Dry cleaner ruins dress, shrugs about it

It takes a lot of nerve to screw up a dress meant to be worn to a wedding, and then act like you’ve done nothing wrong.

My wife, Jill (insert Jack and Jill joke here), had to go to a wedding in Burlington on Saturday and planned to wear a new dress, which had a fancy bow on it, across the top of the bodice.

She took it to a dry cleaner in our neighbourhood last Tuesday, along the Scarborough Bluffs, and asked them to press it because it was slightly creased; she’s a stickler for detail.

She gave them her cell phone number, told them she needed it for a wedding on Saturday and was handed a receipt that said she could pick it up Friday afternoon.

But she didn’t go back until Saturday morning, the day of the wedding. Instead of handing her the dress, the cleaners delivered bad news: They had managed to ruin the bow.

The person at the counter said they’d sent it off to a tailor to repair the damage, and that it would be ready next week.

Jill was outraged (who wouldn't be?) and told the counter person that she was supposed to wear the dress to a wedding ceremony that would take place about 80 kilometres away, in three hours.

The counter person shrugged, as if to say good luck. There was no offer of compensation or assistance.

She was too frazzled and in a hurry to argue or negotiate with them, so she set out on a commando shopping expedition to find another dress, along with shoes and a matching handbag.

Thank God I am a guy.

They could have called her and said there’s a problem – which would have given her a lot more time to replace the dress – but didn’t.

She managed to find one, along with matching accessories, but the shoes were such a poor fit and so badly tortured her feet that she had to go and get yet another pair after the wedding ceremony.

It amounted to a substantial extra cost, which I think should be paid by the dry cleaner. But we aren’t expecting it, and don’t have much of a leg to stand on, according to the fine print on the receipt.

Lesson learned.

  

 

 

 

  

 

  

  

 

  

 

 

   

 

 

   

Comments

[KD]

Don't be surprised by the lack of warning. If she was due to pick it up on Friday afternoon, there's a good chance the cleaner didn't even start working on it until a couple of hours before that.