'Am I the hero for telling a pregnant woman she still has to act like an adult?'

↵

"Am I the hero for telling a pregnant woman she still has to act like an adult?"

My wife (27F) and I (31M) live in an apartment building that has one washer and dryer shared between 12 units. We have lived here for six years with almost no issues. We usually do our laundry on Sundays, as most others in the building use it on different days.

Yesterday around 3 PM, we check the laundry room and see both machines are full, but the cycles are finished. In our six years here, nobody has taken longer than a half hour to retrieve their laundry. So we set a half hour timer to go back and check. We come back, nothing has been touched.

We repeat this process for five hours. Nothing. Same loads. We walk out into the communal area and say loudly that somebody needs to come pick up their laundry, then set a five minute timer to give them one last chance to grab it.

Five minutes go by. My wife walks into the laundry room and sees that the dryer has been put on a half-cycle (we presume because whatever was in there wasn’t dry.) At this point, we do the math and realize we’re going to be up until after midnight doing laundry. So my wife goes into the laundry room, takes the washer load out, places it on the dryer, and starts her load to get a head start.

As soon as my wife steps back in the apartment, I hear someone stomping down the stairs and cursing up a storm. I step out of the apartment, and see a woman in her early 20s who looks surprised to see me.

“Whatever ahole started the washer better not have left my clothes on the f-ing floor,” she says. I tell her “That was my wife, who has been waiting five hours for you to move your laundry out.”

“That doesn’t mean you can touch my crap."

I tell her other people live in the building, and we’re all waiting on you.

“I have been doing one load after another, ahole.”

I tell her that we know she hasn’t because we saw that nobody has touched the machines until five minutes ago. We go back and forth. She proceeds to call me an ahole four or five more times as I tell her she needs to get her crap out when it’s done. Mind you, her stuff is on top of the dryer. We didn’t just throw it across the room. She suddenly blurts out “I’m pregnant, you ahole.” At this point, I am:

1) Caught off-guard, as she does not appear pregnant

2) Sick of being cursed at outside my front door by someone who is clearly more angry that she’s being called out than having her clothes moved.

I raise my voice and say “I don’t care. You still have to act like an adult. You can’t take care of something simple like clothes and you’re about to be responsible for a child. Figure it out.” At this point, she has stopped cursing me out and is dead quiet. Tears begin to well up and she starts to cry.

She lets out one final “ahole” before running up the stairs. When we come to switch the laundry, we see she left a note on the dryer that said “Don’t touch my crap.” I know she was in the wrong for the laundry, but did I take it too far with my comment?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

AcceptablyThanks said:

I can't imagine waiting 5 hours to use a community laundry machine. I'd have moved her stuff after an hour and not said a word.

Spirited-Lab-4021 said:

I hate to be that person but I am 95% sure that was only said to be an argument winner. Because otherwise she could’ve just said “I am sorry you have been waiting but I am pregnant and having a rough day” easy as that.

I get people may not think as rationally in confrontation they weren't expecting it to happen but in a perfect scenario that would have been the easiest and least stressful way to get around that situation for her but she probably just forgot her laundry, didn't like being called out for it, and thought you would instantly just feel bad and give up.

Mental-Paramedic9790 said:

You waited five hours?!! I would’ve taken her clothes out of the machine after the 30 minutes you waited. I suspect she’s not even pregnant. She probably just uses that to get her way.

George7athome said:

Pregnancy is probably the most common condition in the world. Yes it's a special time, but it doesn't give you a free pass to be entitled.

shelizabeth93 said:

NTA. She is. But one washer and dryer for 12 units?! That's presumably 24 people at least. That's a landlord problem. I have my own washer and dryer and do laundry at least 3 times a week. Your building needs more accommodations for it's residents.

crystalizedmidnight said:

NTA - she was. No excuse for cursing you out and she had such an over the top response. I’ve lived in an apartment and never had that much of an issue. She needs to get her life together and figure her crap out like you said. I think you handled that perfectly well. I’d say if she continues to act like that I wouldn’t wait for her to move her laundry, I’d do it for her like you did. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

After reading the comments, OP updated the post to include:

Here’s a few more things to help you understand the context, based on common questions in the comments. There is a sign posted that tells people to empty the washer/dryer as soon as their clothes are done. We also get regular reminders emailed to us by the apartment complex. Multiple buildings, so this pops ups as an issue with other buildings occasionally.

Why did we wait five hours? Two reasons:

1) It’s a slow Sunday and we have other stuff going on. We are both recovering from a nasty illness last week, so we were deep cleaning the apartment and catching up on other work that needed to be taken care of. Time crunch didn’t really hit us until four hours in. In other words, laundry wasn’t the biggest priority until it was the only thing left to do.

2) About four months ago, somebody did throw someone’s clothes into the trash. Wife and I were on vacation at the time, but we saw the emails. I know the person whose clothes were thrown out, different person. He told me it happened less than an hour after the cycle ended.

This set off a crapstorm at our leasing office and we got a flurry of emails asking us if we knew who threw the clothes out, policy updates, reminders on “the importance of being good neighbors,” etc. It was a whole thing.

We’ve got other ongoing issues with the leasing office about them owing us money. Not trying to complicate that. Obviously we didn’t throw her clothes out, but we didn’t want to kick the hornets nest by moving someone else’s clothes unless it was absolutely necessary.

Yes, we do pay to do laundry. $2 for a wash, $2 to dry. Yes we are aware this is too much. Yes we are moving soon to a place with our own laundry machines. Why did I step outside my door? Our apartment door is about eight feet from laundry room door.

Based on the fact that someone started shouting in the hall and was stomping in the direction of our apartment, I assumed that she would either dump my wife’s clothes out of the washer onto the floor, or start pounding on our door. Like I said, we’re both recovering from being sick, but my wife is feeling worse than I am. I made the split-decision to step outside before she caused more of a problem.