The Dry Cleaners
“You’re going to be working for the rest of your life. Why don’t you spend your free time with your friends or at the pool or something,” my mom offered. She didn’t get it. I desperately wanted a job, and for no particular reason. I wasn’t trying to make money. I just wanted a job. I considered having a job to be a great adventure, a sign of something. I wasn’t sure of what.
My friend Christina Kefalos, who brought me to Greek Conventions even though I wasn’t Greek, and who had the attention of every boy in the school, told me I could work with her at the dry cleaners. Thrifty Dry Cleaners paid $4.25 per hour and workers signed up for shifts. The deal was sealed. I was their newest employee.
The following month I headed to work, through the hole in the fence and across the tracks, stopping to feel the track for train vibrations and leaving a penny to get smooshed after I’d left. Sometimes I worried that I’d derail a train that way, but treasured the flattened metal too much to stop. I maneuvered through the fat gravel on the side of the road and hopped over the cement barrier into the middle of Edgewood Avenue.
Thrifty Dry Cleaners didn’t do the actual washing or pressing or whatever it was that they did to clothes in our store. A white van would come and take the carefully tagged clothes away and bring them back “cleaned” the following day. I was always doubtful that they did any actual cleaning of those clothes, instead suspecting that they put them on hangers, pressed them, covered them with bags and sent them back, since no stains ever seems to come out and clothes never really looked cleaner.
I learned a lot about stains at Thrifty’s. We were never allowed to tell a customer that a stain wouldn’t come out, but rather we were told to encourage them to “give it a try – you never know.” Well I knew. Those stains never came out. There were stains the workers learned to avoid. The biggest hazard to a worker at Thrifty’s were the pants of the “freeballers,” the fat men (most of the time) who without exception had stains on the insides of their pants. We went to extreme lengths to avoid contact with those pants, and tried our best to pin the little red and yellow tags to the waistband without touching the actual fabric.
The freeballers weren’t the only people who left the workers unsolicited surprises. The local drug dealers were a constant source of conversation between workers, due to the baggies of marijuana and wads of money left in pockets. We would all try to outdo others’ stories of treasures found by embellishing on the amounts of our finds or speculating about the owner. We commonly debated whether or not to keep money found in pockets. It was generally agreed upon that money less than ten or twenty dollars could be pocketed. Some of us returned such amounts anyway, to make customers happy. The issue was far more complicated when the sums grew over $100 or $200. We sometimes argued for keeping half, but reasoned the customer would then know the remainder had been taken. Christina convinced me that if we returned it, that would be an act of kindness, but we were not obligated to do so. So, mostly we returned the money, save a few dollars here and there, but grappled with the choice over an over again. Sometimes we’d take turns getting slush puppies from the convenience store next door with our found money, trying to outdo eachother with awful combinations of flavors – raspberry banana, blueberry grape, or the rainbow, which included every flavor all mixed together. In the end, they all pretty much tasted the same, even though they turned you lips and tongue different colors.
A major perk of working at Thrifty’s was that you were given a key to the store. Christina and I would occasionally sneak into the store after dark, because we knew it was wrong, that the cops were sure to catch us our after Edgewood’s community curfew of 10:00pm, which was broadcast by an exceedingly loud mounting whistle, that also alerted the volunteer fire department of a fire. We would enter and turn the light in the back room on, try on forgotten and neglected clothes. The store’s policy stated that Thrifty’s was not responsible for clothes left at the cleaners for more than three months. They never threw them away either, so we’d wait for the three month mark and then make them ours for our own personal fashion shows. Ridiculous prom dresses with puffy sleeves, too much toole, and terribly ugly cuts, were favorites. We also liked the gaudy wedding dresses, polyester shirts in browns and blues from the 70’s, and bell-bottom pants. Occassionally, we’d try on newer clothes and try to figure out which of our customers were closest in size. Sometimes we’d give them away to friends for Halloween, hoping that noone would ever come and pick them up.
They never did I suppose. Our clientele wasn’t the swiftest. We’d watch “the purse” from the big store front window on most days. She was a gaunt black lady, whose clothes never seemed to fit her right, clinging awkwardly to the wrong parts of her body, like a wet piece of clothing. She wore white pumps every day and puffy colored socks at the same time. She’d stand on the edge of the parking lot swinging her purse the way a lifeguard swings a whistle, eyeing each car that passed her. We were never sure what it was that she was doing there. Some speculated that she was trying to be a hooker. I doubted. She seemed lonely and crazy to me, and yet sure of her self at the same time. I speculated that she had lost a lover in our parking lot and would come every day to visit that memory, which was interrupted by every passing car.
Another favorite customer was Mr. Mom, who pushed a baby carriage through the parking lot, into the convenience store for a Kit Kat a couple times a week, and almost always on Saturdays, my usual work day. Very occasionally, he’d push the carriage into Thrifty’s to drop off baby clothes for cleaning. It was at these times, we’d choke back our laughter and try with all seriousness to comment on the cuteness of his “baby,” the plastic doll in his carriage. He never seemed to pay much attention to us, or catch our teasing. Sometimes I’d feel bad for Mr. Mom, wanting to understand him better, understand why he carried that doll around and chose not to hear our snickering, but I never told the worker that.
Working at Thrifty’s involved signing up for shifts, and after a year I signed up less and less. I’m not sure what had lit the fire inside of me to start working, but my mom was right, I have been working ever since. I do know that I learned a lot about stains, ethics, and strangers from Thrifty’s, lessons which I am still drawing upon now. I pause for ketchup down my white t-shirt and sometimes I pause to swing my purse in the parking lot, eyeing every car that passes.
