The Robin Hood of For-Profit Education

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I. The Teacher

No one had ever called my father “mister” anything in a professional setting until he taught dry cleaning at a vocational high school in mid-aughts suburban New Jersey. ”Tommy!” to my mother and his more demanding customers then transformed into “Mr. G” with the speed of Clark Kent ripping his button-down open to reveal the Superman logo.

Off came the Costco T-shirts and jorts that stuck to Dad as he worked in the back of his dry cleaning business, starching white collars for many bridge-and-tunnel finance bros living the family life in the suburbs and the high life in the city. Mr. G’s new Costco polo shirts unbuttoned to reveal every goomba’s favorite coat of arms: a 14-karat gold figaro chain with a crucifix that glinted against chest hair that turned a little more gray with every passing year.

The school offered a wide range of vocational and technical programs, among them carpentry, culinary arts, automotive services, and hexating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). Dry cleaning was not popular with students, nor a priority for school administration. The higher-ups treated dry cleaning like low-skilled labor, albeit labor on which they nevertheless depended for school banquet tablecloths and their own personal items of clothing.

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