National Clothesline, February 2010
In this issue…
Wiggle room. California cleaners caught between a regulatory rock and a hard place gained a
bit of wiggle room from the state fire marshal last month.
Fancy fence. “Restore it but don’t clean it” was the charge given to the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute by the
Smithsonian when it delivered a section of Christo’s Running Fence to DLI.
Not just a slogan. “There are a lot of cleaners out there who like to call themselves organic,” said Surendra Kumar. “People are smart. The public is smart. That’s why the term ‘greenwashing’ is out there…”
Compliance evaluation. Two consultants discuss prominent items they look for at a drycleaning facility
when evaluating environmental compliance.
Get personal. It drives James Peuster nuts to see people spend money and time with
non-personal marketing game plans that get marginal results with less
retention.
A federal fix. The nation’s labor and employment laws need a radical overhaul, but not the radical
overhaul that Congress would give us, Frank Kollman says.
Small things, big problems. Don Desrosiers notes that small things can hurt production.
Train for gain. For every dollar you spend on training you will get three dollars back, Harvey
Gershenson says. So why do many cleaners spend no time training employees?
The current issue in its printed format, including all advertisements, is
available as a pdf download (27MB) here.
He always arrives on time and ready to work. He is an excellent presser and when
his work is caught up he immediately looks for another task to perform, whether
it’s helping someone else on staff or simply cleaning up.
Tim Zielinski is a model employee, and not just in the eyes of his proud father,
Frank, who owns the drycleaners that employs him in Suffolk, VA. Everybody at
Cleanerama wholeheartedly agrees that he is the star of the plant.
“Everybody else has problems and problems,” noted Frank Zielinski. “For a kid who was born with Down’s Syndrome — I mean, how many more problems do you think you need? But, he just doesn’t have any problems whatsoever. He comes to work with a smile on his face and
ready to do the job. He’s always willing to help out and make somebody else’s job easier. He likes to please people. He never asks for a thing.” More…
