Drycleaning was never the logical industry choice
for IFI Instructor Brian Johnson to gravitate toward, yet that is
precisely where he has spent all 20 years of his professional life.
Cleaning was an unlikely prospect because
Brian didn’t have any family members in the industry — in
fact, his mother worked for the E.P.A. — and he had never even
seen a cleaners until he was a teenager.
Then, of course, there was the time he was
seriously injured by a washing machine and almost lost one of his
hands. Brian was eight and living in Washington, D.C. Many of his
weekends and holidays, however, were spent in West Virginia where Brian
had been born and where many of his
older relatives still lived. They subscribed to a
somewhat older lifestyle.
“Some of them still used
outhouses,” he said. “We raised farm animals and grew much
of our own food. I played with chickens every day. I was particularly
fond of tending the vegetable garden and using the riding
mower.”
Another appliance the family owned was an
antique washing machine that had rollers for ringing water out of
garments. One day, Brian’s hand got stuck in the rollers and it
started to pull him in. His cousin got him out, but not before he
suffered severe damage to his right middle finger.
“Most of the skin and muscle were
torn away,” Brian recalled. “The emergency room would only
clean and bandage the hand because they could not reach my mother, who
was in D.C. in the middle of surgery.”
Brian’s family opted not to tell his
mother about the injury while she was recovering from her operation,
but things soon got much worse.
“The hand became badly infected and
by the time I saw another doctor at Children’s Hospital six weeks
later, they were considering amputating the entire right hand,”
Brian noted. “My mother got the infection down and I was able to
keep my hand. I did have some reconstructive surgery a few years later
to regain the full use of my hand.”
Such an incident might make any child a little
cautious in life, but Brian had a daredevil mentality. He was quite a
television junkie, watching many sitcoms and impressionable action
shows such as “The Bionic Man.” Whenever the TV was turned
off, he would be a little more reckless, taking up any challenge
instigated from neighborhood kids.
“I jumped off roofs, off buildings,
over cars... on the bike, on the skateboard, it didn’t matter. I
have the stitches to show for it,” he laughed. “At one
point, I had a full leg cast riding a bike. I couldn’t even bend
at the knee. It was on my entire leg and I was still on my bike every
day.”
When Brian was 13, he tried his hand at a
more peaceful hobby: He taught himself piano, playing by ear no less.
Later on, a church pianist set up an audition for him at the Levine
School of Music, a prestigious school for performing arts in
Washington, D.C.
“I was not very interested in
becoming a concert pianist but I
auditioned nonetheless,” he said. “They were
impressed with my piano playing but not with my obvious
disinterest and lack of discipline. When you’re self-taught,
you get used to making your own practice schedules and I
wasn’t about to interrupt my television viewing to begin
practicing piano for hours every night.”
In high school, Brian wanted to earn a little
extra cash. His best friend helped him get a job behind the front
counter where he worked at Royal Cleaners in District Heights,
Maryland. Naturally, Brian was pressing pants on his first day as
“counter help.” He soon picked up other skills, as well.
“They had no trouble teaching me
anything I wanted to learn, and I pretty much wanted to learn the whole
thing,” Brian said. “It was all kind of gradual, you
know... ‘Just hang a load of clothes for me.’ Eventually,
it was: ‘Start a load of clothes for me.’ I tell my
students all the time that I think I had it easier than they do. I had
the luxury of years to learn it all. They’ve got to learn it all
in three weeks.”
Brian moved up to the position of general
manager after eight years with the company and transferred to the
Crofton Station store in Annapolis. Though he now had a completely
different clientele, he still subscribed to the same customer service
principles. He was surprised at the results.
“The customers were giving me
gifts,” he recalled. “I never had that happen before.
They’d catch word of my birthday and would come in and bring me
cake. At Christmas time, they would bring me gifts. I thought that was
the most amazing thing I had ever seen. It was really fun.”
Unfortunately, the fun did not last for Brian.
Things changed drastically at the plant in March of 1996 when a
devastating fire hit.
