The laundry elves have pissed me off

[gilana]

I don't have laundry in my building, so one of my little indulgences is sending it out. I call the laundry, they come pick the bag off the porch, wash it, dry it, fold it, and deliver it in a neat little plastic package. My roommate has also taken to using this service lately. I leave my laundry out in a cloth bag, she puts hers out in plastic trash bags. Twice in recent weeks they've confused whose laundry is whose -- only a problem when it come to payment, really. But I just noticed that when I got my laundry bag back this time, they wrote a name on it in laundry marker. Notice a say "a name", not "my name", because of course they wrote Rosenthal, with an a.

I just called to yell at them about this, and they apologize for misspelling it, but see nothing wrong with having written on my belongings. They made a pro forma offer of replacing the bag, which I rejected -- it just doesn't seem worth it, and I'm picky about the details of the bag -- but as far as they're concerned, they were having trouble telling them apart, so this was the solution. They didn't have my phone number -- and never asked for it any of the times I called for a pick-up, or to find out how much I owed -- but it doesn't sound like they would have called anyway. Apparently other people have their names on their bags, so why shouldn't they just write on mine?

Grrrr. I'm so pissed off, and so frustrated. I just feel like it was such an incredible liberty to take, and it REALLY pisses me off that they spelled it wrong. I get very possessive about my things. I don't care that it's a stupid laundry bag, it's MY stupid laundry bag, and they had no right to permanently mark it. And I feel so powerless. They're the only place around here that does pick-up and drop-off at even vaguely reasonable rates. I'd love to stop using them, but not enough to find the time to drag my stuff to a laundromat and sit around for a few hours.

Comments

[dpolicar]

yeah... even speaking as someone whose personal response to this sort of thing is to shrug my shoulders and get on with my life, I have to say that's unprofessional. If it's really a problem for them, there's a million better solutions -- including safety-pinning a washer-safe ID to the bag.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty surprising and annoying move, particularly given that you've been using them for a while. IMHO, if they do that, they should be providing the bag that they write on, which some laundromats do do.

I am curious, however, since it's come up before, if you could expand a bit on what bothers you so much about having your name misspelled. Speaking as someone whose name (both first and last) is misspelled with bogglingly high frequency, I don't really grok it.

(I hope the question doesn't offend you. I'd just like to hear more about your feelings, to better understand them/you.)

(Tangent: I am sufficiently used to the errors that I pretty much never give my name to someone who needs to write to down without spelling it immediately. But even when somebody is copying it off printed matter that is *right in front of them* (like my driver's license), the error rate is remarkably high. It's only six letters!)

[gilana]

Interesting question. I think I see my name as something of a representation of myself. It's sort of like if you're not paying enough attention to get my name right, you're not really seeing me, and that's a recurring issue for me. It doesn't bother me as much when strangers misspell or mispronounce my name (unless it's in PERMANENT PEN on MY STUFF, obviously), but when people who have known me for a while do it, I have a tendency to take it somewhat personally.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

That is obnoxious. What service is it?

[gilana]

Teele Square Laundromat.