When I started working at the cleaners, our POS hardware was in the shape of four Windows 9x boxen with fat little CRT monitors. The software was a text-based menu with a gajillion options for all the various little nuances of order types and contents. It wasn’t what you might call newbie-friendly; I’m reasonably competent with computers, and the first time I walked up to it I couldn’t have told you what key to press to start a new order. It was, however, very efficient for familiar users. Because the whole thing was keyboard-based, and you could either use the arrow keys or hit a letter to jump to the most common choices in each menu, it became easy to speed through an order without stopping to look at the screen. The mice attached to these systems were largely vestigial.

In April, the owners started the process of purchasing a new POS system. It would come with brand new hardware and software: a shiny LCD touchscreen and a graphical interface where every piece had an icon depicting exactly what it was, and all we had to do was tap pieces to add them to an order. I found out about all this when I came in one morning to find two techs showing off the new system on an example machine. I was less impressed with it than I was with the fact that they both spoke Korean, Spanish, and English, in that order of fluency. (They were giving the demo to my coworkers in Spanish, but switched as needed when speaking to me or to Mr. and Mrs. Lee.)

I was suspicious, as I generally am of the attitude that graphics are ever necessarily an improvement, but I kept an open mind. It certainly did solve a few of the problems we’d been having with the old system. Most notably, it removed the hard limit of five items per order, which is a bit silly when someone brings in six ties and you have to split them up into two tiny orders. The computers would now control the conveyors directly, too, saving us a lot of time and attention while helping customers. And it had a robust customization system which allowed the user to configure it completely for the particular quirks of his business.

In retrospect, that last one should have been a red flag. It should never be the job of the corporate user to configure something to suit his own needs; if he’s already paying for the software and support package, it should come ready for him to use. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The techs, Sam and Thomas, left the example system set up for us to use. This was almost a great idea, as it gave us a few days to play around and get comfortable with it before it was adopted. A few days . . . during the work week. Days during which we would mostly be serving customers, detailing and marking orders, putting bags away, and so forth, leaving approximately no time at all to, say, play with the example system. We figured this out very quickly, but there was nothing we could do except keep working and assume we’d figure it out when the time came.

They did the installation on a Sunday, when the shop is closed, and right around 7:02 Monday morning problems began to show themselves. It was pretty easy to learn, sure, and we got the hang of basic order creation and detailing in no time. But the first time I heard one of the conveyors start running in response to a command from the computer, my jaw hit the floor.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Elena, who opens the store and had therefore been hearing it all morning, only shrugged sympathetically. I listened, aghast, as an awful little MIDI version of Beethoven’s Für Elise issued from a tiny speaker newly attached to each conveyor. It played as long as the conveyor was running, and then stopped.

“That actually plays every time the conveyor moves?”

I couldn’t believe that anyone anywhere could possibly have thought this was a good idea, but Elena confirmed it. As if this weren’t bad enough, at some point shortly thereafter we had cause to be running all three of our conveyors at once, using the new system’s ability to queue order locations for multiple clerks and retrieve them one by one. All of the conveyors cheerfully started up with the same music.

Out of sync with each other.

In three different keys.

I spent a dumbstruck moment imagining listening to that cacophany hour after hour, five days a week, and looked at the speaker boxes for some sign of a power or even volume switch. I found none.

“We’re going to have to break the speakers,” I decided.

We didn’t break the speakers. We didn’t find a way to turn them off, either. For more than six months now, we’ve actually been going about our business with this hideous chorus in the background. The customer response has been varied; one of our regulars, a former piano student, apparently has a traumatic recital experience associated with the tune and shudders when it plays. A couple people have mis-identified it as Brahms’s Lullaby or Pachelbel’s Canon. (This amuses me not because they’re wrong, but because they’re wrong while trying to show off how cultured they are.) Quite a few mistake it for a cell phone ringing. When we explain what it actually is, they’re as shocked as I was.

“Doesn’t it drive you crazy?” they ask.

“Honestly,” I tell them, “I don’t even hear it any more.” It’s true–my brain has learned to filter out the music entirely until someone points it out.

