For many people, one of the side effects of navigating temporarily shuttered businesses and social distancing regulations is a very basic one: where do I do my laundry? Some independently-run laundromats in cities have closed down due to the crisis and concerns over infection. Many people without washers and dryers in their homes have opted to hand-wash their clothing — an understandable alternative, but also a time-consuming one.
At Vice, Alex Norcia has the story of one startup that offered a welcome alternative to all of this — and then infuriated many customers when things went very wrong. Making matters worse, a number of its clients were first responders dealing with matters far more critical than having to sort out where exactly their underwear had ended up. Sadly, lost underwear does play a significant part in this narrative.
As Norcia explains, the startup in question is called Cleanly, and they advertised a contact-free laundry pickup and dropoff service. The appeal of such a service isn’t hard to understand. The company also targeted some of its advertising to doctors and nurses — people for whom time is already at a premium right now.
Things went very wrong from there. Vice‘s investigation included a dozen customers and some former employees of the service; what they turned up was especially worrying:
The customers each told near-identical tales, backed up by the workers: Attracted by the company’s desire to assist frontline health care workers during a crisis, well-meaning customers are signing up for the service, only to endure weeks of stress while searching the city for lost laundry.
The narrative is not unique to Cleanly: many companies have struggled with a massive increase in demand due to the dramatic and rapid increase in people working from home and businesses temporarily closing. But a late grocery delivery is one thing; having a large number of your clothes go missing is something else entirely — particularly if you’re working long hours at a hospital in the middle of a pandemic.
Norcia’s article details a perfect storm of things going wrong at precisely the wrong time — an unnerving cautionary tale for the present moment.
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