Laundry Day

I'm stuck here doing laundry today, and it occurs to me that about the only useful thing I learned in boot camp (aside from how to tell if a girl has VD) was the ability to professionally fold any piece of clothing. I still remember how to fold all my stuff the way they trained us in Orlando, even the gloves. The fact they'd cycle you until you pissed blood if you screwed up has nothing to do with it.

Speaking of laundry, one of the biggest wastes of time I recall from when I was in the pipeline was trying to get my laundry done. Living in the barracks, with no money and no car, you were pretty much obligated to compete with several hundred other squids for the use of 30 washers and dryers in the one dingy laundry room they thoughtfully provided.

The first time I showed up to do my wash was on a weekend afternoon. I couldn't even get in the door, the place was so packed. One squid, and this is completely true, actually offered to sell me his place in line. No freakin' way. Being a nuke, I was sure I could beat the system.

My first idea was just to buy new clothes whenever I ran out, but this only put off the inevitable. For one, there's only so many pairs of tighty-whities you can stuff in a stand-up locker (as a student, absolutely NOTHING could be left out in your room during the day - it would either get stolen, or cause you to fail one of the many daily barracks inspections), and for another, it cost too much. Along the same lines, I tried having the exchange dry cleaning shop do my laundry for me, but that was so pricey I still have a few sets of whites there I don't the money to reclaim.

Doing laundry took up an entire day, which was usually the one day I had off. Remember, it's not *just* a job.

This went on for about two months, until I caught a break. One night we got back to the barracks early (~0200 - early for us, anyhow) and happened to stagger by the laundry. The place was deserted! There was only one weird little geeky dude in there, and even he was almost done. This was the solution: do your laundry in the middle of the night, and you could wash everything all at once. Sure, giving up a night off sucked, but not any worse than the B.S. "security watch" they made us stand from time to time.

(One small aside - the geeky dude wasn't actually doing his own laundry; he was this twidget who was trying to earn enough money to buy a new computer or something by washing other peoples' stuff. Or, at least that's what he said... a lot of the laundry he was folding up looked suspiciously feminine, which begged a lot of questions no one wanted to ask back then).

Anyhow, that system worked for most of A-school, at least until too many other people figured out what we were up to. By the time we graduated, it was busier at night than during the day. I had to come up with something better.

Inspiration struck when we were "smurfing", that pointless exercise in slave labor you got to enjoy between the end of A-school and the start of Power School. There were so many pet projects going on back then that they actually delayed us from classing up one class to ensure they had enough bodies. I worked on several details; a few were kinda okay (like running the video arcade room for a week), some were sort of demoralizing (like being the guy who went around dropping off newspapers in the morning all over the base, on foot), and some just plain sucky (i.e., the galley). But one of the last jobs I had as a smurf was cleaning up the laundry room.

This was a thankless job, since no one was going to close it down long enough for you to clean it up. Even in the middle of the day, when you'd think every one would have been in class, the place was busy. It usually took a few hours just to sweep the floor. But, in the end, it turned out to be quite good deal in disguise.

You see, there were a lot of broken machines in the laundry room, and the chief in charge of the barracks had absolutely no interest in getting them fixed; as long as one washer and one dryer were still working, he could officially report the laundry was open for business. I wasn't looking for new work myself (see how that esprit de corps actually works, boys and girls?), but I was somewhat curious if my 3.2 grasp of all things electrical was sufficient to actually fix anything. One afternoon, having completed all my usual smurfy crap, I took one of the OOC dryers apart with my dig'it tool.

And, to everyone's surprise (including my own) I actually was able to fix it using the schematic glued to the inside of the controller. It was a simple fix, sure (a wire had fallen off the start switch), but it made me thirsty for more. I wasn't quite as lucky with some of the others, but by cannibalizing some machines I got others working, and actually felt some small measure of job satisfaction. Since the chief I worked for didn't care if the machines were broken, he cared even less when I fixed one. It wasn't exactly stimulating, but it made the day go by faster.

It also got me thinking: I had plenty of time to do laundry now, while I was smurfing. But I knew getting up in the middle of the night to wash my clothes would suck hairy goat balls once I got to power school, and it would be worth my while if I could come up with a way to 'reserve' a machine or two for my own personal use by then. I eventually did, and it only cost me a few bucks at the local Radio Hack.

When I fixed the last washer and dryer, I added a special feature: I put a magnetic reed switch inline with the start button. I glued it back behind a wire bundle, where even another electrician would have missed it. The reed switch interrupted the signal from the start button until you closed it with a magnet, so the machine remained OOC until I "fixed" it by sticking a magnet on the back of the controller when no one was looking.

You'd think something so obvious would have been eventually have been found and repaired, but then you'd be underestimating how little the "staff" cared about such things in Orlando. With just a little discretion, I had a washer and dryer all to myself throughout power school, and even made $100 when I turned over my secret to an MM right before I left for Idaho.

I can't say I wasn't tempted to perform the same modifications when I got to Pearl, but luckily I wasn't in the barracks long enough to need to. The moral of the story: a bored nuke is a dangerous thing, and nothing's more boring than doing laundry in the middle of the night.