Humor: Taken to the cleaners

Taken to the cleaners

I have a mind to go tell the owners of my local suburban grocery store that they have a nasty stain on their floor.

"So why don't you?" asked my friend Orville.

"Because I think they already must know," I said grumpily.

"That bad, eh?" said Orville.

"Could be," I huffed. "You cannot actually see it because it's hidden underneath a cash machine that does not work."

"Well, how do you know it's there then?" asked Orville.

"I know these things, OK," I said, pointing to my nose.

I have developed quite a second sense about stains since I was forced to become interested in cleaning.

My wife Katherine and I are trying to sell our house at the moment, you see, and we have had two less-than-satisfactory cleaners to our door.

The first visitor was a commercial cleaner who I engaged to clean our windows and give the interior of our house some spit and polish before our first open day.

In hindsight, I should have accepted his offer of a written quote. Foolish me. I took him at his word.
Even more foolishly, I thought that because his quote was for the kind of money it would take me two days to earn, he would have at least one person to help him.

But, nope, he arrived alone at 11am on the appointed day and quickly bemoaned that he did not know how he was going to get all the work done in time.

He need not have worried.
He did not get anywhere near any of it done and, because we did not have a written quote, he collected his cheque at 6pm and asked brashly if we were happy with the job he had done.

Um, well, yes ... what he actually did.

He did a wonderful job of cleaning the windows and it was not his fault a bit fell off our very old oven when he cleaned (some of) it.

But at least he did SOMETHING which is more than can be said for the firm of domestic cleaners we engaged two days later.

All we wanted the cleaner to do was spot clean: basically to do the things the other cleaner had not done.

But we struck an immediate sticking point over spot cleaning the walls.

"We're not supposed to do endanger ourselves," the cleaner told me when she looked at our "to do" list.

"I'm not asking you to climb the walls," I said. "We just want you to spot clean the grubby marks around the light switches. Please. Please. Our open day is tomorrow."

Silly me, I could have sworn that spot cleaning of walls was one of the things the firm said its cleaners did. Sure enough, it is in the literature the company had sent out to us, but the woman said she would have to call headquarters to check on the guidelines.

"They want me to withdraw," she told me when she hung up.

I was flabbergasted. I had visions of her being evacuated into a helicopter from a first-storey window but instead she just packed up a left in a station wagon without doing ANYTHING!

"We will just have to clean the house ourselves," I told Katherine.

It is not my ideal way of spending a day, but, heck, cleaning is not rocket science. People do not have to go to university to study how to become cleaners. All you have to do is roll up your sleeves and get into it.

I recently had three stainless steel stents put into my heart and it irks me that I had to pay more money to my glorified window cleaner than I did to my cardiologist. If only I could get private cleaning insurance, eh?

Near the end of the cleaning day, I had to go to our local supermarket to buy a carton of milk.

I did not have any money on me, but I did have my cash card.

They have an EFTPOS machine at the till but there is a limit. Unless, you buy $10 worth of stuff you have to have cash.

So I went to the cash machine near the back of the store, only to get the same message I have got from it the only previous two times I had tried to use it: "This machine is temporarily out of order."

Never mind, I thought. They were sure to waive the EFTPOS rules given the circumstances.

I was wrong.

"Sorry, sir, we have a $10 limit," I was told.

"But it's not my fault the cash machine in your store is out of order," I stormed. "All I want is this milk."

"Sorry, you'll have to buy something else if you want to use your card."

I could not believe it.
There is a sign on the store door saying there is a cash machine inside. That brings people in.
It seemed to me, however, that the cash machine is temporarily out of order so often, it should actually say: "Permanently out of order. This machine is only here to cover up a nasty stain."

I am a man of principles.

There is no way I was going to bow to shonkiness and buy $6 of things I did not need. I had had enough of shonkiness. I stank of bleach and perspiration and all I wanted was a shower and a cooling glass of milk. OK, five glasses of beer.

I walked for several kilometres in driving rain to another shop instead.

And I swore never to go back to that local shop of mine again. Ever.

"But you will have to," said Orville.

"Why," I said.

"To tell that you know about the stain."

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it