I was talking to my friend Caroline about my job at the BYU laundry, and she said her grandpa said it was a useful skill--the kind of thing you can do anywhere. It's interesting to see how industrial strength laundry works. That's one thing I enjoy about only being qualified for low-end jobs. You get to see the back side of things. You get to see how things work that you would never learn about otherwise. I told Caroline I'd post some pictures.
The jacket is going down to assembly hanging from one branch of a whole system of lines that transports clothes from one part of the laundry to another--for dry cleaning items, it takes them from the dry cleaning machines to the presses to assembly. The clothing items moving along the line makes me think of that hanging-door-chase scene in Monsters, Inc.
A giant press that I've only seen used once (besides being a warm spot for drying things flat) and the front desk.
The dry cleaning machines. They're like giant wash machines. You can see the clothes going round and round and some chemicals sloshing. It smells really...chemical.
The mangle, used to press and fold sheets. I think. I don't work with the mangle or anything, but I think it's fantastic how huge it is and what a menacing name it has.
The pants press, where I spend most of my time. It's a two-step process--pants go on the dummy first, which is to get the pleats nice and pressed. Then you put them on the press you see to the right. It really scared me when I started working here--I had seen a movie where some poor Asian immigrant is using one and burns her arm, but she has to keep working to meet quota. I've never gotten burned, though, and I don't have a quota.
The jacket is going down to assembly hanging from one branch of a whole system of lines that transports clothes from one part of the laundry to another--for dry cleaning items, it takes them from the dry cleaning machines to the presses to assembly. The clothing items moving along the line makes me think of that hanging-door-chase scene in Monsters, Inc.
A giant press that I've only seen used once (besides being a warm spot for drying things flat) and the front desk.
The dry cleaning machines. They're like giant wash machines. You can see the clothes going round and round and some chemicals sloshing. It smells really...chemical.
The mangle, used to press and fold sheets. I think. I don't work with the mangle or anything, but I think it's fantastic how huge it is and what a menacing name it has.
The pants press, where I spend most of my time. It's a two-step process--pants go on the dummy first, which is to get the pleats nice and pressed. Then you put them on the press you see to the right. It really scared me when I started working here--I had seen a movie where some poor Asian immigrant is using one and burns her arm, but she has to keep working to meet quota. I've never gotten burned, though, and I don't have a quota.
4 comments:
Very interesting--we never knew about all this stuff.
Blog mention! Woohoo! Thanks for the pics, my friend - it's quite interesting.
You know what it makes me think of? On Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where he takes you behind the scenes of all of the different factories (my favorite was learning how they make crayons). You just pulled a Mr. Rogers for BYU Laundry! Very cool.
Also, I've been meaning to comment on your Beatles post for like two weeks, but I kept getting sidetracked (stupid finals). I'll do that now.
Those were my favorite Mr. Rogers episodes.
I second the Mr. Rogers! And I loved the crayon one, too! In fact, I was just thinking about the crayon episode while I was reading "home pre-school ideas" (since it's just not in the budget to pay $400 a month for Gabe to learn the ABCs when he's learning them at home just fine, thank you very much, but that is off-topic) and they suggested factory tours. I LOOOOVE factory tours. I'm so happy you posted this.
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