PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF – PART XXII

I took the credit and collections position at Manes Textiles, despite my better judgment. That’s because my better judgment wouldn’t come along for another few years.  We learn from our mistakes and I suppose that I didn’t learn enough from my unhappy experience as a buyer trainee at Bloomingdales.

When we are young, we tend to believe that we’ll enjoy and do well at whichever job the pays the most money.  Of course, this is far from the truth.  As we grow older and graduate from the “College of Hard Knocks,” we come to embrace the notion that “if we are doing what we love, we’ll never work another day in our lives.”

No job is perfect and they all come with baggage, downsides and a seemingly unfair share of bad days. If the work is interesting and it draws from our greater strengths, we are much more accepting of those inevitable times when things do not go as well as we had hoped for.  On the other hand, when we do not like what we are doing and do not like the environment we are working in, it becomes
increasing difficult to get up and go to work each morning.  On a job we dislike, we tend to watch the clock all day, waiting for the end to come.  Our discontent often goes on display in the presence of customers and co-workers – they can sense it.  It is not a good situation to be in and such a waste of quality living.

A pay check comes around once a week or twice per month.  But, no matter how much you are being paid, the forty or more hours of abject misery is just not worth the unhappiness that one may be putting his family and himself through.

My former job at NUS was paying me $10,000 per year and I was very happy on the job.  I essentially jumped ship for an increase of just $2500 more and landed in a frying pan of angry mob-connected clients (the famed 1407 Broadway); a collections department full of nasty and bitter old ladies; and a management that provided little training or support for young employees like me (other than me, there was no one at Manes under forty).

I did my job satisfactorily at the company for nearly thirteen months.  There were no major complaints from my bosses about my work, considering that my hiring was a rather sneaky move on their part.  I was actually hired to learn from and eventually replace my supervisor, who certain managers disliked. The problem was that the manager, who hired me was let go soon after I started and my supervisor soon got wind about why I was brought to the company. She made my life miserable for a few months before she ended up on disability due to an injury she sustained that required surgery.  In her absence, I was free to learn the job on my own, devoid of her ongoing attempts to withhold training and key information from me in order to safeguard her own position.

My thirteenth month came and went without management reviewing my progress; so I forced the issue and asked for a meeting with the controller. He was the big boss over the credit and adjustments department.  Throughout my
employment Cy B. was a nice enough man.  He was always very pleasant to me and to the other employees.  I must have caught him on a bad day –though -
and he wasn’t too pleased when I mentioned that my review was late and asked
him when I might expect to receive a salary increase.  After all, I was now doing my boss’ full job at a trainee’s pay level.

In the meeting, Cy asked me what I was expecting in a pay increase.  Since I was hired at $12,500, I thought that $15,000 was reasonable for someone currently replacing his boss and functioning at a higher capacity.  His response to me was that the position wasn’t worth $15,000 and that my role in that job was still only worth $12,500 to the company.  There was to be no raise coming to me,
anytime soon.

Disappointed and in disagreement with the controller’s view on the value of the position, I attempted to convince him that “I needed” to earn $15,000 per year.  That was an obvious rookie mistake, because – of course – his answer was to be that the company didn’t pay someone what they “needed” to earn.  The company paid people according to the value of the position and the amount of past related experience the applicant or incumbent brought to the job.  Of course, I had no previous job experience in credit and adjustments prior to joining the company.

Though I was respectful throughout my discussion with Cy, he made up his mind to let me go and “free me from my unhappiness” over my present earnings.  I was shocked, but he left me no opportunity for rebuttal. I was told to collect my belongings and leave Manes Textiles at the end of that day.  His final words to me were that his policy was not to allow employees - unhappy with their jobs and pay - to remain in a department in which these same employees had the authority to credit and adjust customer billing. Did he think I would punish the company by giving away the store to his complaining clients?  No way would I have done that, but he may have had a bad experience in the past, which made it that much harder for my reconciliation pleas to overcome the dogma of a man set in his ways.

