A MYSTERY

Now that I'm a working woman…permanently, I've been making new friends with the people at the $1.75 drycleaners. It's really a great deal! Anyways, I go in there a lot but I can't, for the life of me, figure out how the whole dry-cleaning process works. It's fascinating!

I go in with my heaping pile of mid-range to expensive, professional business clothes and walk up to the counter, the lady greets me with a smile and then starts sorting through my laundry. Well, what I don't get is how my clothes get associated with my name! She brings up my name on their computer, which by the way says "Any Dall." Accents are a killer. But then she just stuffs all my clothes in a black bag and throws it over her shoulder in a big huge bin with 50 million other black bags. This bag has no name or barcode or number or anything on it. It's just a canvas bag with a drawstring! She doesn't scan or put a tag on anything. She doesn't break out a digital camera and take a picture of every article of clothing or fingerprint me either. Then they roll it away to the back steaming dungeon , and I'm thinking, "I'll never see that $20 Old Navy skirt again!" Seriously…there's no way to tell that the clothes in that bag are mine! But sure enough, when I show up to the next day, there's all my clothes (including the $20 Old Navy skirt), all nice and pressed and clean. AMAZING! How did they know?!

And?! How do they decide where my clothes hang after they're done on that 10 mile mobile laundry line? Every time, they're somewhere different! The people that work there are so good with that thing! They take my receipt, (that only shows how much I paid), then proceed to press a little button. All the sudden, clothes are moving all around you! The whole time I'm thinking, "my clothes could be anywhere among this…I wonder where they are?" He presses the button again and TaDa!! My clothes stop right in front of his face. Genius.

Now I'm sure people who read this will end up explaining to me in simple detail the whole process of dry-cleaning. I can just see everybody now, "Oh my gosh, what an idiot! Who doesn't know how dry-cleaning works?!" But I'll admit it, I like being presented with a challenge every time I go in that place…it's fun to try and unravel the unknown. Maybe that's what its all about. Maybe that's how they sell their service. Maybe they want people to be so satisfied with the cleanliness of their clothes, that the mystery behind the actual cleaning process goes by the wayside. Or maybe I'm just thinking too hard.

Hmmm.