The Inseam Incident...

We go to these cleaners that are located just down the street from our house in the HEB Shopping center at Cross Creek (I know; I had no idea it was called Cross Creek either). Anyway, the folks there do fairly good work and the employees are generally friendly.

I have often been concerned that every time I go in and there is this one girl behind the counter, she has a really disinterested look on her face, almost to the point of rolling her eyes that I would even come in. I've told my wife several times that I think I am the victim of being stereotyped as a creepy middle-aged pervert or something. I mean, why else would the one girl not be friendly, when all the other employees are so nice?

Well, we may have had a break-through today. My wife texted me that I needed to pick up some stuff from the cleaners, so I went in with receipt in hand and waited while a nicely dressed gentleman, complete with blue-tooth earpiece waited for the girl to find his pants. As he waited, he occasionally chatted with his wife or mother or someone on the phone. It was really weird, as if he he just stays connected to the person on the other end and they trade occasional comments to one another. Unlimited minutes, I guess.

So the girl finds the pants and naturally, I start to move forward so I can hand her my ticket so we can get my stuff. Just then, the man says, "Wait just a second, we better take a look at these. They've been lost for two weeks; no telling what may have happened."

So I'm thinking to myself that he is going to look for stains or something, but instead he grabs the pants and holds them up to his waist. Turns out they had been sent in for alterations. He looks at the girl, then looks at me, then states, "There is no way these are 32 inches, they are way too long." I think to myself, "What say you go try them on and I'll just pick up my laundry."

The man then goes into some sort of rant about how they had been lost for two weeks and now, they clearly were not altered properly and by God, he had specifically told the other person they needed to be 32 inches long. As he said all this, the girl calmly walked to another counter, grabbed a tape measure and laid the pants flat on the counter. She then asked him how many inches he wanted the pants altered and he responded, "32 inches". She then placed the tape at the top of the inseam and measured down to the very bottom of the pants leg. 32 inches, exactly.

The man then looked at her and laughed, saying, "What is this, a joke?" He then went on to tell her that you always measure from the top waistband of the pants down to the bottom of the leg. He even looked at me as if to get some encouragement.

I try not to get involved in these things, but I just looked at him and said, "Have you ever heard the term, inseam?" He looked at me like I was choosing sides or something and then started to babble on about how every fine clothing place he had ever been to, they measured the inseam from the outside pants leg starting at the top of the waist. So again I could not help myself and I said, "Okay, you know that there is about 12 inches from the waist to the bottom of your crotch, and they cut exactly 32 inches from there. If they cut 32 inches from the waist, that would put your cuffs just below your knees. Can you say Capri's?"

The guy then muttered something into his blue-tooth device, and I suspect that was all the conversation he wanted from me. He then grabbed his pants and walked out saying that he would deal with the manager.

And with that, the girl at the counter suddenly smiled. And when she rolled her eyes at me, this time, it was to signify that the other guy was nuts. And I went home and told my wife that we have had a breakthrough in the laundry situation.

Ya gotta like that.