It’s A (Lint) Trap!

(The summer after my freshman year of college, I decide to live in an apartment with three other girls from my school. One of them is a fellow freshman, and the other two are upperclassmen who have already been living in the apartment for a few months. On my first day off work while living in the apartment, I do some laundry with the in-unit washer. But when I want to put my clothes in the dryer, I can’t find the lint trap. Only one of my roommates is home at the time, and she’s about to leave for work. She’s one of the ones who’s been living here for a while.)

Me: “Hey, [Roommate]? Where’s the lint trap?”

Roommate: “Oh, there isn’t one!”

Me: “There isn’t a lint trap?”

Roommate: “Yeah! It’s because the apartment complex got those new energy-efficient dryers.”

Me: “But that has nothing to do with lint!”

Roommate: “It’s amazing what they can make things do nowadays, isn’t it? Anyway, I’ve got to run!”

(She left for work before I could say anything else. After a bit of investigating, I found that there was a lint trap, hidden in an awkward place at the back of the dryer. My roommates had been ignoring it for so long that it was clogged with compacted lint. It took 30 minutes to pull it all out so I could dry my clothes. Afterward, my roommates were amazed at how much better the dryer worked. I was just amazed they hadn’t started a fire.)