The Eighth Page

Phillipian Investigative: Did E&R Lose My Leggings, Or Am I Just Careless?

At 7:30 a.m. on October 20, 2020, I put my most prized possession, a pair of Wunder Under High-Rise Tight 28″ Luxtreme Lululemon leggings in the shade Incognito Camo Jacquard Bubblegum Pink, or Sasha for short, in an E&R bag. I zipped up the bag, walked it downstairs, and set it down where it would eventually be taken to the E&R facility. The journey that would ensue was one nobody could have ever predicted.

After dropping off the bag, I did not see my precious leggings for two weeks. I could not go to the gym to work out, meaning I additionally missed the opportunity to stare at Jacob’s biceps for two weeks. It was simply unacceptable. I asked every person in my dorm if they had seen precious Sasha, yet no one had laid eyes on her. I looked through everyone’s rooms because I don’t trust a single one of those snakes (they’re still my besties though <3), but I couldn’t find my pair. After many dead ends, I decided to wake up my house counselor, Ms. Ligretoro, to figure out if she had stolen my booty-lifting leggings for herself. I was confused, desperate, and disheveled. I slept a total of three hours a night as nightmares of Demogorgons wearing Sasha filled my brain. 

Today as I wearily put my laundry into the bag, I overheard two girls talking. One said she lost her family heirloom Gucci belt to E&R as the other recounted when her Dior thong went missing. Was E&R stealing our clothes?! After quickly Poll PA’ing the whole school through my Instagram story, it looked as if 97 percent of the school had lost clothing to the popular laundry system; the other three percent were people who washed their clothes in the shower or didn’t wash them at all. This offset my investigation into E&R. I called them day and night but kept getting weak excuses, such as “we clean hundreds of students’ clothes a day, I have no idea where they could be,” and “I can’t check at the moment, I am at my nephew’s Bris.”

I was livid. I worked hard typing the numbers on my dad’s credit card into the Lululemon website to buy those leggings. In a moment of despair, I decided to look at the bag again. In that instant, I had a breakthrough: there’s a front pocket. I reached my hand into the pocket and could tell right away that my precious Sasha had been hidden in there all along. I put on my leggings, checked myself out in the mirror, and emailed EthicsPoint to withdraw my formal complaint.