Social Justice for the well-dressed gentleman
By Matt Miner
At the risk of harkening back to the $54M pants, let me see if I can arouse the ire of my readership (assuming there is at least one reader). Unfortunately, I have to preface this post by saying that regrettably, my cause is unlikely to be taken up by any of the traditional muckraker or populist pulpits. It will probably be difficult (though somewhat less so) to even obtain the support of a celebrity spokesman. We won’t hear about it from Southern preachers or Northern union organizers. My rage today is directed at my dry cleaner, and specifically I’m furious about dress-shirt laundering.
Since arriving at business school (Let’s go Duke!), I have acquired nice shirts. Also, the current fashion for nice shirts is to have the buttons be quite thick, and often convex on the reverse of the button (the side against the fabric). Further, these buttons are designed for the shirt, by the designer. They match the shirt, are of pretty material, and are well sewn. Enter Deluxe Cleaners of the South Square area in Durham, NC.
They have been smashing and obliterating my cuff buttons at an alarming rate, perhaps 10 times the rate of my old cleaners in Phoenix (Astro Dry Cleaners). I have had Deluxe make repairs, and their replacement buttons are invariably generic white buttons, sewn on in haste. The tipping point, however, came on Tuesday night. I was getting ready for a recruiting function. I had a new Hugo Boss shirt which I had never worn. As I got ready to don my new shirt, anguish gripped my heart: the lustrous, black "Hugo Boss" cuff buttons were broken.
“NOOOOOOOOO!” I cried. “Not you! Any shirt but you….”
“What’s wrong?” Charity called from the kitchen. Choking back tears, I explained the situation. While her reaction might have quelled my eagerness to write about my buttons, my resolve was cemented as I put on a shirt with thinner, non-obliterated buttons. My fellow dressers will know that the dry cleaning tag identifying the shirt as yours is looped through the bottom button hole. As I sought to tear off the paper label, it became clear that the label had been affixed with a double stable piercing the shirt itself, rather than merely the label.
"Oh," I thought. "Now you've made me grumpy." Stone-faced and steely-eyed, my purpose now was crystal clear.
In the past when I had complained about my button problems to the cleaners, I had heard replies that “when buttons get old, they become fatigued and break.”
“HA!” I thought. “I’ve got them now. This is a new shirt. They can no longer plead ‘old shirt buttons’.” Armed with this irrefutable evidence, I sallied forth to politely complain.
I left a message for the owner, Ed, and he called me back. He made arrangements to match the buttons (only in color and size – he could not replace my buttons). But he told me the fault was with my thick, convex buttons. He explained that his shirt-pressing machine (which he proudly told me cost $28K, or the equivalent of only 224 dress shirts) just couldn’t help itself with these thick, modern buttons. Like a ravenous wolf, it devoured buttons with each chomp. He even took me back and showed me where and how the button-smashing was accomplished. He then suggested that I consider dry-cleaning my shirts (for only $4.95 each).
As a Duke MBA student, I can’t condone his handling of my complaint, and I see only three possible outcomes. 1) I will find a new dry-cleaner who doesn’t smash my buttons in the shirt press. 2) I will find someone to hand-iron my thick-buttoned shirts. Or, if neither of these proves possible, 3) I will recruit an employee to do pick-up and drop-off shirt pressing for $4 per shirt (minimum order quantity = 5 shirts, or drop them off yourself for $3/shirt). If my employee could press 8 shirts per hour, I’m pretty certain I could be profitable. And the capital equipment for such an enterprise is negligible.
So, for all the fellas with designer threads who are tired of smashed buttons, send me your comments and let me know: Would you pay $4 (rather than $4.95 for dry-cleaning) to have your shirts laundered and pressed, including delivery service, if, when you went to put your shirt on, you knew your buttons would not be blown up?