Oddly enough, that doesn’t stop me from humming along. Not with the melody, mind you; I sing alto, and am therefore much more accustomed to harmonizing. Over the months we’ve developed a nice little duet. I worry that one of these days one of my coworkers is going to notice and smack me for adding to the noise . . . unless they don’t hear my humming any more either.

All this is still just a taste of the horrors of the new POS system, but I’ll be kinder to you than it was to us and save the rest for another time.

When I first started working at the cleaners, wedding dresses had melancholy associations for me; I had broken a long engagement about a month earlier, and I still have my own dress, unworn. I’ve long since gotten used to it, though, and I like admiring the styles and congratulating the couples.

Here’s the usual routine: husband and wife come in a few days after the wedding, and the bride has a last look and a sigh before ending the celebration and beginning married life. Couples who plan ahead sometimes have one of the mothers-in-law bring it in, letting the newlyweds run off on their honeymoon without having to take care of the cleanup. Occasionally a customer brings in her own or a relative’s old dress which has been in storage for a while, wanting to get it put away more carefully before it gets damaged (or damaged more). Only once has a man brought in a wedding dress by himself.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that it had never happened before, but my subconscious knew and picked up that something was off. Every wedding dress we get is different and interesting–some in a good way, some not–but the one he hung up on the rack was particularly unusual, as it was a two-piece affair with a top and a skirt. Still definitely made for a wedding, though, with all due embroidery and beading and things. No veil, but it had a little purse, and a pillow for the rings.

The customer asked if we do a wedding dress service, which I confirmed and then described. He nodded his approval and explained,

“I want to put this away so my four-year-old can wear it some day.”

I smiled at that and started my routine of taking in the order. When I told him the price, which is not pocket change by any means, he accepted it without so much as a blink. I didn’t comment, but as I took a partial deposit, he told me,

“Any price is fine. It’s very important.” After a short pause, he added, “. . . she died,” indicating the empty dress with the pronoun.

“I’m sorry,” I said, since no one has thought of anything better yet.

He thanked me and I gave him his receipt.

I thought a little about timelines after he left. His daughter was four, so her mom’s passing was more recent than that. I don’t know which is more likely–that the dress had been waiting without an owner since shortly after the baby was born, or that the husband had only recently acquired the dreadful task of going through his wife’s possessions. I don’t know which possibility makes me sadder.

We’ll take good care of her dress for them, though. Who knows, maybe in a generation it’ll be back.

Visit the cleaners as often as you need to.

Where I work, both the plant and the store are open on weekdays, and just the store is open for pickups and dropoffs on Saturday. Many of our customers who work during the week bring in the whole week’s cleaning every Saturday and exchange it for roughly the same set of items, clean. This is a good system. It means you’re never picking up or dropping off more than you can comfortably carry, the bill every week is about the same, and you always have enough clean clothes for the next week. Smaller orders also lower the chance of us making a mistake that could get one of your items mislaid or damaged, and bringing something in right after you wear it means any stains are much more likely to come out.

Some of our customers, however, seem to think that we’re actually their spare closet. Twice a year they come to drop off half of their wardrobe and pick up the other half, which usually runs them into the hundreds of dollars. I understand why they do it–I’m a fierce procrastinator myself, and the phenomenon of letting a chore wait long past any reasonable deadline is not foreign to me. But they’re doing both us and themselves a disservice. Sorting out one huge order is a lot more troublesome than doing a lot of small ones, because we’re always interrupted by customers. That gives us a lot of chances to make mistakes. We also tend to be pressed for storage space, particularly at the end of each week, and we resent the customers who blithely take up an unfair share.

Legally, we’re allowed to get rid of clothes that go unclaimed for more than a month. So far we haven’t exercised that right, but . . . I’m just saying. Pick up your stuff.

Know what you’re bringing, but don’t narrate it to me.

Why do I want you to know what you have if you’re not going to tell me? So you don’t get any surprises. I don’t expect you to already understand how each piece needs to be cleaned–that’s my job, not yours–but if you’re paying enough attention to not put a silk blouse in the shirt laundry pile, it can’t get overlooked and laundered. Similarly, if you have something particularly old or delicate, I’m going to ask you about its cleaning history when considering what the safest way to treat it is. If you know or can find out before bringing it, you greatly improve the chance of getting it back both cleaner and in one piece.

