Current mood:

discontent

Stupid, STUPID woman
Today I did laundry. This, in itself is uneventful. A lot of people do laundry, especially on Sunday. But the problem itself wasn’t the laundry. I was heading to the laundry room in the apartment building to grab my now-dry laundry, and on the way there I saw a laundry card lying on the floor in the hallway. I said "oh dear", and picked it up. I looked around and saw someone at the elevator with some large garbage bags full of whatever, but not anyone frantically or even idly searching for anything. So I went to the office to turn it in, and they’d just closed about ten minutes previously. So I decided the best thing to do would be to drop it in the secure mailbox for the office. My instinct upon discovering that I’d lost my card and searching fruitlessly for it would be to ask if anyone had turned one in at the office, and so I figured other people would do the same.

The reason I did this is because the cards are essentially like cash. And they can have up to $50 on them, and they’re worth a $40 security deposit on top of that. I was reluctant to ask anyone if they had dropped the card. It would be awful to hand it over to someone who claimed it was theirs to later find out that the rightful owner was still missing their card, and that there was a lot of money on it.

Of course, having done this, Murphy’s Law kicks in and the woman I’d earlier seen at the elevator with garbage bags is now in the laundry room asking if anyone had seen a laundry card. I, being the sort that is reflexively, pathologically honest, immediately say that I’d found a card in the hallway and put it in the office mail slot. Evidently she stopped listening to me halfway through my sentence (I hate that) because her shoulders relaxed and she held out her hand to me in a partially distracted fashion. I didn’t have a card to give to her, of course, so I said once again that I’d put it in the office mail slot. She didn’t understand what this is (it's a secure slot for people to put their monthly rent cheques in -- they check it daily is my understanding) so I told her I would show her, and we walked down the hallway to the office. She was getting upset already and I knew in my heart that this would get very bad. We got to the slot, I actually tried to retrieve it from inside the slot, and I couldn’t. At this point, she began berating me and raising her voice at me and asking me why I didn’t just give it to her -- why I’d done what I’d done -- why didn’t it occur to me to ask around as to who it belonged -- what was I thinking -- why didn’t I think...

I interrupted her once to say that I didn’t see her drop it and I didn’t know it was hers, and that was why. It seemed a simple, logical answer to me, but evidently she was of the mindset that I should have immediately wandered down to the elevators where she was and asked her if she’d dropped a laundry card.
Now, if I’d seen the card fall out of her pocket or whatever, my immediate instinct would be to call out, "you dropped your card!" But the thing is, the card is potentially worth almost $100. I couldn’t even tell that she’d done laundry as all her clothes were in opaque black garbage bags, and for God’s sake it’s Sunday afternoon. Half the building does laundry on Sunday. ANYONE could have dropped the card. So what I did was the right thing.

Regardless, she was obviously not going to see it this way. It’s hard to describe just how immature and unbelievable the woman was, but I honestly felt like I couldn’t possibly be dealing with an adult. My brain was kind of whirling around, thinking the equivalent of, "I’m a grown-up now. This is the grown-up world, isn’t it? Is this how grown-ups act?" and just generally being a bit dazed by the relentless harassment of this woman.
I lost patience with her quite early, though, and when she asked me what I could possibly have been thinking for the second time, I basically rolled my eyes as I walked past her and impatiently said, quietly, "just trying to be a good person". I dismissed her with that comment, so although my brain registered that she’d come up with some kind of response, I don’t remember what it was.

Oh, and also, I did apologize after offering my explanation. I said something like, "I felt it was safest, not knowing whose it was, to put it in the office box. I do apologize knowing now that it was yours," and she cut me off with something like "well you were stupid and I don’t care about your apology" and when I pointed out that they were open early the next morning she insisted that she didn’t want to get it tomorrow, she needed it NOW. I refrained from commenting, but she obviously had just carted her dry laundry upstairs, and it appeared to be her entire wardrobe’s worth, so she was done for the day (as another woman in the laundry room confirmed for me when I asked). She didn’t "need it right now". Hell, she won't need it for a week at least unless she goes through seventeen outfits a day. Yes, she’s inconvenienced as she’ll have to inquire at the office about it tomorrow, but that’s the extent of it.

The way that I read her, unfortunately, is that she’ll be the type to actively harass me whenever she sees me. I just got an overwhelming sense of immaturity, irrationality, and bullying from her. And it’s just overwhelming to me that there are people like that in the adult world. I mean, I knew in theory, but I suppose I've never been confronted with it before.

The thing is, I know I did the right thing, and if she were to ask me what I’ll do if it happens again, I’d have to honestly tell her that I’ll do the same thing. I’d want someone to turn in my card if they found it, even if they found it while I was walking right by it. If I was in the middle of laundry when it got lost, I’d find a kind person willing to lend me their card and hand them the money to cover it. There’s always a way to figure things out. Heck, if the lady whose card I found had been in the middle of laundry and needed it, I would have offered to let her use my card and just grab a couple of dollars from her to cover it.

You can bet that if I’d asked the people around, and someone had claimed it as theirs, and she’d found out, she’d be screaming bloody murder and asking why I hadn’t thought to turn it into the office. "What were you thinking?! Why would you just hand a card to someone who says it’s theirs? You have no way of knowing! You are so STUPID!"

I was hoping writing this would get it off of my shoulders but I still feel like shaking her.