A few years back, I moved into a new apartment complex in Chicago, and on my first day there, I went down to do a load of laundry.

A nice man named Rick was instantly talkative, and showed me how to cheat the machine so it ran for free.

The person in this story is sort of in the opposite position.

Rather than free laundry, the laundry was never free.

The problem is figuring out what to do about it. Let’s read the story.

WIBTA for complaining about a neighbor using our apartment’s laundry to run a laundry service?

My apartment has two “discounted” washers and dryers in the basement for the tenants.

I say discounted because its fifty cents each device, so way cheaper than the laundromat.

Anyway, for the past couple weeks, I’m finding them almost constantly in use.

There’s only 4 apartments in my building, so it seemed crazy to me that anyone’s using them that much.

But someone has a vested interest…

It turns out a woman in our building who earns her income through working for different app services (like Instacart and Doordash) is now also working for an app where I guess she does peoples laundry.

I imagine she’s doing very well, too, based on how often she has the machines in use.

I wanted to just talk to her about it but English doesn’t seem to be her thing, and she’s strangely tough to narrow down.

So, this is obviously annoying, and it IS technically against the rules…

Anyway, our lease says you cannot use the appliances for friends and family but obviously says nothing about this since who would have thought about such a thing.

I want to complain to the landlord, but I don’t want to be that “Karen” who’s wrecking this woman’s livelihood when I could just drive two blocks up the road to do my laundry.

I haven’t heard any complaints from either of the other apartments, so who knows if it’s just me.

A tough situation. On the one hand, nobody wants to be that person. On the other hand, everybody living here also needs to do their laundry.

Let’s see what the comments on Reddit say:

This person recommends telling the landlord, but she doesn’t have to rat out the neighbor.

Hooray for the surveillance state?

It’s unlikely the cogs are going to turn in a helpful way.

Some were blunt:

Here’s hoping they can both find a better way.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.