Water Water Everywhere

So things are rocking along as usual this morning, meaning one guy is sleeping, one is in his room watching tv and the other is persistently asking if it's time to go to work yet (he goes at noon). Our day staff arrived and was helping him pick out clothes for the day when she realized that he had no clean jeans. She opened the washing machine and noticed that it was full of clothes. They belonged to the guy who was upstairs sleeping who hadn't finished his laundry last night. So instead of waking him up, she took his clothes out of the washing machine and set them on the dryer so that she could wash the other guy's clothes. She planned to put the first load back in the washer when she was done and figured he would never know the difference. (And even if he DID notice, would it really even matter??)

And apparently, yes, it did matter. The next thing I know is that Mr. Upstairs woke up, heard the washing machine running and rushed down to see what was going on. He flings open the lid (of the running machine) and starts pulling all of the wet clothing out and throwing it on the floor. Once he empties the machine, of both the clothing and the water, he just stands there in about an inch of water in front of the machine. And he just stands there. And stands there.


I was hopping mad, but stepped out for a minute to calm down so I wouldn't yell and lose my job. I calmed enough to know that this would be funny later and thought to take a picture.

I tried to gather up the clothing but got a very threatening look and he slammed the top of the washing machine closed and held it closed, like "if I can't use it, nobody's gonna use it." So he won't move and we can't even begin to clean up the mess (that he made and technically should be cleaning up himself). Water is on the ground and is on the move. We watch it flow under the bathroom door and then on into both downstairs bedrooms. And he still doesn't move or say a word.

Our staff threatened that if he kept that up, she was going to call the police. (Can you just imagine that call? "He threw the clothes and water out of the machine and now he's just standing in the water not letting us clean it up.") We decided against that but I did call his father. He talked to him for a bit and tried to reason with him but that's when the shouting and cursing began. So his dad got on the phone with me and wanted to discuss the "root of the problem" being that the dryer is too slow and it takes too long to do laundry on the whole. I gently, or not so gently maybe, reminded him that the "root of the problem" has absolutely nothing to do with the appliances.

We eventually got everything cleaned up and everybody now has clean clothes. A couple of hours later, the guy did knock on my door and said, "Uh, yeah, I'm sorry about earlier. I probably could have handled that a different way."

Oh really? Ya' think????