Laundry Room Etiquette

I was doing some laundry today (shocking I know). The laundry facilities in my building consist of 9 washers and 9 dryers.

We've all seen it (those of us without the luxury of an en-suite washer and dryer), the time's up on the machine, but the laundry is still sitting in it, and sitting in it, and an hour later, is still sitting in it. In my current building I'm fairly lucky, unless I'm doing laundry on a Saturday, the waiting time for a washer or dryer is hardly ever longer than an hour. In my previous building, we had two washers and dryers, and at least one machine was broken at any given time.

The problem with both buildings is that people will put in their laundry, and then go to work, leaving other people waiting for the machine, contemplating whether or not to remove the clothes from the machine, or patiently wait another 15 minutes. I personally have only ever removed some one else laundry from a machine, and that was only after the same clothes were still sitting in the dryer 6 hours later.

I bring this up, because today I was doing laundry, there were a few of us waiting for dryers, and the timer on 3 of them ran out. Conveniently, there were 3 of us waiting. We each found ourselves standing around for 15 minutes, waiting to see if they were going to come get their clothes, when one of the women finally said "I can't keep waiting, I have to work this afternoon" as she claimed one of the dryers, removing the clothes, and placing them on a nearby counter. The other woman also then decided she was no longer waiting, and claimed another. Afraid I was going to lose the one remaining dryer, I thought about removing the clothes, but took my daughter for a walk instead. "If it's still there when we get back, then I'll take the clothes out" is what I told myself.

10 minutes later, we returned to the laundry room as a man was leaving with a bag full of clothes, sure enough the dryer was empty. The man also took it upon himself to open the doors of the dryers that the other women claimed, so that the timer would run out, and their clothes would still be wet. Naturally once he was gone, I turned the dryers back on for the other women.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I get upset when people take my clothes out of the machines as soon as the machine stops. I feel like I should be given the opportunity to handle my own clothes. On the rare occasion that I forget I'm doing laundry, or I can't get back downstairs because my daughter is napping, I completely understand when my clothes are not where I left them. Someone has even removed my clothes from a machine while it was still running and washed their clothes instead. I've never felt the need to retaliate though, I found the actions of this man to be incredibly immature. It's one thing to be upset, but it's another to be foolish.

Why can't we all just get along?