Woman moves stranger's laundry, gets yelled at for 'ruining' expensive clothes.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of waiting for an open dryer in a laundry room, and finally being forced to physically move someone else's clothing out of the washer.

It can feel downright awkward and invasive handling someone else's clothes, and it's even worse when they get mad at you.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a woman asked if she was wrong for not wanting to pay to fix a woman's clothes she accidentally ruined in the laundry.

She wrote:

AITA for ruining someone else's laundry?

I (23F) live in an apartment with a communal laundry room. I was trying to do my laundry today and saw that all of the laundry machines were taken. However, I noticed that many of them were done, the owners just did not pick their clothes up.

After waiting for 10-20 minutes and no one came to pick up the clothes, I emptied the contents of one of the machines and set them on the side (this is a policy in our apartment). When I came back to get my laundry, this other person (also F) started yelling that I ruined her new clothes and demanded I pay her the price of her new clothes.

It turns out that when I was moving the clothes, I missed some white clothes. They were very small, especially wet and I just didn't see them. My clothes are all dark, and when I washed my load, the color washed into them and they are now grey. Apparently, they were brand new clothes that she was washing for the first time and were high quality.

I realize this is my fault that I didn't see them, but I also think that if she valued her clothes so much, she should have come to pick them up earlier. I apologized, but she still wants me to pay for at least a part of the cost of the clothes. So AITA for 'ruining' her clothes?

The comment section quickly filled up.

190PairsOfPanties wrote:

YTA for refusing to immediately replace what you ruined by not checking the drum properly. It takes one second to spin the drum/check under the lip. You should be doing that regardless since all sorts of stuff comes out of people's pockets in shared machines.

theLizardMum wrote:

ESH. I’m actually really conflicted here? First, communal laundry sucks. It really really does, and everyone feels slightly like a jerk when you have to move someone else’s laundry. My first instinct was to say that you did nothing wrong, because you waited a good amount of time and she shouldn’t have left her laundry unattended.

But…you did ruin her clothes. I know it was on accident! But we’ve all gotten caught up and didn’t switch our laundry over as quickly as possible. That doesn’t mean our laundry deserves to get ruined. I know you didn’t mean to, and it was an accident, so I’d say you’re very lightly a jerk here.

She’s a jerk for going off on you. She left her clothing unattended. If you leave something unattended, something maybe happen to it. So I’m pretty conflicted with this one, but I don’t think you’re super in the wrong? She’s the main jerk, I think.

klendool wrote:

NTA you all use a communal laundry and mistakes like this are bound to happen from time to time, its the risk everyone took when they decided to move in to this place AND also when they decided to be lackadaisical about when their laundry would finish knowing full well other people may need to use these machines.

CancelAfter1968 wrote:

YTA. It's not that hard to make sure you get all the clothes out of the machine. It's pretty standard behavior.

Sweezy_Clooch wrote:

NTA. If her laundry was so important she should have a timer to keep track of it. For all the people saying YTA I'd like to know what exactly you're smoking and where I can get some. Also how much clothes could you have possibly missed out of the machine? You obviously didn't do this on purpose and there's no way you would have missed a massive pile of clothes sitting in the machine.

Especially if they're white. How much money exactly are we talking here? If it's a small amount maybe just pay it to say you're sorry and try to be better about checking in the future. But if you missed two small pieces of clothing and they're supposedly 'really expensive' it sounds like she's trying to get some money out of you.

People are clearly very divided on this one.