Today, while helping me do coin-op laundry, Anna dropped a quarter between 2 dryers. At first I gave up and considered the quarter lost, but then I decided to try pushing one of the dryers over to see if the quarter could be reached. It worked, and Anna was able to use her thinner arms to get it out for me. I continued doing laundry and thought nothing else of it.

Later, as went to put my clothes in the dryer, someone else had clothes in the only available dryer. I set to work folding their clothes (because I don’t like to have my fresh-dried clothes stuffed in a basket in an “I don’t care” manner). While I was folding, I discovered that some of her clothes did not get very dry. About half way through my folding, an Asian woman walked in and motioned that she owned the not-so-dry clothes. I showed her that some of her clothes were still damp and stepped back to let her take over.

As I began removing my clothes from the washing machine, she just stood there staring at her clothes like she didn’t know what to do. You can’t just put a quarter in these dryers and have 6 minutes of dry time. You have to put the whole $1.75 in and get a full 62 minutes. All I knew to do was tell her I was sorry this was happening to her, and follow her suggestion not to use that dryer for my load.

When I went to pull my final load, her clothes were still sitting there waiting to finish drying. My load was dry and still had 7 minutes left on the timer. These dryers will let you add extra quarters once you have begun the cycle, but she wasn’t there, and I didn’t have a single quarter with me. I put her clothes in anyway, thinking 7 minutes was better than nothing.

Then I remembered my earlier experience with dropping a quarter between the dryers and almost giving up. Maybe someone else had dropped a quarter back there and left it. I went over to the washers and pulled one over a bit, and sure enough there was one single quarter laying on the floor. I grabbed it and stuck it in her dryer, bringing her minutes up to 14! I think that was probably enough to finish drying her clothes! I was so excited to be able to help and, oddly enough, thankful for dropping a quarter between 2 dryers!