Professionals.

If you’ve ever stopped by PJP, you’ve probably been underwhelmed by our low quality white aprons. NO WORRIES, US TOO. In the very early days of planning for PJP V. 2.0, Jeanne insisted that we hire a linen service to stop by weekly and bring us fresh towels and aprons…and really, who can argue with that logic? And so for almost 60 months, we’ve paid $49.72 a week for the pleasure of tossing our dirty aprons in a plastic bag at the end of the day for someone else to worry about.

(As an aside, I can quickly distract myself with how the commercial laundry service scenario works so I basically grilled our delivery driver with the interrogation skills of a FBI agent. All he could tell me was that all the dirty laundry he picks up from restaurants and businesses all over mid-Missouri eventually ends up at a central laundry location in St. Louis. And then his truck is restocked locally with fresh items and he delivers them back to us. This made me think two things - 1) this sounds astoundingly like the plot line of Breaking Bad, and also 2) I should write WPD in marker on the hem of one of our aprons to see how long it takes to come back to us. And I guess 3) I’m really good at overthinking.)

So yay for freshly laundered items that aren’t freshly laundered by us. And by us, I mean Jeanne. We do own a fair amount of our own dish towels and Jeanne regularly takes them home and provides them with the special Jeanne bleaching laundry experience. I’ll let her speak about that some day, because I’m no expert.

But on the con side…our white aprons look a little institutional for our taste. And some are threadbare and some have pockets and some don’t have pockets and whatever the case, they look nothing like anything else at PJP. And if we purchase our own aprons, commercial laundry services won’t accept them for the wash…presumably because you would never get them back from that central laundry location in St. Louis that I picture to be overly humid and exceptionally noisy. But what do I know? It could be lovely. It’s just that I’ve watched Breaking Bad.

So after a fair amount of research, we’ve figured out that places with super nice aprons purchase two per employee and then the employee is responsible for washing their aprons and bringing them to work with them for each shift. HUH. Who knew? (Well, a lot of people I think…but I didn’t.)

This is interesting because each employee laundered apron will have to meet Jeanne’s review. Also, everyone will need to remember their aprons and we will have to have some sort of deterrent from forgetting it or showing up with a not exceedingly clean and pressed apron. I’ve asked Sydney to find me the perfect black PJP apron and then I’m going to buy 30 of them (two for each of us, plus spares for the inevitable forgetting) and then I’m going to get the aprons monogrammed with PJP.

And then to top it off, we are going to purchase name tags for everyone on Team PJP because we are always asked about Team PJP identities when new blog readers come to the shop. I’ve heard that some retail establishments purchase button makers and then someone makes a new button each time someone is hired, but that sounds like the seventh circle of hell to me because I have no button making skills. I’m making a note now to add “research super easy and cute name tag solutions that don’t involve crafting” to Sydney’s list for tomorrow.

Let’s hope in the next four to six weeks, we are looking like a well dressed team. I doubt St. Louis even misses us…