Post: #1

Now that I'm moving on from my career of the past six years working in dry cleaning and tailoring shops, I wanted to write a bit about my experiences. Considering that this forum is chock-full of dudes that like to dress well, and probably make the occasional trip to the dry cleaners, you fellas might appreciate this.

This isn't meant to be comprehensive, just anecdotes of my experience.

BEFORE YOU DROP OFF YOUR CLOTHES, CHECK THE POCKETS!

Seriously. If it fits in a pocket, I've probably found it in the last six years. Handfuls of condoms. Hip flasks, sample sized liquor bottles, cigars, legal and illegal drugs, cell phones, cameras, MP3 players, bank statements, receipts, wallets, keys, designer sunglasses... You get the idea. Most dry cleaners are somewhat honest and will put your stuff in a lost-and-found box, but why take that risk? Check your pockets.

The last place I worked at had a policy of "If you find less than $20 cash, stick it in your pocket and keep your mouth shut. Anything more, turn it in, and if unclaimed within 30 days, it's yours." Another place had a policy of "any loose cash in the pockets is yours to keep, but if it's in a wallet, turn it in."

I probably found hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over the years. My biggest haul was probably $80 at once, but $1-$20 denominations abounded.

Other random shit...

... A lot of people attending weddings tend to leave their rehearsal dinner and best man's speeches in their pockets. We would usually read these aloud during smoke breaks, some were amusing, others were quite sentimental.

... The occasional pair of panties. One of the best dry-cleaning stories I ever heard came from a counter attendant I know well. A boy takes a girl on a date to their high school homecoming. The girl's mom for some reason or another is the one to drop his suit off for dry-cleaning afterward. Counter attendant checks the pockets infront of the mother, and pulls out a pair of her daughter's panties. The mother cries hysterically.

CHECK YOUR GARMENTS FOR STAINS, RIPS, AND TEARS

Before you turn your stuff over to the cleaners, point out any rips, tears, or stains you notice to the attendant on duty. They'll mark the stains with a kind of masking tape, then try to remove them with special (and awful-smelling) chemicals before running the dry cleaning.

All stains are not created equal, however, so nothing is guaranteed to be removed. It also helps if you can identify the cause of the stain, so whoever 'spots' stained garments knows what chemical to use.

Tie-in to checking your pockets ... If a tube of lipstick makes it into the dry cleaning machine, it has a tendency to get all over EVERYONE'S clothing, since dry-cleaners wash lots of people's clothes in one machine. When this happens whoever is running the spotting board is eternally pissed at the counter attendant for creating a lot of extra work.

MAKE SURE YOUR SHIT IS SUPPOSED TO BE DRY CLEANED

Obviously not all materials used for clothing are created equal. Some are supposed to be hand washed, others machine washed, some specify "dry cleaning." Most dry cleaners will take anything and dry clean it, and if it gets fucked up because it wasn't supposed to be dry cleaned, they're not liable.

A QUICK WORD ABOUT THE DRY CLEANING PROCESS

A dry cleaning machine is not the same as a washing machine. Instead of water, it uses 15-25 gallons of perchloroethylene, a petroleum derivative, instead of water.

After tagging customer clothing and sorting it, it's all tossed into machines which dry clean 25-100 lbs of clothes at a time. The machine's rotating drum is partially filled with "perc" and agitated for a while, removing all kinds of gunk from the fibers. After a while, the "perc" is drained, and the drum heated to about 160 - 180 degrees, the temperature at which any perc remaining in the clothes begins to evaporate. All this perc is captured and transferred to a storage tank, then distilled to separate the actual chemical from all the gunk and grime it dissolved.

Fun fact ... One of the first dry cleaning chemicals was gasoline.

PEOPLE ARE DISGUSTING

It's amazing how unclean lots of adults of both genders and every age group are. Pants with shit stains are common, as well as the noxious smell of a guy's shirt that never uses deodorant nor hardly knows what a bar of soap is for. People working in dry cleaners don't expect your stuff to smell like roses exactly, hence why you're bringing it to the cleaners, but if you can't be bothered to wipe your ass and take the occasional shower, do your own fucking laundry.

ONE MORE THING

If you're a young cat and looking for a job above minimum wage with minimal requisites, look into dry cleaning. $10-$12 is standard entry level wage, $12-$14 if you're decent, $16-$20 per hour for the best. I know a guy that takes home $500 weekly and works less than 20 hours.


