setting: Consider shared laundry facilities, as where all the apartments in a building share a few washing machines, or a small local laundromat.
scene: There is enough time to cycle the washing machines once more before closing time, without a lot of time to spare. 2 machines are not actively running, but they are full of someone's clean wet clothes.
What is the neighborly thing to do? Is there an obligation to leave the clean laundry in the washing machine until the owners return to claim it? I don't think so, but at least some of my neighbors do. They aren't happy about it, but they think those are the unwritten rules. Is it ok to move the clean laundry to the table across the room, for it to start drying in a crumpled heap? Is this something marginal, that can only be justified by dire need to use the washing machine? Or is it something perfectly acceptable that doesn't need any excuse or apology? Does folding the the clean laundry make it less bad, because it's not a crumpled mess? Or does it make it worse, because it involves more invasion of privacy than just transferring an armful of undifferentiated cloth?
scene: There is enough time to cycle the washing machines once more before closing time, without a lot of time to spare. 2 machines are not actively running, but they are full of someone's clean wet clothes.
What is the neighborly thing to do? Is there an obligation to leave the clean laundry in the washing machine until the owners return to claim it? I don't think so, but at least some of my neighbors do. They aren't happy about it, but they think those are the unwritten rules. Is it ok to move the clean laundry to the table across the room, for it to start drying in a crumpled heap? Is this something marginal, that can only be justified by dire need to use the washing machine? Or is it something perfectly acceptable that doesn't need any excuse or apology? Does folding the the clean laundry make it less bad, because it's not a crumpled mess? Or does it make it worse, because it involves more invasion of privacy than just transferring an armful of undifferentiated cloth?