SOME CARELESS CUSTOMERS

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 28 October 1925, Page 4

SOME CARELESS CUSTOMERS

LEAVE THINGS IN CLOTHES. FOR CLEANER TO FIND. A stray umbrella suspended from the straphangers’ leather in a tram-car, advertisements in the lost and. found columns of the Auckland Star, and occasional “finds” in the streets and parks of the city serve to remind us (says the Star) that we are a careless people, prone to lose small personal belongings. Ask any drycleaner whether his customers are forgetful, and the chances are that a slow smile will break on his face as he answers your inquiry in the affirmative, for the fact is that people who have their clothes cleaned give the cleaners no end of trouble by omitting to remove small articles, valuables and sums of money, ere their suits are sent to the works.

One of the city’s largest dry-cleaning establishments employs a'man for two hours every day searching suits that have come in for cleaning. What he finds in a year would stock a small second-hand shop.

Scores of people send their suits to the cleaner without, removing the watch and chain. 'Others forget to> take their cheque-books out. Wallets containing valuable papers and bank notes have frequency been found. It would be thought that young men, courting at long range, would be careful to remove love letters from their pockets before giving over a suit to the hands of strangers, but the operatives in cleaning 'works have long ceased to be interested in the sentimental vaporings of their customers’ sweethearts. One cleaning establishment has found their “return of valuables department” assuming the proportions of a- young dead letter office. ' ” MONEY STUFFED IN POCKETS.

Money is frequently found. <in clothes, in sums ranging from a few pence to £lO or more. The elusive threepenny piece turns up in a multitude of suits, while' coins of greater value are often found. Sometimes there will be a. collection of silver coins in the trousers pockets. Banknotes stuffed into waistcoat and breast pockets are brought to light with surprising frequency, and the funny part of it is that customers have been known to indignantly deny having lost any money when the fact'of the find was made known to them by the factory people. On one occasion a customer’s coat was found to. contain £l2 in notes. His suit was returned, and the messenger delivering it asked if the customer had lost any money. When an assurance. was given that the customer was not the poorer by a penny, the messenger inquired regarding a, sum of, £l2, and was informed that 'such a sum had been hidden in a. drawer. On going to the drawer, however, the customer discovered his mistake, and was more than grateful to the cleaners for looking through his pockets, in which lie had absent-mindedly left the money. A man who was taking a parcel )of forgotten valuables to a depot of the company on the other side of the: harbour remarked upon the. almost unbelievable carelessness of people who could leave so. much of value in their clothes, but the very next week ho sent a suit in himself —the searcher found his watch and chain. Similarly, a city tailor sent a number of suits to the factory for cleaning, and when informed on ,the telephone that £lO in banknotes 'had been found in a pocket, he remarked that he must he more careful in future, and that he would warn his customers to remove, valuables. A day o.r two later the' same tailor sent in a suit with a £1 lio.te in one of the pockets. BANKNOTES IN A BOX.

• ie other day a girl operative in the same cleaning establishment Packed out a match-box from a pocket. Shaking the box, she decided .that it was empty, and threw it under the table, but, acting on a , second impulse born of the thought that the factory should not be endangered unnecessarily, she picked it up. On opening* the box for examination, thinking a match might have been caught in the sides, she was amazed to find two bank notes, one £5 and the other £l, neatly tucked inside.

Tramway concession tickets are found by the hundred. “Indeed, if we did not go to the trouble of returning the tickets we find we could ride free on tfie trams all the year round,” .said the manager of the works. “As a matter Or fact, by the time w© have made inquiries and put down the proper entries on our books in connection with the return of these tickets, we have usuaily earned the value of them.” _ Or course, m these days when everybody from a Boy Scout to a member of an automobile association sports a °" hl , s °oat lapel, it .is not ,surprising that cleaning works have a fine collection of these insignia. HunWhL°f Pe ° P Jf * org6t t 0 remove the badges from their coat lapels, and it v.v»A ha i? Pened t. that tlie small metal devices have been overlooked by the searcher, with the result that the things went to clog the machinery when processes™ 38 the Various