At some dry cleaners, the normal protocol is to put things on the counter one by one and have them itemized immediately. At least, so I gather, because people keep doing it. At our place, though, I’m not just going to count how many pairs of pants I see and stick a price on them. I’m going to check the materials and the decorations to make sure they’re safe to clean, count any buttons that need to be protected, and put bright orange stickers near significant stains. If you have more than a few items, I’m also going to divide them by some logical means into at least two smaller orders which are easier to put away and carry.

This is what I mean when I talk about detailing an order. It takes a little while, so we normally don’t detail while the customer is waiting. Instead, we make a quick receipt that just says how many pieces were dropped off and send them on their way. (The exception is when the customer wants to know how much it’s going to cost, e.g. to pay in advance, in which case we do have to detail the order immediately.) So while you’re taking the time to do a simplified piece-by-piece narration, I’m just counting them and waiting for you to finish so I can start going through them properly. I know you’re trying to help, but you’re actually wasting both of our time.

Spell your last name for me if and only if it’s difficult to spell.

We have a customer whom I’ll call Mrs. Baker; her real surname is an English word which is about as common as that one. Whenever she comes in, she says,

“Hi, I’m picking up. My last name is Baker. That’s B . . . A . . . K . . . E . . . R.”

She uses the same voice for this that I use when I’m leaving our phone number on an answering machine: very slow and well-enunciated. By the time she finishes the B I’ve recognized her, pulled up her order on the computer, and started the conveyors, but I don’t interrupt. I wait for her to finish and then pick up the rest of the script.

On the other side of the coin, I had another customer come in one afternoon, and after greeting him I asked for his last name.

“Djedowic,” he said.

I waited expectantly for a couple of seconds, and then asked politely,

“Will you spell that, please?”

He did, I looked him up, and we carried on as usual. The strange thing here was not that he had an unusual name which, at least for a native English speaker, was not intuitive to spell; it’s that he didn’t seem to know that he did. We have plenty of customers with unusual names, or unusual spellings of common names, and they’re so used to having to spell them that they don’t wait for me to ask. I’m curious how he has avoided that.

Why should you care?

You may be wondering why it’s worth your while to be so nice to your dry cleaning clerk. I mean, you only see us once in a while, for a few minutes at most. We don’t do the actual cleaning or make any major decisions, so it’s not like we’re in a position to bother you once you’ve left the store.

Or are we?

Setting aside anything that would do physical harm to your clothes–we’re way too professional for that, even if it didn’t have legal implications–the clerks are the ones who make your bill. There’s a pricing template, of course, but we do frequently have to make judgement calls. Is that fancy dress a “Formal 1,” or “Formal 2″? Does this sweater qualify as “Bulky”? Or, most commonly, are we going to bother charging you extra for rushing your order? Our stated policy is to do so, but it’s only to keep people from asking for a rush every time. For first time customers, regulars who don’t abuse it, and people we like, we’ll commonly waive the rush fee. In most kinds of service, when you pay a little more in the form of a tip, you’ll get more courtesy. At the cleaners, if you give a little more courtesy, you might just pay a little less.

Complain about the cost of dry cleaning.

Most of our customers and all of our regulars fall into one of two categories: reasonably well-off, or employed by someone who is very well-off. The latter never complain about the price, of course, since they’re not bringing their own clothes or spending their own money. But from time to time someone will make a surprised noise at the bill and ask if the prices have gone up, or make a point of looking at the invoice to see which pieces were how much. I have all kinds of stock responses: some pieces take extra pressing time or otherwise more attention, all the dry cleaners are raising their prices because the suppliers’ prices have gone up–which is true–and if I’m feeling friendly I’ll add something sympathetic about how everything is getting pricier these days.

