Love Them Neighbors

That shafted a bunch of the day, and then I had a meeting. Woo hoo.

Rant alert!

I came home and did some laundry tonight. The guy downstairs was also doing some laundry, and his stuff was in the dryer when I put my stuff in the wash.

Now, as I'm a geek, I'm sure you can guess that I'm anal about how I do my laundry: I've calculated how much I can put in the dryer so it can dry everything I put in in a single cycle. And I've timed the washer and dryer each so I know how long it takes to do a load, and I set my the timer on my watch to go off when it's time to change the laundry. Stupidly, I generally assume that everyone else does the same, since it's more efficient that way, but evidently I'm the only person in the building who does.

I often go down to find that someone's laundry is sitting in the dryer (or washer!), already done. Sometimes I wait for a few minutes to see if someone comes by (they never do). Sometimes I knock on some doors to see whose laundry it is (sometimes I find them, sometimes I don't; regardless, it's a pain in the ass). It really bugs me that people don't keep an eye on their laundry, since we have only the one pair of machines for the four units. I always assume that if I leave my laundry there after it's done, that someone will take it out and put it on the counter next to the dryer.

After all, that's what I do. I really think it's rude for people to leave their laundry in there, making me wait for them to bother to come get it. Like I want to be walking up and down checking to see if I can put my clothes in! Get a watch! Use it!

Anyway, tonight when my laundry finished washing, my watch alarm went off. Since I didn't know when the other person (who it was, I didn't yet know) had put his/hers in the dryer, I figured I'd give it a little more time. My dinner had just finished cooking, so I ate it. Maybe 15 minutes later, I went down and found the dryer finished, and the laundry still there. It was still slightly damp (as far as I can tell, no one else has bothered to figure out how much laundry the dryer can handle at once), but I put it on the shelf and put mine in the dryer and started it up.

A few minutes later, while I was watching TV, the guy from downstairs came up to my door and asked if I could give people a little more time to get their laundry. I told him that I didn't know what a "little more time" was, since I'd given him about 40 minutes from when I put my stuff in the washer, and the dryer could have been done for half an hour for all I know. He said it had probably been sitting for 10 minutes, but how would I have known that?

He was fairly pleasant about it, but it still irked me. You mean you couldn't spare any time in the last ten minutes to grab your laundry, or throw a few more quarters in? My laundry could have been another quarter of the way through the dryer in that time, had I decided to go downstairs promptly when it was done in the washer! Geez!

I didn't say that to him, of course.

I always get kind of upset when I deal with conflicts with neighbors. I had problems with the previous downstairs neighbors who felt I played my stereo too loud (I'm pretty sure they were just over-sensitive; the current neighbors have never complained, nor has anyone else in the building, and, well, there are other details I could go on about). I feel like I usually handle things pretty calmly, but it still puts me on edge, especially if I feel like I'm in the right.

Overall I've had very few complaints with any of my neighbors, ever. The occasional thin-wall problem in college, coordinating parking in a single driveway in grad school, a couple of noise complaints (one against me, justifiably, and one against the downstairs neighbors who had a dog in their apartment which was barking, when they weren't allowed to have dogs) in my other Madison apartment, and the couple of issues I noted that I've had here. Is this more or less than the usual problems that other apartment-dwellers have with their neighbors? I don't know, but I'd guess it's less. But I really dislike dealing with it.

Forum: How do you deal with your neighbors?

Comic book alert: If you're a fan of DC comics, you might be interested to know that legendary comic book editor Julius Schwartz' autobiography, Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics will soon be published. (Schwartz was also an agent for SF writers in the 30s and 40s, and purportedly sold Ray Bradbury's first story.) I've seen Schwartz speak in person, and he's a charming man and a great storyteller. I'm looking forward to this one!