Manlio Rules

We all had high school jobs, right? some of them involved scooping things, or painting things, or grilling things, or selling pointy things door to door. they built character. they were supposed to show us why an education was so important, so we wouldn’t have to do this stuff for the rest of our lives. I personally worked at the local Dry Cleaners. It was called “Our Cleaners”.

Chapter 1: How I got this job

My parents were (and i guess still are) convinced that idle time was indeed poison to a young mind. starting at the age of 12, my father gave me 2 options: summer school or working. since the legal working age in MA was 15, it took me awhile before i was able to fully commit to one of these choices. When i was 15, my mom mentioned that she had stopped by the dry cleaners that day and that he was looking for help. the next week she took me in for an “interview”, and for the first time I met Joe Rizzo, who would be an important character to my adolescent development. i use ironic quotes because the interview went like this:

Joe Rizzo: what’s your name?
me: Manlio.
Joe: can you add up these numbers?
me: yeah, it comes to $20.80.
Joe: wow. ok, you’re hired.

The next saturday, i got to the store at 8:30AM and started work.

my job consisted of a few different tasks. primarily I was in charge of tagging clothes, which meant that when we got an order, i was supposed to separate the pieces out, take a few colored paper tags from the spindle, and staple them to the clothes, then indicate on the invoice which ones i had stapled. Easy enough. of course, when i screwed up, there was the unpleasant task of trying to guess whose skirts went with which order, which can be delicate “no sir, i didn’t mean to imply that you seem like the type who would wear that pink striped shirt, i just was wondering if it was yours because it was mistagged near your order. no sir, i’m not being fresh with you.”

I also had to answer the phone. courtesy dictated that i pick up and say: “our cleaners”, in an earnest and helpful voice, the reply to the question at hand. the 2 most common questions by far were:

1. What time do you close? (7PM on weekdays, 5PM on saturdays)
2. What do you charge for a pair of pants? ($3.30)

I will note that while the frequency of price checks on pants confused me, years later it allowed me to conduct maybe the best economic research I did in my entire career (narrowly beating out my analysis of why Philadelphia needed less ambulances that could handle heart attacks), when i surveyed 25 cleaners in the Philadelphia area (chosen randomly) and examined whether or not pricing for pants was indeed constant among them in hopes of analyzing a market that in theory, should be in perfect competition. Of course, prices were not constant because i didn’t break the cleaners down by wealth of neighborhood. regardless, i got myself a “check plus”. you may think it’s odd to be proud of this, but considering my economics thesis was a bland mishmash of statistical theory and excuses for data that didn’t make any sense with the final conclusion that “more people will be on the internet in the future”, i stand by my dry cleaning paper as the apex of my work.

anyways, my boss would occasionally call and in response to my “our cleaners”, say “no, it’s my cleaners! my cleaners!”. this was sort of funny. of course, it was less funny the one time i picked up the phone, and, distracted by something that may or may not have been the cute girl who worked at the deli next door crossing the street, i answered the phone: “Yeah?”. there was a short pause, and joe’s voice slowly said: “uh… yeah? is that how you answer the phone?” whoops.

far and away the best part about the cleaners was, as my dad would put it, “having a buck in your pocket”. i can’t remember how much i made, but it couldn’t have been more than maybe $5.00 an hour. but after 8 hours on a saturday, i’d walk out with $40, and for a 15 year old who still had no “real” expenses, that was good money, to be spent on… well, actually i have no idea. it’s not like i was going out a lot or had a girlfriend or anything. let’s say for the sake of argument that i spent it on books, or more likely, candy. in either event, it was great.