Every couple of days in no order or time schedule, we have to take the quarters out and refill the change machines. On Christmas Eve we decided to do it as we did not have much to do for Christmas. We get to the store and halleluiah there are no leaks in the store. And then a guy comes out of our customer bathroom which is open to anyone and says “I am so sorry I tried to flush it and can’t get it to go down.” The mind wonders when someone says that, coming out of a bathroom. He kept going on about how he could fix it, we shooed him out. He was one of the regular homeless guys that hangs out at the shopping center. We are pretty sure he was stuffing things down the toilet. We locked the bathroom and called our new savior plumber Emir.
Then the barrage came, phone calls and messages of how bad we were because we locked up the bathroom. One hateful call came on a Saturday night from a regular, she was mean. I have a different number for the laundromat but the previous owner gave this customer my home number FUN!
After watching houseless people use our laundromat as their house. I installed a code lock for the bathroom where a code has to be used to enter, this has brought out a few more unhappy people but it is getting better. I had the bench removed out front. Of course I got a compliant about that. But really to get an overall better environment sacrifices must be made. Overall it seems to have smoothed out and I have been able to give regulars their own bathroom code and they do not have to compete with non-customers to use a clean facility, it has been a win.
We still had the back drains that were causing problems. The back was still very wet because the drains were so backed up the store room drains were still overflowing. We were watchful and hoped it was residual, and not new. It became less as Emir had fixed the drains but the hoses to the machines were too short and leaked where they were patched together. A new hose the right size has fixed that. Now what to do with a decor, it has outlived it’s shelf date if it ever was in fashion.