In point of fact I have no sympathy whatsoever. About rising food prices, yes, absolutely; even for gas, which isn’t life-or-death but still a necessity for some people, I can understand feeling pinched. But dry cleaning is a luxury, plain and simple. Plenty of the clothes people bring us don’t even need to be dry cleaned–they can be hand-washed or even machine washed on a gentle cycle. Even for things that really are dry clean only, you made the choice to buy and wear something that’s more expensive than it is practical. Complaining about how expensive it is to have your Prada blouse cleaned? Oh, please.

Besides, we’re the most expensive dry cleaners for miles, and there are two others within a block in each direction. Don’t blame us if you didn’t shop around.

Respond to “How are you” with your name.

We counter people don’t actually have a script, like telemarketers and a lot of tech support people do, but we may as well have. It starts with “Good morning, how are you?” or the time-appropriate variant thereof. There is a brief exchange of pleasantries, and then we get down to business. Sometimes people are in a hurry; I respect that. You can respond with simply “How are you,” as if it were itself a greeting, and I’ll understand and move on to the important bits. But if you’re going to do it, do it gracefully. When I say “How are you” and you say “Johnson. First name is Adam,” it just sounds like you’re too busy to exchange two words with some peon. You’re going to be waiting a minute while I get the order anyway–it won’t kill you to be polite in the meantime.

Pick a counter at random.

You wouldn’t believe how much this happens: someone will walk in the door with an armful of clothes, go straight forward without looking to either side, and drop them on the first counter he comes to. Meanwhile, the only clerk in the shop at the moment will clear her throat from the next counter over and tell him that she can help him there. (Yes, the cell phone lady was one of these, and I also explained there why we can’t just move to whichever counter the customer chooses.)

An even sillier variant is the one where two counters are already piled with clothes that someone just took in or is in the middle of detailing, and the third is empty and has a clerk waiting patiently behind it. The customer comes in and looks at the three counters. You can see the wheels grinding as his gaze goes from full counter . . . to full counter . . . to empty counter. Finally he walks up to one of the busy clerks and starts to say,

“Hi, I’m here to pick up–”

at which point she has already seen what’s coming and says, “Actually, she’s going to help you at that counter right over there,” without stopping what she’s doing.

There was a slightly disturbing instance of this not long after I started working there. This was back when we still had three clerks in the shop most of the time, and this afternoon they were me, Maria, and Felicia, who actually works in the plant but fills in up front sometimes. At that moment we didn’t have anything to do (which may be why we stopped having three clerks in the afternoon), so all three of us were just standing around at the counters talking.

A customer walked in, well dressed, not young but not quite middle-aged either. He glanced at the three of us and then walked past the others to my counter. I sold him his order, and when he was gone, we looked at each other to check if everyone else had noticed it too: I wasn’t the first clerk he would have seen–not the one in front of the door, or closest to the door, or tallest, or otherwise distinctive. I was the least experienced and had been the slowest to say hello when he walked in. I was, however, the only caucasian.

Plan to get to the cleaners within ten minutes of closing.

Unless I’m really aching to get home that day, I don’t mind staying late with a customer. It falls under the general enjoyment of solving people’s problems, and I’ve been known to unlock the door for someone who told me frantically on the phone that he was flying out of the country the next day and needed something to wear. That’s not the situation I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people who work until five o’clock someplace that’s forty-five minutes away without traffic.  They’re racing the clock every single time they come, and if they think they’re not going to make it they call and ask if someone will still be there in a few more minutes. Yes, I know we’re the best cleaners around, but our schedule is not compatible with your schedule. You need to find one that is.

Tell us how good a customer you are.

This has come up a few times, usually for one of two reasons: the customer is requesting something which they think (not always correctly) is going to be a pain, or because there has been some problem and they’re trying to stress how important it is that we resolve it to their satisfaction. The second one irks me in particular because it implies that we don’t always try to resolve problems to everyone’s satisfaction, which is only the point of customer service. In both cases, though, the customer is making a flattering assumption that, for people who make it, is rarely correct. You are not a good customer; you are a frequent customer. The people we really do consider good customers never say this.

