Do you check the pockets of clothes you dryclean or launder? My experience has shown that most do not. Some of the practices of cleaning that stick in my mind as important- never seemed to be what mainstream cleaners or launderers care to bother with. One of those practices is checking pockets. Oh yes, I know, you believe your counter people do. Yes, they are taught to do so, but not all do this with consistency. The aftermath and trail of tears left behind in the wake can be funny and/or grief. We in the industry have found some things in people’s clothes that would make a sailor blush. Just think back on all the treasures and junk (some too nasty to think about) that we have found over the years. The stories must be in the hundreds.
Many drycleaners have learned the hard way that depending on someone else to cover your back in the cleaning room is a joke. Only you will have the unhappy job of cleaning up the mess, so to speak, when someone fails to find that 75 cent Bic ink pen. Naturally, it is most often black, which is the most difficult to remove. Seems everyone writes with government black ink pens these days. I make a special effort to buy blue ink pens to carry in my pocket. I grow weary of the boring government black everyone writes with. Not to mention the horrors of removing black ink from clothes. It is also a boring ink color to write with.
Try To Explain The Lipstick On The Handkerchief… To Your Wife
My old friend, industry educator and icon, the late Ray Colucci, once said he remembers the cleaners who “confess to going from politics to drycleaning because his training gave him the opportunity to keep his hands in everyone’s pockets!” At his seminars, Ray loved to tell the story of how he collected handkerchiefs (back then we all did) and after laundering them, they were placed in a box for any and all to use or have. Some carried them as hankies and others like the spotter, used them for ink stain removal. At any rate, Ray must have picked one that still had lipstick on it and he had one heck of a time explaining to his wife how he ended up with a lipstick stained hanky in his pocket.
Other more notable, but less pleasant, things have been found in clothes such as very personal items and clothing, notes from a lover, etc. Money is often found, and when it can be traced to an owner at tagging, it can be returned. Often no one ever claimed an occasional 10 or 20 dollar bill. In some cases, hundreds in twenty dollar bills have been found and never claimed. I can remember very often seeing twenty dollar bills floating in a washer of blue jeans. At that point, there is little or no way to match the cash with an owner.
Back to my original point. Ink pens left in pockets of shirts, jackets and sometimes trousers and blouses can spell misery for the drycleaner and spotter. When it reaches that point of explosion in a washer or drycleaning machine it can sometimes be retrieved, but in the case of drying, it is all over as the pen smears everywhere. The mess left behind can take up to days to fix and in some cases, not fixable. The poor spotter is the person left to fix it will. All because someone did not check a pocket.
I believe there is a case for turning pockets inside out for better cleaning. I have seen, lint, grass, sand and other small items remain in pockets after cleaning…giving the customer the impression the clothes were not cleaned. For any who remain skeptical, a study was done and a time put to the actual minutes involved over the course of a day to pull pockets and put them back in after cleaning. The results were negligible. Often times trousers need the pockets pressed, especially after wet cleaning, which lends further credit to this practice. I’m certain my colleague Doc Holiday would agree.
The Late Great Stan Golomb
Naturally these details can and usually are eliminated from processing clothes today, which is why true quality continues to suffer. The late Stan Golomb, another past industry icon, once said that small details like this contribute to why many people will continue to suffer from shrinking industry standards. If anyone continues to think that the customer sets the quality standards, to you I say; wake up and smell the coffee. Stan did not say that, but I do.
I’m headin’ to the wagon now, these boots are killin’ me!
