The background:
The laundryroom to my building is one floor down. The key to my door also opens that door.
When B. and the little guy moved in, it was a 'great adventure' to him to help me take the laundry downstairs. I decided to give him a little responsibility, so I let him carry the key and unlock the door. I had taken it off my key ring because I only had one, and B. needed a key to lock up during the day when I was at work.
The second weekend that we did laundry, I apparantly didn't keep a close enough eye on his handling of our key, because when we looked for it a couple nights later to go to the store, it was missing. No one knew what happened to it. I could have sworn that the little guy put it back in it's spot, but when we looked, it just wasn't there! For weeks, I've had to leave my apartment unlocked, because I just didn't have the money to pay the apartment complex to have the lock replaced so I could have a new key. And don't think that I wasn't worried when we drove to Michigan for thanksgiving with an unlocked door. Everything I own is in this apartment, including my one and only computer! Fortuantely, everything was still here when we got back.
So, for two weeks, we've been spending outragous money and time to take all our clothes to a laundromat to have them done, which was especially grating on me, knowing the convenience of washers and driers were right below my apartment!
Last week, I had some business in the complex office, and a little extra cash, so I decided to bite the bullet and tell them I had lost the key. I almost fell over myself when the woman said 'well, I've only got one more, so take care of it', and just handed it to me! For two weeks I'd been going through all that, and another key was just sitting there in the office for the asking! Boy, didn't I feel like an ass!
So that brings us up to today. The glorious laundry day when I can just carry them down, put them in, spend half the amount, and come back up to the comfort of my couch and my computer. I was so proud! And i kept full control of the key, by the way :-)
Things went along swimmingly. Loads in the washer, loads in the dryer. Let the little guy put in the soap and push the buttons, and he was happy. Everything was laundry bliss!
UNTIL
I went down to get the last load out of the dryer. The little guy and I merrily skipped down the stairs in anticipation of complete laundry success, until I opened the door, and THERE IT WAS! My pile of laundry, sitting on the folding table! Someone had gone into the dryer and pawed through my things like they had some kinda right to my life or something, and just calously dumped them on the folding table! And it wasn't like they needed that dryer either! there were three empty ones sitting right beside mine!
HOW RUDE!!!!!!!
Now, I know I've embelished this story quite a bit for entertainment purposes. But let me ask you, is that an acceptable form of good apartment neighborly conduct, or is it crossing the laundry boundry? Should it be ok for someone else to be handling my clothes when there are perfectly good open machines right beside mine, or should the rule be 'hands off'?