While I’m on the subject, let me let you in on a secret about the people who serve you in almost all retail establishments: We do not care about losing your business. Except for the minority who work on commission, we don’t actually profit from your patronage. If we can’t or won’t do what you’re demanding, the suggestion that you’ll take your business elsewhere is not a threat, it’s an offer to remove one of our problems. Even when you’re talking to the manager or business owner, don’t overestimate how much leverage you have. The time it takes to deal with you may not be worth the money you’re bringing in.

This post is part one of a two-part how-to series. Next time on 50 Ways: How (and Why) to Be a Good Customer.

There has never really been anyone younger than me in my life–I’m the youngest of two siblings, and almost everyone in my generation of my family lives far away. I was usually the youngest kid in my class and have never done any babysitting. So while I have nothing against kids, they are completely foreign things to me.

We like kids, at my work. While I haven’t done a complete survey, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person there who doesn’t have any. The two other counter people and several regular customers have had babies during their acquaintance, which gives them that special “I knew you when you were this big!” relationship that irritated me so much when I was little. It’s fairly common for moms to bring their kids in the car or a stroller when they’re running errands, which if nothing else has taught me the important life lesson that making silly faces at babies until they laugh is lots of fun.

So a man came in one day with probably the most cheerful baby I’ve ever seen. She was just beaming at everybody, and hanging out happily in one of her dad’s arms while he dropped off some clothes with the other.

“I also have a pair of pants I want hemmed,” he said. He nodded towards the fitting room, which meant he was familiar with the process and I could skip the rundown of how it works. The tailor, who was out at the counters chatting with us, went to get his chalk and pins.

“Do you want me to hold your baby while you do the fitting?” Maria asked hopefully. Maria is one of those born moms, and any child in her presence immediately gets her attention and affection.

“Oh, it’s okay,” the customer said. “I can do it one-handed, I’ve done this before.” In retrospect, it’s pleasing that he was that used to having his daughter in one arm. A lot of people have their kids with them all the time in a backpack or a sling, but his way makes her seem a little more like a family member and a little less like luggage.

He went off to change. I kept an ear on the fitting while doing other things. Diego does not speak very much English, and sometimes needs a nonstandard request to be translated for him. When they were done, the customer came out to the counters again before changing back.

“Actually, I wouldn’t mind a hand now,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll stick myself with the pins.”

I glanced around, but Maria was with a customer.

“Sure, I’ll do it,” I said. I’m trying to get out of the habit of avoiding the unfamiliar.

He handed me the baby, and I carefully paid attention to where her weight was resting so that she would both be and feel well-supported. She looked at me, wide-eyed, and then started to whimper. And then to wail.

We made some sympathetic noises and passed her back to daddy, where she immediately transformed back into the happy smiling thing that had come in the door. The customer laughed a little and said,

“It’s okay, I’ll manage.”

Maria finished with her customer while he was in the changing room and looked at me.

“I bet she would have been fine if I’d held her,” she said, teasing.

“I’m sure she would have,” I agreed. I felt a bit sheepish, but didn’t take it personally. Lots of things are scary when you’re a baby, and she could probably tell I wasn’t sure what I was doing.

A few days later, I found myself idle when a girl, maybe sevenish, came in with her father. Maria took care of his pickup while the daughter eyed the candy jar.

“Can I have one?” she asked me.

“If your dad says it’s okay,” I told her.

“Dad, can I have a candy?”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes!”"

“Okay then.”

She stood up on her toes to peer into the jar, which is strapped to the side of the clothes rack at the counter to keep it from being bumped off the edge all the time. I unstrapped it and held it a bit lower so she could see what was inside.

“Hmm. What’s this one?” she asked me, pointing.

“That’s taffy. It’s chewy, and grape flavored. This other one over here is the same thing, but banana.”

She poked around a little, and then picked out two mini-boxes of Nerds.

“Yellow or red?” She was thinking out loud, not asking, but I looked at the boxes and said,

“Well, this one says it has lemon and wild cherry in it, so that’s yellow AND red.”

That seemed acceptable, so she put the other box back and I strapped the jar back onto the counter. Her father reminded her to thank me, and they went on their way. For some reason, there was nothing awkward at all about that interaction for me. Maybe some “dealing with children” part of my brain just happened to be awake that day, or maybe I’m just learning.

However. When you are in my store, put it away and leave it away until your business is done.

