I had a dream that I started leaving laundry at work. Not intentionlly. I just never thought about it. I took my socks off and forgot them wherever I threw them.

I did this so much that my boss started doing the laundry for me. Not that I noticed this either. I would just think “Hey, I want some socks,” and I’d find them in a drawer, clean and folded. For all I knew, I’d left them there like that.

This had gone on for some time.

Meanwhile, I had a friend who worked for a PR firm. She was doing me a favor: She was marshalling the resources of her firm to dig throught the trash of famous women (something they were probably going to do anyway), and use the information to come up with a plan for me to meet one, impress her, and get her to marry me. I wanted a celebrity wife.

One day, I went to work and changed my socks. My boss sa this and got mad. “You know,” she said. “I’ve been doing your laundry now for some time now. It’s not easy, you know. But I had no choice, the way you just leave it lying around like that!”

“What?” I said. It was then that I noticed that the socks were folded together in pairs in a way I certainly never would have done. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll start putting them in a hamper from now on, and doing it myself. Thanks, though.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Well, the thing is, here’s the bill for the last 6 months.

“What?!” I was being charged the laundromat fees and a pretty steep labor fee by her, for a service I had no idea was being performed, and certainly had not commissioned.

Later that day, my PR-firm friend came to talk to me. She showed me her latest findings. As usual, I thanked her, but said I was too nervous to use this information.

At this point, she became cross. “You know,” she said, “this stuff isn’t easy to do. It’s bad enough that you’re 6 months behind on your bills with us, but the worst part is how dismissive you are.”

“…bills?” I said. Like I’m saying, I had thought it was a favor to a friend.

So there I was with some pretty steep bills for stuff I’d never asked for. I started to talk about my problems. And people started to listen.

It seems that my case had touched a nerve, and catalyzed the small-but-growing “customer service” movement. This was a coalition between two groups. The first group felt that “customer service” was an inhuman way for people to treat each other. The other group felt that there was too much bad customer service and not enough good.

The common ground was that both groups were sick of being treated in an inhuman way. They started getting media. National media. And there I was on the cameras, explaining what had happened to me.

In other words, I was a celebrity.

One day, the woman from the PR firm came to talk to me. She had a proposal. I was a celebrity now. So was she, by association. It was good for her firm, she said. No press is bad press, she said.

But of course, good press is better than bad press. You know what would be good press? If the company suddenly came up with a really shocking and unexpected settlement for me.

Did I still want a celebrity wife? She asked.

Because she now had a lot of pull with a potential one, if you catch my drift.

And thus, everybody’s problems were solved.

The end.