[legion]

The apartment I had in college had a coin-operated washer and dryer on each floor.

The apartment company failed to empty coins from the machines the entire school year. By late winter, the quarters had started to build up inside the machine to the point that you really had to work the coin tray that slid back and forth to displace some quarters to be able to get a wash or dry. I called the apartment company multiple times (as did a few other people in the building) asking them to empty coins out of the machines but nothing ever happened.

Then one day in the early spring, I put my quarters in and no amount of jiggling the coin tray or hitting the machine would let the coin tray slide all the way in to activate the wash. I desperately needed clean clothes for work the next day and the machine had eaten $1.50 that I didn't really have the funds to replace. So I decided I would try to pull the coin tray back out to get my money so that I could go to a (more expensive) laundromat. So I pulled on the tray. I pulled hard. I pulled harder. Eventually I had both hands on the lip of the coin tray and my feet against the machine and pulled with all my might. Something metal snapped in the machine.

It turns out what had broke was the lock on the door to the coin holding area, which I cleaned out to allowed the coin tray to slide back and forth again. There must have been $100 in quarters in there. Also inside the door I could see the switch that the coin tray would hit when laden with quarters. I got free washes for the rest of the semester and I told everyone in the building about it. A couple of weeks later the drier had finally gotten so jammed full of coins that it would no longer work either. I repeated that procedure on the drier.