Taking the Piss Out of a Dry Cleaner that Won’t

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Today it was definitely time to take the dry cleaning in. First, it hadn’t been done in way too long. And second, our female cat had decided to stake her claim – if you know what I mean – on one of my husband’s dress shirts, and so that shirt definitely needed a little spot and odor removing TLC.

So I bundled it all up and took it to a certain dry cleaning shop in Sunnyvale – let’s call them “$1.75 Cleaners” because, hey, that’s their name – and I had the following somewhat surrealistic, and thoroughly irritating conversation.

Me: I have some clothes here that I need to have cleaned. Let’s see, I have four sweaters, some shirts to be laundered, and a suit – do you do suits here?

$1.75 Cleaners guy (whom, I might add, was no spring chicken, certainly someone who had seen a cleaning or two): Yes, we do suits.

Me: Super. Ok, oh, and this one shirt is in this plastic bag because our cat urinated on it.

$1.75 Cleaners guy: What do you expect us to do with it?

Me, rather stunned: Uh..clean it?

$1.75 Cleaners guy: Oh no, we can’t do that.

WHAT…THE…

$1.75 Cleaners guy continues: They wash them all together, it will get on all the other laundry. We can’t have that.

So correct me if I’m wrong, but when an article of clothing or linen gets a stain on it, or – gasp – an odor, aren’t you supposed to take it to the dry cleaner?

Isn’t that what they DO?

Isn’t that their reason for BEING?

Morons.

We had been going to that particular shop ever since it opened; now we’ll go past that shop and thumb our noses when it closes.

Which it probably will soon, what with its not actually wanting to do what cleaners do for their customers.

Not to mention that new sign in their window which says, in effect, “It now costs $2.50 to get your item cleaned at $1.75 cleaners.”

Nice.

I give them two months, tops.

5 thoughts on “Taking the Piss Out of a Dry Cleaner that Won’t

  1. Did you ask to speak to the owner or manager? If not, Why?
    I would have, at least for an explanation from some one else besides a (probably) $7.50 an hour employee. You never know when you walk into an establishment, how long an employee may have been working there and/or how well they are versed in that particular business.
    Cat pee? well, the dry clean process does not contain water, so this makes it hard to get out water soluable stains. Cat pee is especially dificult to get out, but not impossible. I tell all of my customers (I too own a $1.75 dry cleaners) to wash the garment, if washable, in the warm water with a couple scoops of Oxi-Clean.
    Personally, I wouldn’t want my clothes washed in the same machine as someone’s urine stained clothes, as it is possible for the odor to transfer, if it does not come out all the way; however, I think you deserved a better, possibly more educated response than, “what do you expect us to do with that”.

    Hey, at least you know your clothes, if cleaned at that cleaners, will not be cleaned with someone else’s urine stained clothes…

    Scott

  2. well i know i wouldnt want my clothes washed with your cat piss stains. you deserved a better answer than “what do you expect us to do with that�?. But at the same time, i donthtink the man was being so unreasonable. i think you may have an anger management problem.

  3. Well for one. Maybe you should train your cats to not piss on clothes. For number two take your clothes somewhere else then. I’m sorry but you probably brought so much other crap that they already have to tag in. Maybe you should keep your stuff clean and it wouldn’t be like that. Your not dumb. You can clean your own stuff and bring it in. yeah, “what do you expect us to do with that” is a little rude for an employee to say to a complaining customer. but that doesn’t mean you should complain about stupid stuff like this on the internet. Yeah, they probably charge $2.50 for certain items. not everything. so yeah. suck it.

  4. Thanks for your posting…Why couldn’t they just clean your cloth separately or with another cat piss load? I’ll def stay away from those cleaners.

    By the way, has anyone been told by their dry cleaner that long sleeve shirts can only be laundered and not dry-cleaned?

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