The Brown Shirt Marketing Lesson

My old dry cleaners called me to today. I think it was their version of a courtesy call. Here's how it went:

     "Ms. Jones, we have a brown shirt
      here and you need to pick it up by
      Friday or we are donating it to charity."

What I said with every ounce of sarcasm I could muster:

      "Wow, that is so GENEROUS of you
        to hold on to my shirt until Friday.
        Thank you SO much."

I'm not proud of being sarcastic but the call really made me mad.  It solidified my decision not to use this dry cleaners again.

I'll call the dry cleaners "B." After being a 15-year loyal "B" customer I recently decided to try another dry cleaners because "B" removed the standing 20% discount they had been giving me for the entire 15 years.  And less than 2 weeks later I receive this "courtesy call."

All they had to say is:

      "Ms. Jones, you still have a brown shirt here.  We think we missed giving it
       to you last time you were here. Do you think you can pick it up this week?" 

If the person had worded the call this way I would've been sincerely grateful for her call.  And I wouldn't be as irritated about the 48 hour notice to pick up my shirt.

However, I had been wondering where my brown shirt was...