I went to the worst laundromat ever the other day. Both change machines were broken, forcing me to go to the car wash across the street, twice, to get enough quarters. The reason it took so many quarters is because half of the machines were broken, but only a couple of them actually had signs, so I ended up wasting a bunch of quarters trying to find machines that actually worked. One dryer worked for about five minutes, then shut down completely. One of the dryer doors was held shut with duct tape. The glass in the door of another dryer was missing altogether.
The entire place was dirty, and had a weird smell about it. This was probably because instead of a dumpster, whoever was in charge of taking the trash out just piled it up in the corner. There were a bunch of old, broken washers just shoved into another corner. The vending machines were completely empty, and covered with a quarter inch layer of dust. There was no fire extinguisher, just an empty holder for one. The bathroom had no soap, no paper towels, and no toilet paper. I would have taken my laundry elsewhere, but by the time I started to notice all of this, my clothes were already in the washers, so I figured I might as well finish what I had started.
The entire time I was there, I saw not a single other person. The whole place just had an abandoned, derelict feel, like a ghost town, or one of those old run-down houses you see out in the country, where you can tell no one has lived there for years, and you wonder how it's still standing. The odd thing was, it wasn't in a bad part of town. It was just a weird, creepy, out-of-place laundromat. I wouldn't be surprised if I went back there tomorrow and found an empty lot.
