I'm going to stray away from my typical topics today to share with you my greatest "sticking it to the Man" moment.
I live in an apartment building that was built in the 70s. As far as I can tell, the coin operated laundry machines are original. One day, management decided to raise the washer from $1.50 to $1.75 without any notice. I was pretty upset. That adds up pretty quick when you take jiu-jitsu and you have to wash your gi 2-3 times a week. So I retaliated thusly.
This was a little over a year ago. At the time, I was working for a company that sells fasteners (nuts, bolts, screws, etc.). It turns out that a 7/16" SAE flat washer is roughly the same size of a quarter. For me, a bag of 25 of them cost me between $0.30 and $0.50 depending on the grade of steel. Do the math.
Now it turns out that this little trick doesn't work on every machine. I happened to get lucky and pick this one first. Out of the 8 washing machines, it only works on 2 of them. It also doesn't work on the dryers, but I hang dry my gis anyway. You also have to be aware of variances in thickness though. I've come across some that are either too thick or too thin.
So my message to management is simple. Justify that price increase by upgrading our machines!