Somerset Laundry gives hospitals clean bill of health

PITTSFIELD – Five years ago, Scotland-born Judy Busby was a student at Galway University. She was singing in an Irish recording studio, laying down her music – a rich blend of Irish folk style and contemporary tunes – when Robert Busby of New Hampshire walked into her life.

Robert Busby had been visiting a friend in Ireland and he admits with a shy smile that it was love at first sight.

It was a whirlwind romance, the couple said recently, and six weeks later Judy Busby was living in New Hampshire. Five years later, the couple is married and operating Somerset Laundry on the south edge of Pittsfield center.

“Sometimes,” she admitted in a thick Scottish brogue, “I look up from my work and wonder ‘Where am I?'”

But the couple has found their work and the life in central Maine so satisfying that they both quickly asserted that they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. “It’s only geography in the end,” said Judy. “I’m happy where I am.”

The couple is busy serving the coastal hospitals’ linen needs. Part chemist, part repairman and a whiz at laundry, Robert Busby had 16 years’ experience working for Arrow Health Care, the laundry’s parent company, before coming to Maine. AHC operates laundries in Norwalk, Conn., and Pittsfield.

Two years ago, the couple relocated from the firm’s New Hampshire headquarters to manage the local facility, housed in a nondescript one-story cinder-block building, which has been in operation for more than 30 years.

“Our workload is pretty much dominated by the health care industry,” said Robert Busby. “We serve Maine Coast Memorial, MDI hospital, Waldo County General.” Seven thousand pounds of linens a day pass through Somerset Laundry in the summer months.

Judy Busby said she and her husband set the quality bar high and are sticklers for perfection. “We’re really proud of this wee laundry,” she said. “It is so important to Robert and I – just as individuals – to do a good job.”

“We tell our staff that everything that comes in here could be going to their grandmother’s bed,” she said. “If there is a problem, we’re on it like a rash.”

Robert Busby said that when the couple first arrived, the quality standards at the laundry were not where they thought they should be. But after two years of upgrading equipment and showing, rather than telling, employees about quality, the laundry’s reputation is spotless.

The operation is simple: soiled linens, gowns, sheets and pillowcases are sorted in a large room separate from the rest of the facility. “The yuk room,” joked Judy Busby.

“The biggest problems we have is medicines,” she said. If an item has been cleaned and then is rejected, it is treated and rewashed three times before it is discarded.

From the sorting room, the linen heads to one of a bank of washers, including “The Beast,” a machine that can handle 450 pounds of dry laundry, or the equivalent of 38 top-loaders. The machine is so powerful that it sits on shock absorbers so it won’t damage the building as it goes through its cycles.

“I still back away when The Beast begins to spin,” laughed Judy Busby.

From the washers, most of the linens go to 170-pound gas dryers while the sheets head to the ironer. Hooked by two corners to a feeding mechanism, the sheets slide through a 300-degree set of drums that dry and iron them simultaneously. Coming out the other end of the 24-foot-long machine perfectly pressed, the sheets are also automatically folded.

“The key is that we only handle them twice: going on and coming off,” said Judy Busby. “Handling is kept at a minimum.”

The couple is proud of their quality control system and the sense of family they have generated among the nine plant workers. At the end of every shift, Judy Busby stands at the door saying goodbye to her workers. “Thank you for today,” she says to each and every one.

“We have a great staff,” she said, adding that several have worked at the Pittsfield facility for more than 12 years.

“My commitment is to my workers first,” said Judy Busby. “Without them it really doesn’t matter about our customers.” When a recent warm spell made it uncomfortable in the laundry, she went to a nearby store to buy some fans. “I had the cart piled high with seven fans,” she laughed, “and the woman at the till thought that was just a bit excessive.”

The Busbys have also nurtured solid working relationships with the housekeeping departments of the hospitals they serve.

“Hospital budgets are so low,” said Judy Busby. “We need to take care of their linens. These people are taking care of other people. They need to know we are caring about them.”

The laundry staff begins the day at 4 a.m and leaves around 1 p.m. The trucks start to roll about 3 p.m. and deliver the clean linens to the hospitals while picking up the next day’s soiled materials. “This schedule works because when the hospital staff arrives at 6 a.m., all their clean lines are there and all their dirty ones are gone.”

The Busbys say their only regret is that many hospitals in the central part of the state send their linens south to be cared for. “This is not being capitalistic,” Judy Busby said, “it’s being realistic. This end of the state needs more work.”

“There is a wealth of talent and skill in this county that is not being utilized by the companies in this county.”