Swan Cleaners

Dropped off two pants and three shirts on Friday morning… There was a customer there for tailoring service so the girl at the counter was busy but she was nice. Laundry, medium starch. Will be ready Monday after 4pm. That’s $ 13.60. I pay, I leave with just a small credit card slip… different from the claim check I’m used to, but everything seems digital and keyed to my phone number, so… okay.
I return at 5:30 tonight (Monday) and a young man presents me with two pants and two shirts. I ask about the 3^rd shirt. He walks away and a young girl comes up and says, yep, two pant, three shirts.
I point out that what we have, here, is two pants and two shirts.
Oh, she says, hold on. She wanders up and down the rod with shirts on it. She comes and checks the size on the two shirts I have, and goes back, looking for a shirt of similar size. I can hear the guy on the phone asking someone where else a laundered shirt might be.
He gets off the phone and they confer for a moment. She returns to me and says that the shirt isn’t here. It must have had a stain or something that held it back. It’s… elsewhere. She points out I can come back another day.
No, I point out, I REALLY TRULY CAN’T. My hours are such that it will be a week before I can return. Well, it will surely be done in a week…
I stare at her for a while and she goes back to rifling through the shirts on the racks. I turn my back, do some deep breathing, check my Facebook, look at adorable babies and puppies and funny memes, and when I feel that I can resume regular human speech, I turn back around. Three people are now searching for the shirt.
Suddenly, like it was a treasure hunt, someone finds the shirt. It cant be anyone else’s because the racks aren’t very full and I doubt there are all THAT many shirts tailor-​made to fit a 6’5″ 265-​lb man.
She comes up with the shirt, and says expectantly, «that will be $ 13.60» and I say, «I paid when I dropped them off.»
«No.» She says.
«Yes. I did.» I say.
«No.» She repeats.
«Yes, I REALLY DID.»
«No you didn’t, and I know because I would have marked it down.» and SOMEHOW, MIRACULOUSLY, after putting on the Keystone Cops Show for 20 minutes just prior to her assertion that she KNOWS she’s right, she shows ZERO self-​doubt and nary a HINT that she would consider she’s capable of a mess-​up… Lord, please grant me this sort of self-​confidence, someday, in Jesus’ name amen.
At this point I am entertaining the uncharitable thought that this group literally could not find their collective balloon-​knots with both hands, a flashlight, and a military navigator… But I clamped down on my pie hole and started looking for my receipt, hoping that I hadn’t thrown it out with the receipt for last week’s lunch or this weekend’s gas and grocery receipts… But it was there, and I presented it to her.
«Huh,» she said.
I gaped at her for a few seconds before I realized there would be no moment where it dawns on her how incompetent they seem, no apology, nada.
And that’s why I say, maybe they need some time to get it together. But it’s safe to say they don’t have it together yet. And I won’t be back.