I got taken to the cleaners. Literally.
I never really understood the phrase "I got taken to the cleaners"—until I did.
I bought a new suit to wear to my son’s Memorial Day weekend wedding in Mexico.. The couple plighted their troths on a beach overlooking the turquoise Caribbean. The sun shone brightly, as if to bless the union, but the humidity was off-the-charts —like opening a dishwasher in the middle of the steam cycle. By the time the bride and groom said their "I do's," my suit and I were completely soaked in sweat.
The day we got home, my wife took the suit to our local dry cleaner. The clerk said it would be ready tomorrow. Easy, right?
Wrong.
Another customer had left a pen in a pocket, and an employee had forgotten the cardinal rule of dry cleaning: check the pockets. My suit came out of the dry cleaning solvent sporting more than a dozen ink spots of various shapes and sizes. For Halloween I could have gone as a Dalmatian.
My wife was furious. She takes clothes seriously. Once when I was trying to sort clothes for the washing machine she actually accused me of not understanding fabric. Perhaps I don’t but frankly, I wasn’t crazy about the suit anyway; I was hoping the cleaner would offer to reimburse me the amount I paid for it. Heck, I would have happily taken half that much. I can’t imagine wearing a seersucker suit again unless I’m invited to another tropical beach wedding or the undertaker dresses me in it for my cremation —two equally warm events.
Over the next four weeks, my wife visited the shop so many times she should have been named Customer of the Month. But every time she went in to pick up the suit,, she left empty-handed.
The routine went something like this:
Visit 1: "It's covered in ink, but we’re trying again!"
Visits 2–6: "We got more spots out… but some are still there and we’re gonna work on them." (They were apparently removing one spot at a time, like a lottery scratch-off ticket).
I accompanied her on Visit #7. The jacket was ink-free, but the right leg of the pants still had three small spots below the knee. I would have accepted it — but my perfectionist (and by this point) pissed-off wife said no, she wanted it spotless. Like the new suit it was. The clerk promised the manager would call me the next day.
The next day, he did: "Good news, we got those two spots out!"
"There were three," I replied.
He said he would look into it and call me back. That was the last I heard from him.
Yesterday—three weeks after our seventh visit—I stopped by the store and, to my surprise, the suit was ready. I assumed it would be handed over with an apology for the inconvenience, not to mention the time and gas we had wasted making eight 10-mile round trips to the store.
The clerk said, "That will be $26."
I paid, brought it home, and hung it in a back bedroom closet where it will repose with half a dozen wool suits I brought from Connecticut in 2013 and really should give away but can’t because Florida Goodwill stores don’t accept wool suits.
This afternoon, I received a text message from the cleaner:
"Please leave us a review on Yelp!”
I’ll think about it — I really will — but I have more important things to do right this minute, including looking up “plight” and “troth” in the dictionary.