I didn’t always have that rule. Something I enjoy about my job, and about customer service in general, is solving peoples’ problems. This includes being as helpful as possible when the customer is juggling a credit card and a cell phone and a laundry bag and a dry cleaning receipt and trying to communicate politeness to me while being distracted by the person on the other end of the line. I can just whoosh around making dirty clothes disappear and clean clothes appear while in my other hand I’m ringing up the pickup on the credit card, and all they have to do is sign and smile and they’re on their way. Most of the time they appreciate it and it shows, and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Even if they don’t, I’m pleased with myself for making a transaction smooth and efficient, and that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling too.

It turns out that being able to juggle all those things, or in fact be useful at all while on a cell phone, is a skill which not everyone has. I don’t know whether it can be learned, because I’ve never tried to do it–as lenient as I am for other people, I’m pretty strict about my own use. (This is, I understand, a good rule for input and output interfaces too.) Most of our customers who try to interact while on cell phones are capable of doing so, but it only took one that wasn’t to change my mind.

She came in on a typical quiet mid-afternoon. Maria was marking clothes at one end of the store, and I was marking shirts at the other. I took a moment to get to the counter I was signed into, by which time the customer had stepped forward to one of the two empty counters. She was staring into space and talking, of course, on her cell phone.

“Ma’am, I can help you over here,” I said.

She wasn’t just distracted, I think she physically didn’t hear me. I waited a few seconds, expecting her to realize (as people normally do) that nothing was happening, look up and learn that she was the reason for this, and then fix it.

Point of note: I can’t just casually move over to another counter and help a customer there. A clerk who is on the clock is responsible for one of the three cash drawers, and those don’t move. If I really need to, I can use one of the other computers and then move the money to my own drawer, but it’s asking to make a mistake and we don’t like to do it. I certainly wasn’t going to go to the trouble for someone who was ignoring me.

She didn’t notice the pause or anything else. Maria told me later that, in my place, she would have just continued waiting until the customer figured it out. I’m not that rude, or else not that patient. I switched to plan B, which was to go over and pick up her things (clothes to drop off and receipts for pickup) and move them to my counter. Usually at this point the customer realizes she’s in the wrong place and comes over to where I’ve begun tapping on my screen.

Still nothing. She just kept talking like I didn’t exist. At this point I decided there was no chance of interaction, so I switched to just getting her out of the store. I pulled her pickups down from the conveyors and made her a quick receipt for the dropoff. Normally part of doing that is to confirm that the regular schedule is fine (as opposed to the customer wanting a rush order), but if she wasn’t going to talk to me, she had given up her opportunity to do that.

The customer’s only acknowledgment of where she was or what she was doing was to slowly fish a credit card out of her purse. I went over and picked it up–she was still at the wrong counter–ran the transaction, and printed both copies of the receipt. Again, if you’re not talking, you don’t get the option of letting me not print the customer copy. (Somewhere, a tree is weeping.) When she signed it, I finished the pickup, detailed the drop, and went back to marking shirts without pleasantries. She wandered away without having ever made eye contact.

After the customer left, Maria stuck her head out from around the corner. She gave me a “can you BELIEVE that?” look, and I rolled my eyes in agreement.

It was pretty slow over the next couple of days, so I took one of the shirt boards and lettered a direct but courteous sign requesting that customers not use their cell phones while in the store. It lasted for about a day before Mr. Lee noticed and removed it. I wasn’t there at the time, but apparently he told one of my coworkers that in his store, the customer is king. This from the guy who buys hard candy instead of the mini assortment everyone requests because it’s slightly cheaper and lasts longer. (It lasts longer because no one likes it.)

So we don’t have a sign that says it, but please put your phone away. You’ll get better service and be able to return to your conversation that much sooner.

Dry Cleaning Misconception #1: Dry cleaning is, well, dry.

The name is a little misleading, I admit. The “dry” part, or “sec” in the original French, does not mean “without liquid.” It means “without water.” Dry cleaning solvent (the stuff the clothes get cleaned in) is a non-water-based liquid which, with the help of spotting catalysts, can remove stains from garments which can’t safely be stirred around in hot water.

