The Re-employment Chronicles
So . . . I took a new job in a city far from where I live and so am in the midst of a transition that will eventually move my family and I about a 1000 miles from where we are to an entirely new place we’ve essentially never been. It rates mention that my wife and I are not overly adventurous or impetuous in fact risk averse would describe me pretty adequately and my wife, my Shari . . . well she has given up much to be with me.
We spend years carefully and diligently climbing the stairs as is my way, we stop . . . look around if just for a moment . . . and then . . . plunge down the waterslide. So its not entirely out of character that about once every ten years or so we take that dive and do it whether we need to or not. Of course this time we kind of needed to, that or face the specter of unemployment fueled hunger, pestilence and eventually I imagine . . . death. So anyway here I am a couple of weeks out of every three camping in a hotel, working, eating, drinking, sleeping and traveling. Pretty much life as it is on the road. Not nearly my first time yet different than most of my adventures. I’m mostly alone. I’m the only out-of-towner at the office, the only one in the hotel, the only one going out for dinner every night. My trips are missing the camaraderie and commiseration of the group. That pack of middle-aged guys alone and away from home but together and trying to make the best of it in seedy sports bars, threadbare hotel lobbies and crappy 24 hour breakfast joints. A pack of really very different guys that wouldn’t find each other in ever but for the business trip, the sales meeting, the trade show and because of that like a blooded army platoon, they are then, now and forever Friends. I miss that.
But I digress.
The story of the transition is a story unfinished that will find its way here some time sooner or later. Some time maybe after I’ve found the perspective to find it funny. No this story is not that story. This story is the story of the laundromat.
What with the extended stays away from home and the ridiculous nickel and dime-ing pricing policies of the major airlines (you know who you are) I in my infinite wisdom and generous nature suggested that to avoid excessive baggage fees I would pack out two weeks worth of stuff fly it out once then simply wash clothes at the end of the trip, repack and leave my bags of spring fresh clothing in my office for next time. Great idea. Saves the company a minimum of $60 a leg in baggage fees, I’m not humping 50lb. suitcases all over hell and gone, and it seriously reduces the likelihood of me losing every stitch of clothing I own to the baggage blackhole. Great idea!
And so we finally arrive at the point of the story. The Laundromat.
I actually grew up in a laundromat so I am pretty familiar with the concept. And when I say I grew up in one I very nearly did . . . my best friend’s family owned one and he and I grew up making large forts out of cartons of tiny soaps, drinking warm bottles of pop from wooden crates, picking through boxes of gumball machine prizes and sneaking candy machine candy bars. My first 15 years are full of the smell of laundry soap, the whirr and clink of the dollar changer and the physical hum of the great machines. This was my best friend and we literally spent everyday together from age 3 to age 20 and most of those days included time at the laundromat. It was a given. So like I said I’m no stranger to the concept of a laundromat. A large, extremely clean and well lit building filled with fully operational if not new high capacity, high speed washers and dryers, a good snack selection, comfortable seating and a 24 hour on duty attendant to assist with unusual change requests or out of order machines. That’s a laundromat.
Well apparently not.
I found the place on Yelp! Close enough to the office that I could conceivably finish over an extended lunch hour. I loaded the address into Tom Tom and headed out. I thought ole Tom was having me on when it turned me down the alley. No. The alley gave way to a small rectangular cinder block structure. A storm shelter? No, too cracked and leaning. A maintenance shed for some long gone utility? No, not nearly fancy enough. No this, I came to find, is a laundromat. Worse yet apparently a pretty typical one. For shame.
I go in. Not because I want to but because I have two weeks of dirty clothes and two hours to get them clean. No time to go anywhere else. No time to go down to the campus district and find a Duds and Suds or Dirty Dungarees so I can get a pitcher or two while I launder. No time. A shame.
The inside did not disappoint. Linoleum. . . cracked, peeling and completely skinned in some spots. Banks of badly maintained washers and dryers that had me wondering if my clothes might go in cleaner than they’d come out. As a marketer I’d expect the ideal message a laundromat would hope to portray to its prospective clientele would be of cleanliness but this wasn’t that. It wasn’t that at all. And amidst it all were a handful of people, like me, there to wash some clothes. And while I’ll admit they were by all appearances perhaps a little more down on their luck than I they were still just people wanting clean clothes. And wanting them enough to brave this little hell of commercial depravity for the opportunity.
Word to the wise you business owners out there . . . just because you think you have crappy, careless, dirty customers doesn’t mean you need to run your business that way. No one wants to go to a crappy, careless, dirty business no matter what service is provided and given the chance all of those crappy, careless, dirty customers will go and spend all their dirty dollars somewhere else.
I did.