...


I'm sure I'll add to this as I remember shit, but your comments/questions/opinions are welcome.

Post: #2

Cool post.

I'd love to hear some dry cleaning war stories. Are there any particular ethnicities or types of people that gravitate to dry cleaning?

What separates the good from the bad dry cleaners? What is it that the guy who makes $500 a week for less than 20 hours does better than the others? And how can you tell as a customer if a shop is going to be good or bad?

Post: #3

Pick up any Dope Suits that anyone left behind?

I used to have a deal with my old dry cleaners when I was younger and on the come up that if anyone left anything behind that was dope and fit me, I would take it off his hands (so to speak).

Got a couple of smooth Blazers.

(Read into this story for the lesson, young players.)

Post: #4

I'm rough on clothes and it's come in handy to have a guy who knows my name a few blocks away for fast cleaning and alterations.

Easiest way to get on friendly terms with your dry cleaner: Bring in the same suit two Mondays in a row, covered in blood both times. Hard to be a stranger after that.

Post: #5

I used to work in a dry cleaners myself.

Ours had a lot of Brazilian customers. Most of them were middle-aged men and women who could barely speak English, but there were a few cuties who would occasionally walk in. There was one who was a legit 9 -- DSL, plump ass, thin, always had a smile, had a cute accent when she spoke -- married to a doctor. She was one of our best customers too, always bringing in at least $100 worth of dry cleaning every week. Then she stopped coming in, and I found out she and her family moved back to Brazil. That sucked.

The most money I found in someone's pocket was $300. Sadly, the guy called an hour later asking me if I found $300. I was tempted to lie, but the good guy in me told him the truth. Second most was $100.

Entitlement can run pretty high among customers. Many believe we should be able to remove every and all stains, simply because we're a dry-cleaners. I've lost count the number of times I've had to tell customers that we don't make promises or guarantees when it comes to removing stains, since as MSW2007 put it, not all stains are created equal. I remember one time where this woman refused to pay for a jacket she dropped off because we weren't able to remove this black shit off of it. She was adamant about not paying, even though I tried to explain to her that stain removal was not guaranteed. I ended the discussion by telling her if she didn't want to pay, then we would store the jacket at our place until she did feel like paying for it. She threatened to call the cops and her lawyer, to which I told her to go ahead, since I'd love to see what crime she was going to charge us with. She ended up taking several pictures, including myself, and said something about how she was going to use this as evidence against us. Nothing ever came of it, of course.

If you want to ingratiate yourself to a cleaners, bring in legit dry cleaning, like slacks, sweater, suits, coats, etc. Don't be one of those who brings in only the cheapest-priced stuff, like button-downs and dress shirts. The people I worked with were not shy about talking shit about these people, calling them cheap-skates and penny-pinchers, amongst other things. They usually got the shittiest service too.

Post: #6

Strange. All the dry cleaners around me are run by Koreans. I can't figure out why this is happening. And they are plentiful: every strip mall has at least one Korean Dry Cleaner, one Vietnamese nail parlor, and/or one Chinese restaurant.

Post: #7

(11-11-2013 09:21 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Cool post.

I'd love to hear some dry cleaning war stories. Are there any particular ethnicities or types of people that gravitate to dry cleaning?

What separates the good from the bad dry cleaners? What is it that the guy who makes $500 a week for less than 20 hours does better than the others? And how can you tell as a customer if a shop is going to be good or bad?

Having worked in both restaurants and dry cleaners, I'd say that they attract similar groups of people ... Working class, varying ethnicities especially blacks and Hispanic, some with criminal records, others with drug problems. Few dry cleaners run background checks or drug tests, hence the convicts and drug users. A significant chunk didn't graduate high school, either, usually "street smart" and not "book smart" guys.

95% of the pressers I've worked with were guys. 95% of the counter help and laundry crew were girls. Whenever a new, hot girl would get hired, it would quickly turn into a competition among the pressers as to who was gonna tap her first. Fraternizing among staff is quite common, and since most people in the industry have worked for multiple employers, you tend to know somebody working at most cleaners.

The guy making $500 weekly for < 20 hours makes that simply because he's the best. What would take most pressers two hours, he does in one, and his work looks just as good. He knows he's good, a lot of owners know he's good, and he's one helluva hustler... One golden bit of advice he gave me was, "Make sure the first deal you make is a good one, because you probably won't get a chance to re-negotiate."

