Unbelievable! Absolutely unbelievable!
I stopped in at the dry cleaner's on my way home as I wanted to get an idea of the cost before I lugged in my winter wardrobe for cleaning. I have recently invested in some proper dress shirts and I wanted to know how much it would cost to have them cleaned. Men get it done all the time. The guys at work don't seem to know which end of the iron you plug in, yet their shirts are always crisp. They take them to the cleaner's.
Pants, skirt, jacket, you name it, $6.70. I inquired into a women's dress shirt.
"A blouse? $6.70."
I corrected the girl, "no it's a shirt."
"$6.70."
"How much is a male's shirt?"
"$2.45."
"Huh?"
"Women's shirts tend to be of a more delicate fabric and they're smaller."
Ah-ha, I was glad to have that cleared up. I explained that it was the exact same fabric as a male's shirt. Having bought it from a shirt maker who originated in making shirts for men, I knew that it was not special fabric.
"But women's shirts tend to be smaller, so we can't use the same machine that we use for the men's shirts. We have to use a bunch of different ones."
I was about to argue that one too. Then I realised that I am a scrawny runt and there was no way I was going to make the argument that my shirt was just as big as a man's. Yet I know that scrawny runt males are out there, I've had friends who fall into that category. What happens to their shirts? Do their shirts fit on the machine? What do they get charged?
If I was the size of a tank, my shirts would fit on the other machine. What would I be charged? The darts in a women's shirt and the narrowing for the waist give them away.
I'm going to take my shirts in. I'm going to ask for proof that they won't fit on this machine. I'm going to ask for the justification for the more than double the price increase for the same item. I'm beginning to understand why women know how to weld an iron. Discriminatory pricing. Clearly the fight for equality didn't target all the right areas. Dry cleaning should be the next big target. I should be able to look as crisp as a male for the same low price, just like the men should be able to iron their own darn shirts.
1 comment:
One possible explanation (for fun, and yes it makes use of some generalizations):
Men do not like to iron.
Men do not like to spend huge amount of money on clothing.
Women like men to not look scruffy and unkempt.
Women realize that teaching men to iron is futile.
Women realized men might pay someone to do it for them, if the price did not adversly affect their
ability to buy beer and powertools.
At some point women agreed to subsidize the cost of mens use of drycleaners by agreeing to pay higher prices. This may also have been affected by womens ability to use an iron. Since they can do most of their own pressing they only take the 'dry-clean' only and special items in, there for they need to pay more per item in order to subsidize the costs of the men's more frequent visits.
Or maybe the dry cleaners just take pity on the men and want to punish the women for not doing (or being able to do) it themselves, like disapproving mothers.
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