Real-Life Communication
It's Sunday morning -- your day off from the drycleaning business.
You're relaxing with a cup of coffee and reading the editorials in the newspaper.
Suddenly, you come across a letter to the editor that upsets you.
A
local citizen has written a letter complaining about the lack of workmanship
in today's society. The whole letter is really negative, but here's the paragraph
that really makes you mad.
"People don't take pride in their work.
Twenty years ago, I used to be able to send all my favorite suits to the drycleaners
without a worry. These days I'm afraid to, because when you bring a drycleaner
perfectly good clothes, clothes you have taken good care of, the drycleaner
ruins most of them."
You're angry about this writer's unfounded accusations.
You deal with thousands of garments a week and only on the rarest of occasions
does one of them ever get damaged.
You decide to write a short letter
responding to the writer's accusations one at a time. In order to back up
your arguments, you can refer to statistics and information provided by the
International Fabricare Institute's damage assessment report:
"Problems
resulting from manufacturing were the cause of 41 percent of damaged garments
and household textiles analyzed at the International Fabricare Institute last
year.
"Solvent-soluble dyes, prints and sizings were the leading category,
accounting for 22 percent of the troubles assigned to manufacturer responsibility,
IFI said. IFI also noted a dramatic increase in the number of garments with
shrinkage and distortion problems.
"Damage to the dye or design that
caused color loss were two of the biggest problems caused by drycleaners,
IFI said. Of the 25,000 damaged garments analyzed at the IFI lab last year,
16 percent were judged to be the responsibility of the drycleaner.
"Another
one-third of the garments suffered damage from handling by consumers, IFI
said. Stains were the main problem with consumers often causing problems because
they do not understand procedures for stain removal.
"IFI analysts
were unable to assign responsibility for garment damage in some cases, either
because of lack of information about the damage or because samples of the
fabric needed for comparison were unavailable."
(Reprinted with the
permission of: Hal Horning)
Read the information in the
report and write a brief letter to respond to the writer's accusations.