About a month ago, I started doing laundry for some folks who run a few Airbnb’s around here. My roommate’s girlfriend, a prolific babysitter when her master’s program isn’t in session, saw the post asking for a laundry guy on NextDoor and pointed it out to me (a courteous move on her part). I made a NextDoor account, reached out, got the job, and started going across town about twice a week in the middle of the day to pick up their sheets and towels, take them to a laundromat, wash them, dry them, fold them, and bring them back before the next guests checked in. It was a good gig—they were probably overpaying me, and I could blog from the laundromat while things were in the washer and dryer. One time I got a bunch of free beer a bachelorette party had left behind.
But it was also kind of weird.
There was a rotating crew of people involved in managing and cleaning the apartments. I only met the guy who paid me one time. Halfway through, they added two new apartments to the rotation, and I learned there was some sort of love triangle going on between the people running the Airbnb and one of the folks doing the cleaning. I also learned that at least two of the apartments they were Airbnb-ing were forbidden from being rented out as Airbnb’s.
But they paid me in a timely fashion, it was easy, and with Lyft demand seemingly down in July (as people, I assume, fled Austin for respite from the heat), it was a nice source of money. I was also taught how to fold a fitted sheet.
But that training may soon go to waste. Because they ghosted me.
One of the folks running the show was going back to Los Angeles for the weekend, but she’d told me I was supposed to do laundry that Sunday and Monday (this was about a week and a half ago). In between her telling me that and Sunday arriving, though, I got a text from one of the other folks running the show (the guy who paid me, who I only met once) saying they actually didn’t need me those days.
I have not heard from them since.
There are a few possibilities for what could have happened:
1. They realized they were spending too much money on a laundry guy.
They weren’t paying me an exorbitant amount (it came out to between $15 and $20 an hour), but they were paying me more than I would assume the market demands for such tasks.
2. Their landlord shut the operation down.
Hopefully, this wasn’t what happened, because it would really stink for the cleaning staff. The folks paying me seemed unconcerned about violating the leases, and they mentioned that other units in their complex were allowed to be Airbnb’s, but it’s possible the landlord felt differently.
3. They haven’t needed laundry done for two weeks.
Certainly possible—they did buy a lot of sheets during my time with them.
4. I am really bad at doing laundry.
I didn’t think I was doing a terrible job, by any means. The stuff was clean when I brought it back, and folded. But it’s also possible my impression of what constitutes acceptably-done laundry is not up to their standards. I may, unbeknownst to myself, be very bad at laundry.
***
Anyway, with everyone coming back from vacation, teachers returning to work, and college students trickling back into Austin, Lyft demand is back up. Also, the shop here at The Barking Crow is making some things happen, and we got some ad revenue recently for future use. So it’s not a very big deal that my laundering days might be over. But it is a little weird that they didn’t formally tell me things were done.
Either way, I still have approximately 74 unused dryer sheets in my trunk if anyone uses those.
