Change for a Dollar

Why I am glad the Bluff's laundry machines no longer take quarters...

(This is a true story.)

As I set out to do my laundry a few weeks ago, I realized that, to my chagrin, I didn’t have any quarters yet again. Sure, I had dollar bills, nickels, dimes, and even 50-cent pieces… but quarters? No. (Is it just me, or does this happen to anyone else? What has the world done with our quarters? And why isn’t there a quarter-exchange machine anywhere on campus?) This time, before I went digging under the couch cushions and through my roommates’ pockets, I decided I could be clever about this; I was going to beat the system. So I took one of my dollar bills and skillfully fed it through a near-by soda vending machine. My plan was to stick the bill in, press the handy “coin-return” button, and voila – get my quarters. Ingenious, right? But the soda machine got the better of me. As I pressed the “coin-return” button, what should I receive but 9 dimes. Dimes… 9 of them! Not only did I not get quarters, but I was also gypped a whole 10 cents! After that, I just about decided that it would be easier to simply hand wash and dry my clothes in the future. Either that or take them to Horton, another dorm on campus.

All that to say, the Bluff (which is the complex I live in) has new laundry machines that now take handy cards instead of quarters. Which means… next time we're looking to do laundry, we don’t have to sneak through our roommates clothes to find quarters, tear apart our couch cushions and car seats, or lose 10 cents in an effort to be clever. We can just fill up our cards at the machine and voila, we'll be set to go.

*While this might cause an inconvenience to those living in the Bluff who finally exchanged their bills for rolls of quarters, maybe they could invest them, instead of dimes, in the vending machines... ?