An Open Letter to the Dude Who Left His Clothes in the Washing Machine For an Hour

Dear Sir (or Madam, if you happen to be the unusually large woman I saw in the laundry room the second time I went downstairs),

I understand that today was a beautiful day outside. The temperature was a lovely 70 degrees with nary a cloud in the sky and only a light breeze to spoil the perfection. Doubtless you were outside enjoying the sunshine, roller-blading on the trail or jogging through the city. Perhaps your girlfriend dragged you out for a walk with a stopover for frozen yogurt.

Or perhaps you were inside all day. Game 7 of the Boston-Atlanta series and Game 1 of the Los Angeles-Utah series were on TV this afternoon, although why you would be watching the Celtics-Hawks blowout is beyond me. Maybe you got distracted by Grand Theft Auto IV - I've certainly been guilty of that offense this past week.

Unfortunately, you forgot one thing on this glorious day: you forgot to take your clothes out of the washing machine in our apartment complex.

When I say "machine," you should know that I actually mean "machines." There are six such washers in our complex's laundry room, and you monopolized four of them.

Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that. It's more efficient to do clothes all at once. No one is expecting you to do one load of laundry at a time.

What I do expect, though, is that you not leave your wet clothes in the washing machine for a FREAKING HOUR after they are done.

Again, I understand that you likely just got distracted. Hard to blame you for that offense on a day like today. But for someone like me, who is trying to do laundry on a Sunday afternoon when that's the only free moment I've had all week and I'm trying to simultaneously write a 5-page paper for class on Monday and buy a new cell phone because my old one died and help my landlord figure out exactly what size of new doors to buy for my bedroom closet and shop for groceries and decipher the overwhelmingly complex health plan my new job sent me this week when my election is due next week and and I have no idea how many numbers I lost in my old cell phone so now I'm trying to track them down on Facebook and in my old phone bill and now my landlord wants to show our apartment tomorrow and would like me to clean the place up a bit, your conduct this Sunday afternoon is a bit annoying.

So, if you don't mind, could you please take those clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer? I have no qualms about removing somebody's dry attire from the washer, but wet clothes are, y'know, icky. Thanks sooooo much.

Kisses,

Thomas J "Tommy" Carcetti