One sunny Saturday morning, Tom woke up to find his wife, Lisa, busy in the kitchen. She was preparing breakfast and looked a bit worried. “Tom,” she said, “can you please take our clothes to the dry cleaners today? I really don’t have time. I have a lot of things to do today.” 

“Of course!” Tom replied. Tom quickly gathered their clothes—a gray suit coat, a pair of white pants, and Lisa’s favorite blouse.

Tom drove to the dry cleaners. There were clothes of all colors and sizes hanging on the conveyor racks. He approached the counter and gave his clothes to the attendant. “We need these cleaned,” he said.

“Great! We’ll have them ready tomorrow,” the attendant replied. “Here is your ticket, you’ll need that when you pick them up.”

The next day, Tom returned to pick up their clothes. He handed the attendant his ticket. The attendant handed him a big hanging bag. “Here you go! All done!” she said. Tom thanked her and took the bag home.

When he arrived, Lisa was waiting at the door. “Did you get our clothes?”

“Yes! I have them right here,” Tom said, handing them to Lisa.

Lisa opened the bag and looked inside--her face changed. “These aren’t our clothes! This is not my blouse! And those pants are two sizes too big!”

Tom was confused. “What do you mean? I gave them our ticket!”

Tom went back to the dry cleaners. He said to the attendant. “I think there has been a mix-up,” he said. “These aren’t our clothes.”

“I’m terribly sorry, I must have misread your ticket.” She checked her records in the system and then went to get the correct items.

Tom looked inside to double-check. These were their clothes.

Tom arrived home and handed Lisa the bag.

But as Lisa pulled out her blouse, she frowned again. “Oh no! My blouse has shrunk!” she said sadly. “And look at my suit coat,” Tom added. “There’s a stain on it!”

Finally, Lisa pulled out her white pants and gasped. “Tom! They’ve turned pinkish!”

“I’ll handle this.” Tom said as he gathered up the clothes and headed back to the dry-cleaners.

At the dry cleaners, the attendant apologized. “We’ll take care of this immediately. We can get the stain out of the suit coat and make the pants white again, but I’m afraid we can’t do anything about the shrunken blouse.”

“That was your mistake, not ours.” Tom said in a serious tone.

“You’re right,” the attendant replied. “We’ll reimburse you for the cost of the blouse.”

“Thank you,” said Tom. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

... In the end, everything turned out okay.