For the early history of dry cleaning (think middle ages), the popular thing to use for this was kerosene. Dry cleaners eventually got sick of their plants burning down, though, and I imagine the smell of the clothes wasn’t too hot either.

From the mid-twentieth century through the turn of the twenty-first, the most popular dry cleaning solvent was something called perclorethylene. There is now evidence to suggest that perc (I get to use the nickname because I’m in the industry) may be carcinogenic to people who are repeatedly exposed to it. (That’s not only us in the plant, but also you wearing the clothes.) So cleaners in the United States are required to switch to one of the growing number alternatives by, I believe it’s 2012. Not surprisingly, wet cleaning–which uses a carefully controlled temperature and timing to clean things that are normally not safe to wash in water–is becoming more widespread as well.

Now that you’ve had a completely unrelated history lesson, here’s the summary: clean it is, dry it ain’t.

Dry Cleaning Misconception #2: There is such thing as “chemical-free dry cleaning.”

I may get this more than the average counter person because I live in a hippie town, but every once in a while someone comes into the shop and asks if we do “chemical-free” dry cleaning. I always have to resist the urge to stare at them and ask them what exactly they think dry cleaning is.

Alas, my need to give good customer service is stronger than my desire to make fun of hippies, so instead I mention that our plant doesn’t use the cancer-causing solvent they may have heard about and politely suggest wet cleaning as an alternative. Never mind that water is as much a chemical as whatever they think they’re afraid of. I don’t have a lot of respect for people who are against something without understanding what that thing is.

Dry Cleaning Misconception #3: Dry cleaning is spot cleaning.

This comes up most often for purses or coats that have leather trim. We don’t recommend cleaning leather items in our solvent, and neither do most of the items’ manufacturers. Instead, we have a business relationship with a leather cleaner that doesn’t deal with the public itself. We take in leather items from our customers, send them to the leather cleaners, and tack on a markup for our trouble. Naturally, this is more expensive than normal cleaning, but also a whole lot safer for the piece being cleaned.

This leads to the situation where someone brings in a coat (about $10 to clean) with little leather straps or something on it, and learns that protecting those straps will bring the cost closer to $60. (It’s very common for the cost of cleaning a leather item to be higher than its purchase price.)

“Can’t you just clean this part here, where it’s stained?” the customer inevitably asks.

No, we can’t. I think people have an image of a little old lady hunched over the jacket, dabbing at stains with some magic dry cleaning potion that makes it as good as new. The reality is that your clothes, along with everyone else’s, go into a big machine that looks a lot like a regular washing machine. They swish around, get cleaner, get dry, and are removed and put in line to wait for pressing.

We can’t put only part of your garment in that machine. Either take the risk that your item is going to get damaged, or suck it up and pay to have it cleaned properly.

Dry Cleaning Misconception #4: Dry cleaning is miraculous.

Here’s a sad story:

A woman brought us her daughter’s wedding dress, which had been hanging in a closet for the ten years since the daughter got married. No one had noticed anything strange when it was put away, but when the mother took the dress out, there were light brown stains all down the front of the dress.

There’s no mystery here. Someone spilled a little champagne on the bride at the reception, which on her pale gown immediately became invisible. It was quickly forgotten about, and the dress was put away without being cleaned. Over the years, the sugars in the champagne stain changed color, and by the time anyone noticed, the window in which it could feasibly be removed was long gone.

Good customer service requires both optimism and honesty. We told the customer,

“We’re willing to try, and we may be able to improve it, but we don’t think this stain is ever really going to come out.”

We did, and it didn’t. The last I heard, the customer was considering having the whole dress dyed. It wouldn’t have helped; dyeing darkens all parts of a garment equally, even the ones that were darker to begin with. Pending advancements in dry cleaning technology, the dress is ruined.

Dry Cleaning Misconception #5: You need to dry clean items that are down-filled.

Nope. A gentle machine wash is fine, and will actually get it cleaner. The only reason you can’t just wash your comforter at home is that your washing machine and dryer aren’t big enough. Ours are.

