I had an interesting morning, to say the least. Normally, I like to get to my laundromat early in the day, but today I was later than usual. Things started off no different than they ever have. I mean, it's a ****ing laundromat. What can go wrong?
While loading my laundry, I cracked open a new bottle of detergent, and as I was in the process of transferring the contents of the old bottle to the new, I spilled some of it on a machine (there's excess around the opening of the bottle sometimes). I don't have any kind of contingency plan for these types of disasters. Normally, I would use a piece of clothing to wipe off any spills. However, all of my clothing was in-cycle. My laundromat doesn't have any kind of paper towels or rags for these types of incidents, either. All they have is toilet paper from the bathroom, and that was my game plan.
At this point, I walked to the back where the bathroom is, and I noticed that the door was closed. No big deal, "I will check back in a few when it's no longer in use," I thought to myself. A few minutes after that, I looked out of the window and saw an ambulance pull up to the front of the store. "Okay, someone at the exercise joint next door probably hurt themselves," I thought to myself, yet again. Next thing I know, an EMT comes in and asks me if I called an ambulance. I'm all like, "Um, no," as I didn't hear any sort of commotion in the laundromat that would have caused me to do so. "Maybe he's in the bathroom. Sometimes they OD in the bathroom," the EMT said. Apparently, this is not a first-time occurrence here.
It turns out that there was indeed a guy in the bathroom, and he was the one who called for an ambulance. I'm now back at the front of the store during this, so it was hard to see what, specifically, the guy was on and/or using. But, I could hear the EMTs talking to him, and one of them said to the guy, "What, are you trying to kill yourself?" as he held up what looked like a metal can of paint or cleaner (an item not sold within the laundromat). Once they determined the nature of the guy's issue, they brought in the stretcher and loaded the guy into the ambulance.
After all that happened, an older guy in his 60s and I got to talkin' about the incident and other matters, which involved the following:
- He was divorced.
- He was a former salesman who made $180,000, but was laid off in 2000. Assume the tech crash.
- He had another job: selling cellphones, where he was made the employee of the year multiple times.
- As a result of being employee of the year, he won tickets to spring-training games for his favorite baseball team. It cost him more to travel to the training camp than he made in that week's salary. Irony extant.
- His other jobs: working at Walmart, other sales jobs, and he now does motivational speeches for several different companies.
- We talked about all the bars he went to in the '70s.
- We talked about the seedy parts of town that he's scared to go into.
- We talked Social Security, Medicare, women/marriage, his travels.
- He had a heart attack at the same laundromat in 2010, according to him.
I think the moral of the story -- the great takeaway -- is that the laundromat is the place to be.
~ Aux-In, reporting from the frontlines.
