I remember taking rags every week from the MIT truck to the tiny laundromat underneath Cosi in Kendall Square. The proprietor was Persian so I think he liked me best out of all the employees on the truck. Back then we had a tiny bag of rags to give each week.

Fast forward 7 years and we now go through enough rags to justify a laundry service. We send all the rags out from the HUB every Monday and they return Friday. We send the rest out Friday, and they return Monday. But for some reason, the HUB was always out of rags to send to locations during the days in between Monday and Friday. Locations were resorting to doing their own rag laundry.

Alden (our new kitchen manager) wanted to know why we were constantly out of rags as a company. It turns out that some locations were requesting 40 or 50 at a time, every few weeks, while others were requesting 3 at a time every single resupply. The greedy locations were sucking all the rags from the kitchen, leaving none for the other locations. So we bought 1800 rags, and initiated a new system. Now instead of “asking” for rags, the locations will automatically receive 15 rags with each resupply. This should result in a steady stream of rags throughout the company at all time, and a cleaner Clover.