Dirty Laundry

I don’t talk much about my job in this blog. It really isn’t that relevant to most of the stories I tell. Suffice it to say that I have a position in the marketing department of a technology company. It’s a white collar job, pays reasonably well, and I have no complaints whatsoever.

But I do have a slight entrepreneurial streak, and though I many never muster the courage to follow through with it, I have dreamed of owning my own business. Actually, what I’ve been kicking around recently is the thought of a having a second, side business that I could manage while still keeping my day job.

One reason for considering this I’m thinking as Chris and Tommy get older I could hire them to do some work, and ease their entry into the workforce, help them build a good work ethic, and with actual income to their credit, establish a Roth IRA for each. Who knows, if it took off maybe it could be their job during the summer when they’re in high school.

Okay, that’s still a long way off. But I like to think ahead.

Anyway, I’ve put some thought into what kind of business would work. First, it would have to be a business that did not require me to physically be there every day. It has to be the kind of business that I would not have to show up at a specific time each day, for example, to unlock to doors in the morning or lock them again at night. It would be a business that has little or no actual inventory, and requires few, if any, employees. I don’t have the time to deal with employees calling in sick, and I can’t be leaving my office every couple of hours to handle some crisis.

Well, as you can figure out, there aren’t too many businesses that meet these criteria. One that I’ve come up with is self-serve car washes, where you pull your ride into a stall and use the wand or brush to wash it. You feed quarters into the box and you get a certain number of minutes. I like it because it’s a cash business, I’d never have to be there at any specific time, and I could go there whenever I wanted to clean up the place and pocket my bags of quarters. Plus, it’s open 24-7, so I can make money while I sleep.

Unfortunately these are very expensive. I’ve looked at a few, made an offer on one, but wasn’t able to pull it off. It’s really a stretch for where I am financially right now.

My other thought was a Laundromat. This is also a cash business, has little or no inventory, and it could be open 24-7. I’d need a cleaning service to come in each day and mop the floor, clean the bathroom, etc., but probably would not require much else in the way of labor. But these are also expensive. The couple that I have found for sale are asking way too much money.

So what is the point of this, you ask? The name of this blog is not The Business Man, after all.

Well, the point is that I must have been thinking about Laundromats the other day and nodded off.

Because the next thing I knew, I was in my Laundromat, working away.

It was not exactly as I imagined it. I was behind a counter under a big sign that said ‘Wash and Fold.’ And there was an enormous pile of laundry in front of me, waiting to be folded. My employee had not shown up – I didn’t even know I HAD an employee - so I had to sort and fold this huge pile of laundry.

Well, I’m an industrious guy with a strong work ethic, so I got after it and started sorting and folding. It didn’t look so bad; I was making some real progress. After a few minutes of folding I took a look around to see what my Laundromat looked like.

It was awful.

I mean, I only had one washer and one dryer! Who in their right mind opens a Laundromat with one washer and one dryer? And clearly I had the business to support more machines, because there were baskets and bags full of dirty laundry waiting to go into my single pair of machines.

Memo to the Boss: Develop and execute expansion plan right away!

But wait a minute. This single washer/dryer pair was no ordinary Kenmore. Each load only took about 90 seconds to wash and another 90 seconds to dry. And the one customer I had on the floor at the moment was filling and emptying these machines as fast as they could clean and dry the clothes. It was like something out of a cartoon – huge armfuls of clothes went into the washer, only to be taken out again and thrown into the dryer, where the same huge armfuls of clothes came out all hot and fluffy and pitched into my pile at the Wash & Fold counter.

It quickly became apparent that I was going to have a hard time keeping up with the folding. The clothes were piling up at an alarmingly fast rate. I dug back into the pile and started folding again. And as I got going I noticed that most of the clothes were little. Not doll clothes, exactly, but kid clothes.

Tons and tons of kid clothes.

I looked out at my lone customer, still madly moving huge piles of clothes into and out of the machines. She was working furiously, sweat dripping from her hair, arms moving so quickly they appeared as a blur. But instead of shrinking as the clothes came out of the washer and into the dryer, the pile of dirty laundry got bigger.

This woman looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place her. On the other hand, how could I? I’d only owned this place, as near as I could tell, for about 15 minutes.

I went back to the folding pile and started again. In two minutes the pile had doubled in size. Shorts, pants, shirts, pajamas, all in kid sizes. Was that Snow White out there using my Laundromat? Was I folding the laundry for seven dwarves?

No, that couldn’t be it. There were way too many clothes here for only seven dwarves. Maybe this laundry is from an orphanage. Like, perhaps, the only orphanage for all of China.

I pulled on the sleeve of a shirt when the pile shifted and out poured an avalanche of socks. It knocked me out of my chair and onto the floor, burying me up to my chest in socks. I quickly began to sort them, looking for matches…but to no avail. Not a single sock matched any of the others. I did a quick count, just to get a ballpark number.

There were eight million socks. Each one without a match.

Something was definitely wrong here. I must have purchased the only Laundromat in Hell.

I looked back out at my customer. She was demonic. Moving so fast I could not follow her motion. The machines were both belching water and steam, clothes flying everywhere, but somehow ending up in my pile of Clothes To Be Folded. The pile of dirty laundry now extending out the door and into the parking lot.

Suddenly the woman stops, turns and stares at me. Here eyes are shooting daggers. If looks could kill I’d be dead.

Now I recognize the customer.

It’s my wife.

She’s shouting something. No, screaming is a more accurate description. And it’s directed at me.

“Are you going to stand there and watch me work all day?”

I feel something kicking my foot. Harder and harder. I can’t see what it is because I’m up to my shoulders in unfolded laundry. The kicking really starts to hurt, so I start to dig through the pile of clothes to see what’s going on.

“Hey,” I hear someone say, “are you going to fold these clothes or what?”

I look up. I’m back in my own living room. Sitting on the floor.

Surrounded by laundry that needs to be folded.

My wife is standing there. Chris and Tommy are right behind her.

“We’re going out to play,” she says. “If you’d get your act together, maybe you could join us.”

I nod, mumble something, reach for a shirt. Start folding. My wife and kids walk out of the room, through the kitchen and into the backyard. Soon I hear them laughing and having fun.

Wow.

I think I’ll take another look at the car wash idea.

It’s great to be The Family Man.