Enter the VMI Laundry and the 25 men and women who work there to ensure that cadets who get their dirty laundry to them will get it back cleaned and folded in a timely fashion. The laundry cleans, dries and folds non-wool items, and during duck season they press thousands of white shirts and ducks each week. All items containing wool are dry-cleaned and pressed. It is then hung on racks where cadets may pick it up. If an item needs repairs, the laundry attaches a note advising the cadet that the item should be submitted to the tailor shop for repair.
Every person here can do every job here.
We rotate from job to job so it doesn't get monotonous. If we get in a jam in one area, any of us can move to another area on a moment's notice. Early each Monday morning, laundry employees take a truck into the courtyard where cadets are to deposit their laundry bags full of items that do not need to dry cleaning. In a normal week, between 1,050 and 1,200 bags are dumped in the wagon. And unless the world comes to an end, we are going to have that laundry back in a cadet's pick-up bin by Friday.