Yet, like a foolish simpleton, I didn't entertain that thought at all when I decided to drop three basic dresses off at a dry-cleaning joint nearby. A couple of them were not clean and they were all wrinkled due to traveling in my suitcase. Because I am planning to wear them for wedding festivities this weekend, I decided it would be best to fork over a few bucks to get the garments spruced up a bit.
So, yesterday I walked a few blocks to the nearest cleaners and surrendered the items to the man behind the counter. Nothing about the place gave me any hesitation, and true to the idiotic tendencies I had that day, I didn't inquire about the price. In old-school cleaners style, there didn't seem to be any prices posted. I wasn't worried. In my experience, getting things dry-cleaned is not too pricey. It's true that I don't probably do it often enough to really know the ballpark figures and I generally go to the burger joint of cleaning companies, but I just expected it to be $20 at most for all three dresses. (Please, go ahead and laugh now if you know better).
Today, I explored the city while my friend worked (by the way, she wasn't with me yesterday when I dropped off the clothes. Too bad because she probably could have supervised this situation.). I had a grand but exhausting time riding the metro and walking miles up and down streets around the city. By mid-afternoon, I was ready to head back to the apartment, so I swung by the dry cleaners.
All seemed right until the cleaning agent spoke the total: $62!!!!! What?!?!? I tried not to drop my jaw when the unsuspecting man behind the counter dropped the bomb. I was super surprised, but what could I do? It was my fault that I had not checked into the prices beforehand. I had no option but to give the man money and walk out the door. Out of spite, I grabbed not one, but two candies from the counter jar as I left. Ridiculous and unethical, I know. The initial feelings of hurt pride and frustration quickly melted into hilarity. I just had to shake my head and laugh at myself. I suppose that's the most sane thing to do in a situation like that, right? It's just money. It's okay. There are worse tragedies in the world.
Just goes to show you that a girl my age can still get schooled. All I know is I better look $62 worth of clean and pressed this weekend. I better look mighty good.
3 comments:
Way to show them by taking two candies! Bam!
It's evidently what the market will bear in Clayton or this place would be out of business! Or, maybe this place only does a few garments/day and therefore has to charge higher prices to stay in business--maybe they make their money off of first and last time customers (I doubt it). You should have inquired which it was and taken 3 candies. JJN
Off the top of my head, $12 is the most I have ever paid for a dress to be dry-cleaned.
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