Turns out ASU dorm students can now reach new levels of indolence with a contracted laundry service Valet Today that cleans their dirty laundry and folds the clothes without students doing a thing but making a trip to the store for pickup. Coupled with online classes, we figure this will allow some students to stay in their rooms all semester--surfacing only once a week to check their mail at the UPS Store and grab their laundry. (Assuming they can walk that distance with leg cramps and bed sores.)
But we see a whole lot more potential than just furthering the Xbox time for Steve the three-year freshman. We took a lesson from our friends at the federal prison system. Who knows the perks of laundry better than a bunch of cons?
Sure, dorm dwellers don't have much need for a five-inch shiv, but there's plenty of demand there. Here's the plan: use this laundry service to sneak essentials into ASU dorms under the cover of wanting your clothes to be Snuggle soft. Nowadays, dorms are so tight even the pizza boy is afraid to go knocking.
The first run should be smuggling liquor and cigarettes into the Adelphi complex. It will help the students forget about the ankle-deep water every time it rains.
And what about the prisoners ... er, residents of the Healthy Living Community in Mariposa Hall? They're a virtual cornucopia of potential customers who would surely appreciate some underground acquisitions. They could get anything from cigarettes to inspiration copies of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Count of Monte Cristo." You could even include rock hammers and long-term instructions on how to tunnel to Four Peaks Brewery. Maybe even pictures of men/women from the other floors -- spawning a kind of laundry-based dating service. And don't forget random stuff to throw off the balconies--hard-boiled eggs in your T-shirts, maybe an effigy of [insert desired oppressor] complete with bungee noose.
Other residential halls could smuggle in phone cards, since the students without cell phones (both of them) can only call 911 from the community phones anymore. They might even have room left in their folded pj's for their mail.
In all of this, we see cigarettes fast replacing Sun Dollars as the agreed-upon currency in this potential underworld, since Valet Today will want to keep these exchanges on the d-low.
With the motto, "We do errands - you do life," we figure Valet Today is hip on this possibility too. "Errands" is a rather ambiguous term, so it could easily include stuffing students' laundry with copies of "Shane's World" or rudiments from The Castle Boutique.
After all, Valet Today has a credible history with this sort of thing back East, running a laundry business and a parcel service. Gotcha. And with assurances that they never lose anything, what could be clearer?
We hear ya Valet. Now, do you like Camels or Marlboros?
