29 May:
Laundry mix-ups happened from time to time; I have no idea how the contractors did the laundry –did each person get their laundry put into an individual machine? That seems unlikely and too good to be true. Were laundry bags all piled together by unit or physical location (which would, by default, pretty much mean it was shared by unit)? There was no way to know. Sometimes different articles of clothing would come back in your laundry bag. Most of it would be yours, but one or two items…. well, it could be anybody’s call.

I sometimes had minor items lost (t-shirt, socks) but never whole uniforms, although I’d heard of it happening. Wouldn’t someone notice a uniform that wasn’t theirs, what with the name tags and all? You’d think, but let’s face it, typically you grab your laundry bag and go, and throw stuff in your locker without thinking– it all looks the same, after all. If you’re in a hurry, you may even just dump stuff out on your bed to deal with later. The KBR laundry contractors– apparently all Filipinas, near as I could tell– had no answers for you. The same mysterious vortex that allowed your single socks to vanish apparently allowed articles of clothing to hop laundry bags, leading to potentially awkward exchanges of found items among comrades.

That said, I never, ever ended up with a set of ladies’ tiger-striped undies in my laundry bag.