A teachable moment

This is a teachable moment.  It's about respect, quelling your own selfishness and knowing that rummaging through someone's skivvy drawer is wrong. 

First, this plea.

When someone (me) offers you a warm recently vacated dryer for your clothes (the clothes you've left sitting in three washing machines nearly 3 hours while people waited...) do not then open a dryer in use, pull out someone else's clothes and put yours in, insisting that you have to use it since it's "closer."
Closer to what? It's two feet away from my proffered warm empty one.

And when I tell you your behavior is selfish and disrespectful, don't come back with, "Don't lecture me about respect. I'm a very well educated woman!"

Obviously you can guess this was my afternoon encounter.  This woman in her late twenties actually tossed out, "I'm a very well educated woman!"  Oddly enough she looked quite a bit like the internet sensation by the same name.  

I decided she needed to go back to school. 

"First, miss, your clothes have been sitting in three machines since I got here this morning.  Done.  Sitting.  Waiting for your eminent return for over two and a half hours.  Other people waited ever so patiently for washing machines while your clothes sat untouched.  Not one person made a move to remove them from their home.  The clothes you see now, finishing their drying cycle, are the clothes washed by people waiting for you to empty your machines.  Second, I just offered you two machines that are empty and warm, a third empty above them ,and a fourth will be empty in... well, however long it takes for me to reach in and do it.  That's four empty dryers for you to use, not two feet from the one you are emptying of clothes that are not yours.  If this establishment were packed and all the dryers were in use and the woman whose clothes you are now fondling had simply left them in there for, say, two and a half hours to languish, you may be well within your right to ask the attendant next door at the bakery for assistance in removing those clothes and setting them aside.  As it stands, those clothes have a couple minutes left on the dryer and the woman has been punctual, as have most of us today, about getting her laundry.  Therefore your actions are selfish and you obviously lack respect for other's things.  AND THIRD...  You have stated that you are okay with people taking your items from the washing machine (if only we'd known) or the dryer.  Most of us are not - in the same way we are not okay with you rummaging through our underwear drawers.  I would not be comfortable with you going through my underwear, nor would I be comfortable with you going through my wife's panty drawer or my son's pajamas.  And the fact that you are doing that very thing right now with this woman's items is uncomfortable to me.  The fact that you are doing so while she is not around, unaware that you are essentially rummaging through her lacy frilly things is actually creepy and I believe criminal in several states and more than a handful of college campuses.   This is the kind of basic lesson I hope my one year old has already learned:  respect other people's things... and don't be a creep.  Oh... and you're lucky my wife is not doing laundry today because she wouldn't have given you this little lesson, she'd simply rip you a new one, you inconsiderate twit."

And that is a teachable moment.