Friday, September 19, 2008

Neighbors!

This blog is one of those that my husband calls Emotional Rants.

Well, here it goes anyway. As I was doing laundry today I was headed off by a neighbor who apparently thought their laundry is more important. What happened is that they took out my laundry from the washer (once the cycle was complete) and put it on top of the drier and then put their laundry into the washer.

Now here is where the problem lays. I do not want anyone touching my laundry. AND OF COURSE THIS WAS ALL Personal laundry which for me is sooo much worse than if it were just sheets or something of that nature.

To say that I was livid would be somewhat of an understatement. I knocked on my neighbors doors I yelled and then fumed and of course nobody confessed. SO, I had to resort to waiting for the culprit to come and get their wash from the washer to the drier. Of course I was fuming the whole time because I would have to re wash all of my stuff.
So, I sat there really aggravated, and fuming thinking of all the things I could do with the persons laundry and all the things I would tell them of what I think about them and all that good stuff.

Finally their laundry finished and I took it all out and put it in their basket and left it on top of the washer and drier like they did to me! Then, of course I put all my stuff back in to be re washed.

Well by the time that I had come back to my house to drop off all of the detergent supplies I saw who the neighbor was (I had a suspicion) that it was this particular neighbor.
We happen to have a younger guy living in the building who happens to be a little bit sick mentally. He is fully functioning just not completely there. He lives alone and I often see him in the elevator. He is always friendly.

So, I came up to him and with as much un hateful, un resenting, un scathing tone I could muster told him “Hey Neighbor, next time you see my stuff in the washer let me know and I’ll transfer it over to the drier. That way you won’t have to do it for me, and I won’t have to rewash all my stuff”. He was like: “Oh yah, sure no problem. I didn’t see your number on the display there”. So I said yah, some of us put it there for this exact reason. So that if someone else wants to use the washer and drier they can just come and knock on the door of whoever is currently using it and then the problem is solved”. He said: Oh okay. I said thank you, he said thank you and that was it.

In the end I learned two things:
1. Judge people favorably (my good friends favorite saying to me)
2. I need time to think and then act. As proven today I had time to think, then when I acted it was not as bad as it would have been had he opened his door and I would have unleashed the wrath!

3 comments:

Just Shu said...

This was common practice in yeshiva,
Why should the neighbor have to sit around and wait for you to remember to get your stuff. It's not like it was tossed on the floor..but then again I'm a guy - so take that into consideration

concernedjewgirl said...

You see the issue is that there is a little dial where you put your unit number so that if somebody didn't have their stuff out you could go and knock on their door. I had my unit number on there so this guy who lives 10 feet away from me could have just knocked on my door. Also, I was less than 2 minutes late!

Just Shu said...

gotcha