Clareified

My building has one triple loader machine. I love the triple loader, you can basically shove everything and anything that won’t run, turn on the cold water and let ‘er rip. Understandably, it costs more than the other machines. Eight quarters.
So, I went down there, shoved all my stuff in the machine, poured in the detergent and the fabric softener, shut the door and started to feed the quarters.
I put one in, and the LED display ticked down from eight to seven.
I put in another. Six.
And another. Five
I put in another. Five.
One more. Five. What the hell.
I put in one more, forcibly pushing downward to knock the other quarters loose. Five.
NOOOOO.
I looked around for a stick or a hanger…anything to jam down the coin slot to knock the quarters loose.
Nothing.
I pushed against the machine with all the might of now almost able to bench press a hundred pounds, upper body.
Five.
So, I did the only thing I could think of…put in another quarter.
Five.
I stood there looking at my clothes safely locked in the triple loader I loved so well, and I knew I had reached a crossroads.
How many more quarters would I push into it so that I wouldn’t completely lose all the quarters I had already put in? I was already in for seven quarters, one more would be the eight I had expected to pay, but if that one did knock the others loose, I’d be in for nine or ten.
When do I give up?
I looked at the quickly dwindling roll of quarters in my hand and made a decision.
If the triple loader didn’t work, I would need to use two doubles - costing five quarters each, plus the twenty quarters it would take to dry the load. And that was my measure. I would feed quarters into the triple loader until it reached the point that I wouldn’t have enough quarters for the other machines.
I put in the next three quarters, hoping against hope each would be the one that make it work.
And in the end, the static red five told me it was time to move on.
I unloaded the washer, divided my clothes, put in the ten quarters and headed out. I thought about putting a sign on the broken machine to warn others, but the optimist in me decided against it. Maybe they’ll put in just one quarter and the machine will spring to life for them.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:29 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.