
 
Mexican Babies

Having just returned from the laundromat, I have another peeve to add to this list.

Momma's, please leave the daycare children at home. The laundromat is not a playground. Here we have three mexican women come in with 7 kids, all under the age of 7, in tow. Now, while you are jamming your 9 loads of laundry into two double loaders, 4 of your kids are having laundry cart races around the folding area, two are crying, and the last is standing in the corner trying to see if her screaming will echo back to her.

I mean, damn!

Malcolm
 
Perhaps it's just a sign of the times, or the way we do laundry, but laundromats are an ever-increasingly rare sight here in Ireland.

It's very rare that an apartment doesn't have a washing machine and dryer or washer-dryer.

Many of them are now gone or have morphed into normal dry cleaners without any self-service, and offer 'service wash' laundry (they do everything) which are mostly used for over-sized items like duvets, large curtains/drapes etc. Or, if you want to get all of your laundry pressed too e.g. you've loads of shirts, they can be kind of handier than doing the laundry at home.

Although, I have used laundrettes/laundromats them I was in London and Paris. I had a washer-dryer in both apartments, but its drying abilities were EXTREMELY over rated. Basically, like a washing machine with a hairdryer built in :)

In general European laundromats are rather uneventful places in my experience. Front loaders aren't so finicky about how much laundry you put in and in general the commercial versions are practically indestructible. If you stuff them full, they'll still generally do a reasonable job of washing your clothes and there's no risk of doing them any damage unless you try to wash bricks (although nothing would surprise me!)

I do remember being pretty horrified when these two female Aussi back packers came over to me and asked "it's going around but the clothes aren't getting wet" ... They'd put their dirty laundry & a large scoop of Persil into a laundromat dryer. It couldn't have been more obvious that it was a dryer, it was one of the really huge ones with TUMBLE DRYER written on the front.

I had to explain in baby steps that it was a dryer. They were confused because they'd 'only ever seen mom use the one where your clothes go in the top'

Then they were wondering if you needed different machines for different types of laundry, or if you could put them all in the same machine, or if you could just set the machines differently!

OMG they were thick!

I also saw a Laundromat owner in Paris going absolutely mad as someone had put dye into two Mieles via the detergent dispenser chamber.

There was a LOT of shouting in French and demanding names and addresses for the repair bill :)

In general though, anytime I have had to use one, they are pretty uneventful.

Commercial machines over here tend to have much shorter, wetter cycles than domestic/residential models.

E.g. it's not unusual for the machines to be setup to do two short washes then a lot of deep rinsing.

Because they're bolt-down machines, they don't need to worry too much about ramping up spins etc, so they just open a gravity drain and go straight into spin with lots of water in the drum ... looks far more interesting than a residential model.

They're also almost always hot fill which obviously saves a lot of time.
 
In Paris two American girls (from Michigan) attempted to use the front-loaders in a laundromat. It was a laugh riot.

I HAD to eventually speak!

They had plugged their 110v hair dryer in to a Euro 220v outlet. Why oh why did it melt down?

They had tried to get somewhere on the Metro. (What do you mean change trains?). Never before had they seen a subway system.

They also did not understand that the Mieles there heated the water in the machine, and what was taking so long. (Why their darks were set to 90*C I will never know). I used "cold" just to get out of there quickly. Switched their machine to a much lower setting.

Even the concept of the detergent vending machine (whre is the little box of detergent?) had them stumped. It dumped detergent into a metal receptacle/cup that you carried the detergent to you machine with, and then returned it to the place of origin for the next customer that was buying detergent.

Did I mention there were suds everyehwere? Oh yes they used way too much detergent.
 
I am a baby boomer, and in high school, we had home economics/bachelor living for males, basic cooking skills, laundry ie: use and care of the machines, basic sewing. I think this is now called family/domestic/consumer science, is it a required course nowdays? I recently read an article about how new college grads had a "finishing" course, Polite table conversation, what silverware to use, how not to fumble with a napkin. It was presented in the spirit of how to survive a dinner with a prospective employer. How sad is that? alr2903
 
Until a few months ago, there were 3 washaterias in this town of about 5000, but one (the oldest) has now closed. It had gotten run down and nasty, and I couldn't imagine taking my clothes in there. The one I've been going to is very well kept, with Dexter FL and Whirlpool TL equipment. The owner and attendants enforce the rules - if someone misbehaves, they're out. The other one is not so great, but hear it's cleaner than the one that closed. The ones around here tend to be busier when it's been dry, as many people in the surrounding area have wells and cisterns, and don't want to use up their water if rain is short.
 
I am a baby boomer, and in high school, we had home economics/bachelor living for males, basic cooking skills, laundry ie: use and care of the machines, basic sewing.

We had similar requirment in junior high school (intermedite school). Except the girls had to take shop and woodworking and the boys had to take cooking and sewing.
 
I support the idea of teaching high schoolers of both sexes the ins and outs of daily living in our mechanized households.

Unfortunately I went to an "academic" high school with no shop classes and no home ec classes. I guess we were supposed to be above all that. I recall an eerie feeling as I went on that I had no idea how things were grown, made, etc. What I knew of getting by in a household I picked up as a kid in the home. What I missed with shop classes etc I've picked up by grilling those less academically restricted and finally decided that I prefer a mechanical job to one shuffling paper and learning new and creative ways to lie. So I fixed that ;-).

I feel a bit sorry for those who think it's a mark of distinction that they don't know how to hang a picture, change a tire, load a washer, etc. In reality their understanding and enjoyment of modern life is incomplete, and it's almost like they are half-formed beings.

My elderly neighbor recently moved into an assisted living facility. I recall talking to his kids: he was a total loss at doing some things his late wife had done. He didn't know how to pay bills, keep a checking account balance, etc. So his daughter would visit regularly to take care of these details for him. How sad is that?
 
It's very sad. Some people split things up into "man" duties, and "women" duties...that's a load of crap. I never will forget when I gave a big party at my house for my family after I moved in...somehow in convo I mentioned that I had spent the day mopping floors, doing dishes, and scrubbin' the toilets--not to mention doing the laundry. My snooty aunt looked at me like I had three heads and asked "...you know how to do all that?!?" Yeah, and I can make a damn good Bundt cake too! lol
 
This stuff isn't hard....

...if you just pay attention. Like my mom always said, "If you can read and follow directions, you can cook!" I paid attention and knew how to do my own laundry well before HS... good thing since I went off to a boarding school at 14 and was on my own. I was also a pretty good hand at cooking long before the Food Network was on 24x7.... good thing there too, since I was a bachelor until I was 32 and probably would have starved or gone broke otherwise! Never had a class in either, just paid attention to what was going on, asked questions and tried to pitch in.

And I never assumed it was someone else's job to take care of such things. I'm not going to let my kids assume that either!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top