The Jerry Maguire of Dry Cleaning

Yesterday, I took my relationship with dry cleaning proprietors to a new global and complex level. Not only am I a consumer (read this as "charitable benefactor for the college education of dry cleaning owners' progeny") but now I have become an arbitrator and/or mediator between shop owner and the common (wo)man. One colleague here at work was caught in a bit of a pickle a couple of days ago that ended with a screaming match with the owner and the threat that she would not get her clothes back. The issue was that the friend brought in pants where she had pen marks and some food stains that she wanted the cleaners to help remove but when she came to pick it up the next day, she found that the stains were still there and that some of it had bled into a larger area. Unfortunately, this friend was someone who had been visiting from our Japanese office on a bit of an exchange program for 3 months and surprisingly, the owner of the dry cleaners was a Korean immigrant (yes, Korean-owned dry cleaners, a rarity in America). Needless to say, English as a second language contributed to this communication disaster. So what probably was intended to be, "Miss, I am sorry to trouble you, the stains are still present on this article of clothing and I wonder what you think can be done about this," got lost in translation and came out as, "Expletive, expletive, your mama!" Thus, I was called upon to talk to my peoples and reconcile this clothing fiasco using my subpar native tongue skills. One of my colleagues told me to come with guns 'ablazin' and was trying to razz me up and asking me if I was ready to spew Korean profanities but I knew better: my mom has told me that honey attracts bees more than vinegar does. So I went into the war zone yesterday prepared to face the devil incarnate but I saw a 4'11" Korean woman who smiled when I came in. I conversed with the shop owner about the situation, translated the events from my colleague's side and the upshot was that we got all her clothes back, and after going through the different options, we settled on not paying for the pants still with stains and it was fine. Maybe it was my proper Korean greeting initially, my height perhaps,or maybe my extremely pink shirt (it's quite persuasive) or in my diluted mind, maybe it was that my neighborhood dry cleaners put out a global message to all dry cleaning networks about how much of a 'cash cow' and friend to the 'family' I am, but we all hugged it out with apologies exchanged on both sides. The funny thing is that before I left, the shop owner told me to talk to my colleague about being careful with stains and told me to take a look at her pants even now. As we walked away, I looked closely and saw that she had all these pen mark nicks all over her pants and some marinara splooshes on her blouse. Before she leaves back for the Japan office, I might need to buy her garbage bags or potato sacks to put on over her clothes to protect herself from her own hand. Help me, help you, help yourself!