Loading a machine
Putting an order into a machine is one action, and it can start from either end — the order in front of you, or the empty drum in front of you.
Loading the machine here is the same operation as the status move.
Two ways in
From the order. Open it, choose a status that allows a machine, and pick the machine in the same submit. Nothing else is needed — see Moving an order through its statuses.
From the floor. An idle card has a Load order button that lists the orders waiting in the wash queue, so you choose the order for the drum you are standing at. The queue tab works the other way round: Assign on a queue row lists the idle machines. When every active machine is busy, that button reads “No idle machine” and does nothing.
Both routes end in the same place, and either one can be used by whoever is free. The owner can always load and unload. Of the roles a business starts with, Manager and Staff can too; Cashier and Driver see the floor but not the buttons.
What has to be true
| Check | What you are told when it fails |
|---|---|
| The machine belongs to this outlet | Machine was not found |
| The machine is active | Machine must be active to load an order |
| The order's status allows a machine | This order's status can't be loaded onto a machine |
| The kind matches | Washer 3 is a washer, so it can't take this order at this stage |
| The machine is free | That machine already has an order loaded |
The kind check matters because two of the default statuses name one. Washing takes a washer, Drying takes a dryer, and Folding and Ironing take either. A machine you have marked for maintenance is refused outright, which is the point of marking it.
One machine, one order
A machine holds a single order at a time, and Wash Junkie will not be talked out of it. The reason is the record it is keeping: a run ties one machine to one order for one span of time, with a start, an end and a name against it. Two orders sharing Washer 3 would leave every question about it unanswerable — whose load was in there at 8:45pm, how long it took, whose cycle to count.
If two people press load on the same machine in the same moment, one of them gets the machine and the other is told it is already taken. There is no version of this where both loads quietly succeed.
An order you have removed from the books stops holding its machine, so the machine frees up on the floor without anyone having to unload it.
What a run records
Each load opens a run: the machine, the order, the outlet, the staff member who loaded it, and the time. That is where the elapsed clock and the “loaded by” line on the card come from, and it is what the machine efficiency and staff reports are counted from later. The order's own history gains a line reading “Loaded onto Washer 3”.