This is a true story that happened at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park in 2008 in mid spring.

The call came in bright and early on Thursday. The shop manager at Cameo Cleaners of Gramercy Park came into my office and stated that she had a big problem. It seems that a bridesmaid dress was brought in on Monday, horribly stained and was needed for today. The dress wasn’t ready and the client was on the phone and she was hysterical.

The dress was in bad shape, the client had worn it the previous weekend to go out. The dress was supposed to be worn at her sister’s wedding; she was the maid-of-honor. A drink was spilled. The dress was stained. She was getting on a plane in 3 hours to travel to the wedding. She wanted the dress. She wanted it now. It was her sister’s wedding; she had to have the dress in 1 hour.

I explained our dilemma. We had called and spoke to her boyfriend the night before. He gave us the okay to re-clean the dress, “take your time”; he stated not really knowing the magnitude of those words. Now we were between a rock and a hard place. We have an upset client, a stained dress, a boyfriend in the middle and an impossible deadline.

I offered to have the dress shipped FEDEX. It would be in her hand first thing tomorrow morning. No dice. She wouldn’t accept anything less than the dress in her hands as she boarded the airplane.

I picked up the phone and called Charlie, one of my partners in the firm, to figure out how to solve this one.

A one hour deadline wouldn’t work, the dress was still in the cleaning machine and would not be out for 45 minutes, add transportation and you’re looking at an unhappy client, really unhappy.

Charlie made the suggestion of meeting her at the airport. “Find out where she’s flying out of”, he barked. My fingers hit speed dial. The client said, “JFK”, I knew we hit gold. JFK is 10 minutes from our production facility.

I asked the client what gate she was leaving from and quickly dispatched the info to Charlie. The dress came out of the machine without a trace of the evidence from last weekend. Charlie jumped into his car and broke a few traffic regulations but was at the gate in time.

The client left for her sister’s wedding, with a smile on her face and the dress in hand. Oh, and the dress was perfect.

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