Sitting at Mtn Energy waiting on laundry & I have some notes...
The lone handicapped parking area has been filled with able bodied drivers & there is no enforcement of the tag/placard requirement for using the space. The vacant-eyed stare from the girl behind the counter has hammered home the point that she is only there to collect a cheque & is not going to do anything aside from operating the cash register. There are so many teens/twentysomethings that it is nigh impossible to get inside the store. The haze of smoke right at the entrance ensures that I use my inhaler at least twice per visit. The profanity is making me uncomfortable & I am NOT sensitive to that sort of thing at all.
The laundry facility is utterly filthy. I cleaned the tops of the machines I used myself as there was so much paper, empty containers & extraneous junk on them, it was impossible to access the detergent compartments. More machines are out of order than working. I opened a washer to find it full of animal hair, some sort of vegetation & rocks. Normally, I wait until after midnight to use the laundromat, but my husband is out of town & as I have been approached several times by strangers, I don't actually feel safe going so late. People have been squatting in the laundromat. I was made very nervous by a man waving a large metal bar around...
Burnsville is a small town, with a minuscule homeless population, but being open 24 hours means the Mtn Energy store & it's environs are open for anyone who feels like wandering in. While I don't expect a convenience store to solve homelessness, I do have an expectation of safety & cleanliness that so far has. Ot been met. Nothing seems to shake them up or encourage them to make improvements. If there were a single other laundromat in my area, I would never step foot here again. read more