“The restaurant next door was set on
fire and it took us out completely,” Brian said. “We lost
everything. All the garments went first. We had a conveyor that was up
in the air, so all of the garments caught fire, fell to the floor, then
set everything on the floor on fire. The inspector ruled it arson, but
nobody could actually prove who did it.”
Plant owner Tommy Rubino and Brian had to
let everybody else at the location go and then spent the next four
months trying to get back on their feet.
“It was a big mess,” Brian
said. “I stayed on to work with almost no salary at all, working
80 hours a week.”
After a lot of hard work, Rubino hired most
of the employees back and Crofton Station branched out with more stores
and routes. However, by 1999, Brian found himself burned out. He had no
idea what he wanted to do, but that didn’t stop him from telling
Mr. Rubino that he’d be leaving soon.
“I didn’t think two
weeks’ notice would be fair after 13 years,” Brian said.
“I just figured I’d let him know then that something was
going to happen at some point. Literally, two days later, this IFI job
fell into my lap.”
Brian has only had two jobs in his life and he
was hired for both of them thanks in large part to people he knew. This
time, he had Anne Weakly at IFI to thank. She had previously been the
manager who hired him at Royal Cleaners. Since she had trained Brian,
she was confident that he would make a good instructor.
Brian had plenty of experience, so the
teaching aspect of his job came easy for him. What surprised him,
however, was how many cleaners in the industry lacked skills and
experience.
“All I had known was how we did
things at the company I was with,” he explained. “I thought
everybody cleaned their presses every day and cleaned their stores. I
just thought everybody did what we did. I thought the training was the
same, that everybody had that basic background. It was a rude
awakening.”
As part of the technical staff at IFI,
Brian fields phone calls and e-mails from members and consumers, as
well as potential cleaners who often see drycleaning as an easy
opportunity to make money without a lot of work.
“People honestly don’t think
they need any type of training,” he said. “They honestly
think it’s OK to put holes in garments or take color out of
fabrics. You know why? Because the guy down the street is doing it.
It’s just part of drycleaning.”
Brian hopes IFI’s new Award of
Excellence program will help offset the problem, merging frustrated
consumers with the cream of the cleaning crop. Unfortunately, it can be
pretty slim pickings in the field.
“There are so many bad cleaners out
there,” he said. “God forbid I ever have to pay for
drycleaning in my life.”
It doesn’t make sense to Brian
because so many people are willing to invest their life’s savings
in a plant, but they aren’t willing to invest a much smaller
amount in a cleaning class.
“Get some education. Go to a school,
preferably come here — but if you can’t come here, just go
to a school and get some training,” he said. “It’s
going to make all of the difference in the world.”
One of the most rewarding aspects of
Brian’s job is the rapport he shares with his students. The
common question he gets from every class member is: Why don’t you
own your own plant?
“I’m lazy!” he laughed.
“The thing is, I would have to move to own a plant. My whole
family’s here. I really like living in the D.C. area, but the
market here right now is not a good place to be as far as drycleaning
goes.”
Perhaps someday he’ll be at the helm
of his own cleaners, but for now, he’s content to offer a helping
hand so that cleaners reach their true potential.
“It really is a lot of fun,” he
said. “I can’t wait for Monday to come around when the
class gets here. By the second or third week, Jane (Rising) and I will
be exhausted, but it’s just so much fun... the different people
with different stories.”
Brian likes it so much he often sticks
around after class just to get to know his students a little better.
Some want to get to know him a little too well.
“I’ve gotten some strange
proposals,” he laughed. “I remember one girl... right in
the middle of class she yelled out, ‘You know Brian, I’m
taking you back. You’re coming back with me and I’m going
to chain you up in the closet. That way, you can’t get
away’.”
No matter how much fun he has with his
class, though, there is one thing Brian never reveals: his true age.
“The running joke is how old I really
am,” he said. “I’m anywhere from 22 to 42. Every
class leaves here after three weeks not knowing how old I really am
because I’ve told them so many different ages.”
