Hey!  My shirts aren’t getting clean!

Many shirt launderers either say this or should say it.  I am amazed at the varying levels of clean that are accepted as, well acceptable. In fact, some laundries have very clean shirts and accept that as normal while others barely seem to get their shirts clean at all and, yes, they consider that normal.

If you had a wish list, on that list would be I’ll bet, that you could get shirts perfectly clean, with no pre-scrubbing, no ring-around-the-collar and no stains.  You want this first time, every time.

Ok, I admit it.  I am world’s biggest Columbo fan.  Surely you must remember the bumbling Los Angeles homicide detective in the crumpled raincoat.  (Why did he always wear that in LA?)  My fondness for Columbo has nothing to do with his style or his mannerisms, although those traits never annoyed me.  I considered them to be a wee bit of comic relief.  After all, Columbo did have a grim job.  He just made us forget that.  Anyway, I like Columbo because of the ingenious writing – the quality of the stories.  On Columbo, you always knew whodunit, but it was hard to imagine how the seemingly hapless detective would figure it out.  He always had us amidst a genuine mystery.

Most plant operators have some sort of an idea of the quality of the shirts that they produce. My experience has shown that they really are quite objective.  I don’t recall anyone proclaiming that their shirts are a “ten.”  Most say that their shirts are a “seven.”  They are about right.  The problem is that they all seem to be at a loss as to how to raise them to even an “eight”.  They’re stuck at the rating that they are at, with no clue and perhaps no inclination to raise it.  Customers seem ok with it too, so the plant staffers, as a whole, collectively, have bigger fish to fry and leave the shirt quality where it is at.  Is it “good enough”?  Evidently so.  Our final inspectors, the customers, aren’t particularly dissatisfied, so we move on to something else.  Complacency is the name of the game.