There’s no story behind this one, I just thought I’d toss it out there.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Mrs. Lee well enough as a human being. She’s friendly, and when we still had a Starbucks she’d go on a frappucino run from time to time when it was hot. But there is a fundamental challenge in our relationship, which is the fact that she doesn’t share a language fluency with anyone at the store other than her husband and the computer techs–i.e. anyone who does the day-to-day work of the place.

Now, I don’t begrudge her this. English is hard; I have often said that I would never have learned it if it weren’t my first language. Nevertheless, this presents a problem. Explaining anything to her is an agonizingly slow process of trying to find the intersection of words she knows and words which describe what’s going on.

The frequency with which this comes up increased drastically in April, when we “upgraded” our point of sale system. (Whether or not this was actually an upgrade is a topic for another day.) Mrs. Lee helps out at the counter sometimes when it’s busy, and suddenly there was a new, not terribly intuitive interface for her to deal with. And because it was busy, we didn’t really have time to explain it properly. (She is old enough that computers and the common patterns of using them are not a familiar part of her life, as is everyone at work besides me.) She picked up the basics–she’s not dumb–but it’s reduced the amount of actual work she’s able to do with us.

So she finds other things to do. Like turn off the heat seal labeler, which is a 370° mini-press we use to put customers’ names in their shirts. She does it to save energy, which is valid, but it drives us batty because the thing takes ten minutes to heat up again, which both is a waste of our time and also negates any energy savings. We’ve given up on explaining this for the reasons given above. She also tries to organize things, which is always terrifying because a lot of my job relies on things being in the right places and knowing what those places are. (Especially on Saturdays, when a) it’s really busy and b) the pickup schedule changes at midday, necessitating a lot of fast reorganization.)

One day we had a queue of baskets of clothes waiting to be marked, as is sometimes the case when it’s been busy. In fact, we had just filled one and started a new one, so there was a basket on the end with a single order (in a bag) in it. I can only guess that Mrs. Lee was trying to arrange the empty baskets, and saw that one on its own. It was almost empty, and didn’t yet have a tag with a range of order numbers on it, but . . . there was a bag in it. I saw her consider this, but got distracted by a customer. When I turned back around, she had moved that basket to be in line with the queue of empties, but taken the bag out and placed it carefully on the floor where the basket had been in use a moment ago.

Er, well, okay. I put it back, put the new order in it, and made an order number tag. Mrs. Lee didn’t seem to notice or mind, and I went about my business. (Technically her business, I guess.) Under normal circumstances I like having things clear and explained, but sometimes, you just have to keep doing your job.

So one day I found myself looking at a hamper that had been sitting unlabeled on a shelf for a few weeks. It’s pretty neat–washer-load-sized, sits nicely open, snaps flat when empty. Hmm . . . I need a hamper. I asked Maria,

“Do we know whose that is?”

“Nope.”

“… can I take it?”

She shrugged agreeably, so I grabbed it on my way home.

(Note: We are very honest, at my workplace. We find valuable things in pockets every week–ranging from full BART cards to thumb drives to more than six hundred dollars in cash once–and with the exception of the obviously trivial we always give it back. If it’s really important we’ll also call them, as as happened for credit cards and passports. My point here is that I wouldn’t just go “yoink” just because something had been left behind; I let it sit around for a while first and then made sure we didn’t know whose it was.)

I didn’t bother setting it up, I just propped it folded up against my dresser and wandered off out of town for the weekend.

At the end of my next workday, a fairly regular customer came and dropped off a big armful of shirts. In the small talk as I took that in and fetched his pickup, he asked,

“Say, did I leave a white collapsible hamper here?”

“Dunno,” I said, straightfaced. “I’ll check around and give you a call if it turns up.”

Maria was politely silent until he left.

“God damn it,” I said.

“It’s pretty cheap,” she pointed out. “He can get a new one.”

“Meh. Nah.”

I wasn’t about to fess up to having taken it, but nor was I going to keep it, cheap or not. Stupid morals. On the plus side, she’s right, I saw the same or a very similar hamper at Walgreens and it’s pretty cheap. I think they come in two-packs, though. I’ll ask around and see if anyone wants the other one.