The qualms of laundry day in residence at Algonquin College are finally over for most students.
On Oct. 27, residents woke up to brand-new laundry machines after a week-long maintenance closure of both laundry rooms.
Students learned they would be unable to access the laundry rooms from Oct. 23 to Oct. 27 after an email from the residence days prior. They were hopeful the old machines would be fixed to settle the struggles of guessing which ones would be functional on laundry day.
On the day maintenance ended, residents were surprised to see shiny new machines in both laundry rooms. The initial email never mentioned the change, only that the machines would be under maintenance.
Finally, students were able to wash their clothes worry-free.
“It’s my first time using them,” said resident Kierstyn Auger. “Now they’re like, so nice and they’re bigger. It’s just easier to use.”
She explained the last machines were unsatisfactory and were always out of order.
On the other hand, some think it wasn’t a huge change.
“The dryers heat up and the washers fill and they’re deeper than the old ones were so you can fit more in the load. Bad news is, they didn’t upgrade the (payment) system,” said resident Brayden Grooms.
The payment system allows residents to tap their student card after loading money onto it.
“They still constantly eat money, which is disappointing. They took these facilities down for what, like a week? And all they did is put new washers. Yeah, they wash and dry, but what good is that if they don’t even take money?” said resident Marcus Harrison.
“Also, you can’t use pods in them now,” said Grooms, looking at the bold “No Pods” lettering printed on the detergent slot on a machine. “I mean, you can. You just have to take the nasty pod gelatin out of your clothes after.”
The issues with the AC card system seemingly weren’t fixed or replaced during the maintenance, while the issue with detergent pods is listed on the machines. Despite the flaws, they’re still considered an improvement by students.
“I mean, the way I’m looking at it right now is at least they don’t throw up errors anymore. So, we know right away if something’s wrong instead of coming back and finding out the dryer didn’t have any gas or the washing machine didn’t have any water,” said Harrison.
“At the very least it’s ‘No, it ate my money’ instead of ‘I just waited the past hour for it to dry, only for it to still be wet’.”