The Killer Comforter

It was a Saturday morning in the summer, which means I was working the dry cleaners by myself. I heard the bell ring meaning someone had come through the front. When I came out of the back room I saw a tall, thin man standing at the counter. He was visibly upset and holding a large white comforter in his arms.

“Hello sir, welcome to The Fussy Cleaners, how can I help you?”

As I approached the counter, the man shoved the comforter towards me saying “this comforter stinks!”

In my head I was thinking “Jesus, this does stink. Why the fuck are you shoving it in my face”? I was a well-mannered employee so instead I went with “uhhh…”.

“You guys cleaned this last week, and this is what it smelled like when it came back. My wife is sick, my dog only has one lung, and my whole house smells now! My poor dog is really small and is probably gonna die because of this. My wife is just going to get sicker! You assholes are going to pay for her medical bills and…”

I stopped him there.

“Sir, I’m so sorry about this. Let me call the office to see what happened”.

I leave him in the front of the room, seething.

“Hi, this is Tyler from the Brecksville location. I have a customer here with a comforter that smells really bad, and he says we returned it to him like this. Do you have any ideas?”

“Does it smell like gasoline?” the woman on the other line asked.

“Uhh, that seems really specific, but let me go check”.

I go back to the front of the store where the man is still scowling. Without saying anything I walk up to the comforter, give it a good whiff, and silently walk to the back of the store again.

“So, it does smell like gasoline… why did you know that?”

“Dry cleaning fluid is petroleum based, so if it isn’t cleaned properly it will still have the smell of gasoline. We just need to send it through the process again and it will be fine.”

I hung up the phone and returned to the irate man in the front.

“Sir, I apologize about the smell. We just need to run your comforter through again, and the smell will go away. This will of course be free of charge.”

“You idiots better not mess this up again! And I’m still going to send you the medical bills for my wife!”

I didn’t really know what to say to that part, so I just let it hang there as is.

The man left after I finished processing his order, the whole time babbling about how much of an idiot I was.

He left and I went back to my work for a minute, when I heard the front door open again. It was the same man.

“Is there something else I can help you with, sir?”

“I… I just wanted to let you know… I’m still really mad!”

He left in a huff and didn’t come back this time. I put the comforter in the bin, and went back to the shirts I had been working on before.