That dude has his regular $500-per-week job occupying a few hours in the morning, and most afternoons, he's pitching in at some other cleaner for a couple of hours to make extra bank. Doesn't show up for less than $30-$40 per hour.

(11-11-2013 09:40 PM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  Pick up any Dope Suits that anyone left behind?

I used to have a deal with my old dry cleaners when I was younger and on the come up that if anyone left anything behind that was dope and fit me, I would take it off his hands (so to speak).

Got a couple of smooth Blazers.

(Read into this story for the lesson, young players.)

I've copped a few garments left behind by customers, since after a certain period of the customer not showing up to pay and collect their garments, said garments became property of the dry cleaners. Employees were usually free to take whatever was appealing.

The best clothes I got though, I paid for - one of our regular customers was an older guy running a tailoring operation, that brought his dry cleaning to us. He would sell custom and made-to-measure suits to people he knew for cost + 10%. So if a suit cost him $400, he'd hook up people he knew for $440. We're talking $1,000+ suits. Not free but one hell of a deal, all because I knew him through my work.

(11-11-2013 10:38 PM)MVolt Wrote:  If you want to ingratiate yourself to a cleaners, bring in legit dry cleaning, like slacks, sweater, suits, coats, etc. Don't be one of those who brings in only the cheapest-priced stuff, like button-downs and dress shirts. The people I worked with were not shy about talking shit about these people, calling them cheap-skates and penny-pinchers, amongst other things. They usually got the shittiest service too.

MVolt knows what's up.

For the fellas... If you're trying to find a good dry cleaner, ask friends for recommendations first. Take 'em a few suits, chat up the counter staff, meet the owner if he's around, and become a regular. Don't bitch about pricing, either, since 90% of cleaners are priced as cheaply as they can to barely break even.

Shit talking about customers is super common among everybody. The counter staff bitch about a customers attitude, the seamstresses bitch about people bringing in stained and obviously damaged clothing customers want them to repair, pressers bitch about the workload, the heat, and how difficult some items are to make look good.

(11-11-2013 11:24 PM)ColSpanker Wrote:  Strange. All the dry cleaners around me are run by Koreans. I can't figure out why this is happening. And they are plentiful: every strip mall has at least one Korean Dry Cleaner, one Vietnamese nail parlor, and/or one Chinese restaurant.

Where do you live? Is there a large Asian population?

Funny enough, one dry cleaner I worked at was in a strip mall with other stores including both a nail parlor and a Chinese restaurant. A few of the girls running the nail parlor were bangin' hot.

Post: #8

I couldn't believe the prices on dry cleaning in Denver. One dress shirt at a place I tried to take my dry cleaning to was $12 as opposed the the $3-4 I was used to paying in Miami, which is a much easier place to make money than Denver. I feel like maybe it's because people in Denver don't dress as nice, therefore they aren't going through as many clients. Luckily I eventually started working a job that cleaned my clothes for free, but even so I would have been 10x better off in Miami paying to wash my own clothes with a good wage. Bottom line, fuck Denver and their over priced dry cleaners.

Post: #9

(11-12-2013 07:00 PM)InternationPlayboy Wrote:  I couldn't believe the prices on dry cleaning in Denver. One dress shirt at a place I tried to take my dry cleaning to was $12 as opposed the the $3-4 I was used to paying in Miami, which is a much easier place to make money than Denver. I feel like maybe it's because people in Denver don't dress as nice, therefore they aren't going through as many clients. Luckily I eventually started working a job that cleaned my clothes for free, but even so I would have been 10x better off in Miami paying to wash my own clothes with a good wage. Bottom line, fuck Denver and their over priced dry cleaners.

$12 per shirt?! That's absolutely insane. For that price you could buy "fitted cut" white cotton dress shirts from China wholesale, and wear a brand new shirt every day for the price of getting it cleaned. Most cleaners I've worked for or dealt with charged under $3 per shirt, many under $2. Low margin, high volume business, since many cleaners business model is "attracting customers with the lowest advertised price."

...

Just for laughs, I searched YouTube for a dry-cleaner pressing pants. This is NOT the way to do it:





A professional presses the top of the pants all the way around before pressing 1/2 of each leg. The video is especially funny to me as it was posted by a channel called "expertvillage"

Post: #10

(11-11-2013 08:53 PM)Cincinnatus Wrote:  Fun fact ... One of the first dry cleaning chemicals was gasoline.