My termination took place in June of 1981. There was a recession raging on throughout the country and jobs were very hard to come by, especially for people with my low level of experience.  Adding insult to injury, my health benefits were
immediately cancelled leaving Betsy and me without a safety net for illness – or for pregnancy.

Yes, Betsy was already 5 months pregnant with our first child, Steven.  She was nearing the time she would stop working. Traveling to New York City throughout the hot summer was just not an option.  Earlier, Betsy had changed jobs and left the insurance company she had been working for since college graduation. Her next job was at a custom (accent) rug show room, where she worked alongside of Harold Koch, the brother of the New York City Mayor Ed Koch.  My parents also knew Harold.  He once had his own wholesale floor covering business and they dealt with both Harold and his partner, Eddy Katz.  Betsy really enjoyed that job, which often brought celebrities like Angela Lansbury into the showroom to shop for expensive, on-of-a-kind, hand-made rugs.

Betsy and I had also recently moved from our Stonehurst apartment into our present home in Freehold Borough (NJ). With a baby on the way, we needed more room for our child and we had found a small starter home that would cost us about the same as we were paying in apartment rent.  In just a year and a half our apartment rent jumped from $235 per month to $525 – no longer a bargain even in those days.  For $55,000, it made good sense to buy the
little house on Barkalow Avenue, in the town.  It was owned by a baker and his wife - a nurse, - who had a few kids. They were outgrowing the home and were moving to a larger house near our old apartment.

Betsy and I were fortunate to have had a small inheritance from Betsy’s grandfather to make a small down payment on our new home. We put the remaining dollars in the bank for a rainy day.  There wasn’t very much left for a flood, though. And, a flood (of expenses) is what we got.

We were young, inexperienced, and scared to death about all that was coming our way.  Betsy couldn’t work any longer with a child on the way. I had very little marketable experience in a tough job market. I had zero contacts to call on for networking. I knew no one in a position to hire or refer me for a job. Our parents were not in a position to be very supportive, either. And, we were to owe a significant amount of money for the upcoming delivery of the baby.  Instead of enjoying the pregnancy and all of the excitement we should have been able to enjoy, there was only fear and frustration.  What to do? Where to turn?

I tried selling whatever I could find at Englishtown Flea Market.  I didn’t have a regular item, yet.  The effort didn’t yield much, but it was what it was. We also used up the rest of Betsy’s inheritance on bills.  I suppose we were lucky to have it.

It was an awful experience that damaged me for years. To this day, when I am home on a weekday, I will not put any daytime television programs on the tube.  It reminds me of the time when I needed a job so bad and was left along with the retired, disabled and unemployed to suffer alone in the presence of Regis Philbin, “As the World Turns” and “The Match Game.”

Out of desperation, I eventually took a straight commission job at Management Recruiters (MR) in New Brunswick (NJ) and returned to my days of staffing.  It wasn’t long before the employees at MR all jumped ship together and formed a new agency called LRB Associates in Milltown, NJ.  I was invited along with them and accepted their invitation.  Also, a straight commission job, I toughed it
out at LRB and made a couple of nice job placements.  It took three months to get paid (hiring guarantees), but it was just good getting out of the house in a suit every day and having a few bucks on the way.

On October 15, 1981 Betsy gave birth to Steven Perry LeVine. He was a small and wrinkled baby boy with dark hair and Asian-shaped eyes.  Somehow, we made it through the pregnancy and had something wonderful to show for it.

Nothing prepares us to care for a newborn child. It just comes naturally.  You figure it out.  If there is something you don’t know, you ask.  The baby looks so delicate, but it is not as frail as it looks.  It’s a wonderful experience shared by a new mother and a father, who love forms a cradle of love for a fortunate child that will now come first, ahead of the needs of mom and dad.

Unemployment was long and difficult, but like everything else it had a beginning and an end. Things improved over time and mother, father and baby adjusted to a life of middle of the night feedings, bottle sterilizations, diaper changes and trips to the store for diapers and baby formula.  To be continued….