Cultural lesson #105

I don't often take things to get dry cleaned, but when I do, you better believe it's a pretty big load. Now that it's back to sweater season, I quickly realized I still had not had my sweaters dry cleaned from last season! (Horrible problem, I know) So, a friend of mine, Adrianne, took them in for me since she was having to pick something up herself. I met her later, and she gave me the ticket to pick them up later with. (You have to have a ticket here, good ol last name just isn't enough.) Of course, I ended up loosing the ticket. I kept thinking I needed to ask Adrianne what I was suppose to do since I lost my ticket...I kept putting it off and putting it off. Well, I finally remembered yesterday, and when I told her her eyes got huge. Not the most comforting response...obviously, I reluctantly asked if that was a bad thing. (Hoping her response was prompted by something other than the current conversation going on.) She proceeded to tell me that not only is it not great I lost the ticket, but, apparently, they only hold your clothes for 30 days. After that I guess they go to the land of left dry cleaning, wherever that is. As I began counting the days, that turned into weeks, I realized it had been about 30 days. I took it pretty well at first, but as I began processing what was there, I realized it was over $200 worth of sweaters! Not terrific news...They don't really speak English at my dry cleaners, but, fortunately for me, Adrianne's fluent in Czech. She graciously offered to go down today and try to figure things out for me. I got a text saying no luck the first try, that they only had one lady working, so she would have to wait for her co-worker to come in and look later. SO, at noon I met Adrianne up there to see if they had found it. Well, they hadn't. She said her co-worker had (conveniently enough) just left, and she would look when she got back...again. I suppose she saw the sadness and distress all over my face, because she started looking herself a couple minutes after telling us to wait. Turns out she found it pretty much immediately, and made me a very happy girl. Thanks Adrianne!!! And the moral of the story is...don't loose your dry cleaning ticket.