Ein man disappears. And his customers don’t care. “Dear owner of the laundry”, is written on one of the many slips of paper stuck to the outside of the closed door of the “Sauberland” dry cleaning in Frankfurt, “because I’ve been waiting for the laundry to open for over two months, but it’s never happened, I now turn to you with this sign. I would like you to return my clothes (5 pairs of trousers) that I gave you on June 1st as soon as possible. Attached is a copy of my receipt. If I don’t have my clothes back by Thursday, August 4th, I will be forced to take legal action and seek compensation.”
What should be more surprising: the disappearance of a man who seems to have been sucked off the face of the earth for two months? Or about the fact that a customer, who has suddenly lost trust in the basic resource, wants to take legal action for five pairs of trousers without even thinking a word about the unexplained fate of the “Sauberland” boss? This other customer note on the door shows that it’s not always just about one thing, the clothes: “What happened? Please get in touch!” Or the one next to it: “Hello, I hope you’re doing well and you’ll be able to open your cleaning again soon. We still have shirts with you.”
Pent-up crisis of meaning?
If you look through the window into the shop, the man seems to have just stepped outside the door: there is still a pile of uncleaned laundry on the floor; neatly ironed trousers and shirts on the shelves; a sign offering spray vacuums for rent; lots of boxes of dye salt lined up in rows. Was it these years of cleanliness that made the man, himself a cause of stains and emissions, freak out two months ago?
One can only speculate: did a long-standing crisis of meaning prompt him, the clean-cut man who had been in hiding, to suddenly quit, to start a new life in secret and to get rid of all the relationships in which he was previously stuck? Without first thinking about a retraumatizing handling of the business? Did he just get serious about this dream, often depicted in literature, of leaving everything behind? Or did he fall victim to an attack? Did he lay hands on himself? Does he have no relatives and is therefore no longer missing?
A call to the responsible police station clarifies that the man “didn’t want to” go to his shop from one day to the next, and in about two weeks a notice will be posted at the dry cleaners’ where you can pick up your laundry. This put a police stop to all further speculation. It’s about the clothes.