Business Careers

 
I had been attending LaSalle College (now LaSalle University) studying Physics and Electronics for the past seven years. I took two courses each semester by attending two classes four nights a week. I also spent every July and August taking accelerated courses that required attending one class four nights a week. During those summer courses, my wife and kids vacationed with her parents in Massena, NY.

All that work and now a future in electronic engineering seemed mighty dim with Nixon's wage freeze and his suspension of military contracts. One day browsing the Help Wanted Ads for an engineering position a management ad caught my attention. It was an unusual ad in the way it was written so I sent a resume with a cover letter that reflected the phraseology of the ad. When there was no reply, I regretted trying to be wise.

Then, about a month later, I got a call regarding my resume. The caller asked if I had written the cover letter myself. When I answered "yes," he asked if I could come to his office in King of Prussia right away for an interview. It was Sunday and I explained that I was painting my house. He insisted that I "come-as-you-are." That afternoon I was interviewed by Sy Hochman of S&S Associates. S&S sold and repaired industrial electronic test equipment and had offices in King of Prussia, PA and Bethesda, MD. He was looking for someone ambitious enough and imaginative enough to help him build and run a home electronics repair business. I got the job.

Mr. Hochman had become motivated to expand his industrial repair business to include home electronics when he couldn't find reliable service for the tape recorder and electronics he installed in his "mobile office," a big, red Lincoln. He had started the business and was authorized to repair Sony and Harmon Kardon home electronics under warranty. He was also repairing products for Radio Shack and Lafayette Radio and employed one part-time TV / Stereo repair technician. But Sy Hochman was an ambitious man with degrees in Electronic Engineering and Juris Doctorate. His goal was to be the biggest home electronics repair center in the Delaware Valley and provide warranty repair to consumers and retailers for every manufacturer.

After a brief introduction to his existing service business, I began by designing a repair ticket with copies for the customer and the manufacturer with a matching stub that attached to the repair. The ticket had to meet the information requirements of many different manufacturers. Next, I set up a replacement parts system using 4x6 index cards and we began contacting manufacturers like Craig, Panasonic and Sanyo, basically Admiral to Zenith, to become their authorized repair center.

Now we needed customers. I had the business aptitude and Sy taught me salesmanship. We began going door-to-door to local electronic retailers and department stores like John Wannamaker, E.J. Korvettes, and Gimbles to sell them on the plan that we could do all their repair work faster and cheaper than they could do it themselves. In less than two years I employed 12 people. I liked being the boss. I had my own office, a secretary, 9 repair tehnicians, a parts manager and a delivery man. I administered our manifests and the invoicing to manufacturers who either paid us for defective parts returned to them or exchanged them for new parts/

But Arlene hated my job and my boss. I must admit he was very rude the evening I invited him to dinner at our home in Franconia. He had asked where all of our crucifixes were since we were Christian and later said we should never serve meat and anything with milk in the same meal to a Jew. Today I would have replied that since he often ate shrimp at a restaurant, he could eat meat and a desert made from milk at my house. But the incident set my wife against Sy Hochman.

We serviced all types of home electronics including microwave ovens and VCR's. We were the warranty repair center for over 40 manufacturers of home electronic products, foreign and domestic. Our customers included consumers, retailers and department stores. Some department stores like Gimbles, Korvettes, Lit Brothers, and Wannamakers delivered repairs to us by the truck load. We added a second floor to the warehouse area so there would be enough room for all the merchandise we took in for repair. Every department store had its own method of manifesting its merchandise out for repair. Gimbles invoiced us full retail for every item they sent and credited our account when the item was returned. To speed up the process of separating and identifying merchandise, I began a "color coding" system with the tags attached to the merchandise.

Then, around 1970, RCA with headquarters in Cherry Hill, NJ, started a company similar to ours. They called their company Service America and provided "in-home" repair services. RCA previously only repaired RCA merchandise but Service America was set up to repair "all brands" of home electronics. Although Service America provided in-home service and we did not, Service America did not survive. Unfortunately, neither did Service in Electronics.

By August 1971 President Nixon initiated wage and price freezes, canceled government contracts and placed surcharges on imports. While he was praised politically, he destroyed the value of the dollar and the nation's economy. Engineers from companies like GE were begging me to hire them to fix TVs and stereos. Sy Hochman closed the Bethesda, MD office and his partners moved into our King of Prussia office. They took my office and fired me.

I took a job at Seifert X-Ray located right in the same little industrial park but I saw very little activity around S&S. Within the year, though, I had taken a job with the JCPenney Company and was working in Audubon, NJ. A few years later I learned that Seymour Hochman had been murdered in a robbery in North Jersey and that the entire business had been dissolved. In what order this happened I never found out but I did know that his partners wanted no part of his service business.

 
In 1971 I was interviewed for a position as Product Service Manager for JCPenney Company. I will never forget that interview. I met with the Regional Product Service Manager in the Audubon, NJ Service Center. After the application and discussing my background, education and experience, I was offered to take a "test." JCPenney call it The In-Basket.

The In-basket created this scenario. "I was the new manager of a product service center and my In-basket was full." I had one hour to prioritize and make a decision about every item in that In-basket which was a cornucopia of problems from office jealousy and personal rivalries to customer complaints including a letter from a neighbor of "Mrs. Flowers." She witnessed a JCPenney truck often parked all afternoon at the widow's home. I would later learn that some of these in-basket "problems" came from real situations. I don't know about Mrs. Flowers! The only criticism that I got from my decisions on the In-basket was that I had not made returning a phone call from the Regional Service Manager the top priority. I promised not to do that again and was hired by JCPenney to the position of Product Service Manager.



The company dedicated its first full-line shopping-center department store in 1961. This store was located at Black Horse Pike Center in Audubon, New Jersey. The second full-line shopping center store was dedicated, at King of Prussia Plaza in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania in late 1962. Those stores expanded the lines of merchandise and services that an average J. C. Penney carried to include appliances, sporting goods, tools, garden\lawn merchandise, restaurants, beauty salons, portrait studios, auto parts, and auto centers.

At that time JCPenney sold home electronics, major appliances, lawnmowers, garden tractors and bicycles. The Product Service Centers were free-standing operations that provided repair and maintenance for these products. Product service also sold service contracts called Assured Performance Plans. The manager was responsible for the entire operation from assets to staffing to profits to keeping the JCPenney customer happy.

My experience at Service in Electronics served me well. From manifests to parts inventory records, it was all the same as what I had created at SIE. I started as an assistant manager at the Audubon, NJ service center while learning scheduling and routing for in-home service and maintaining a fleet of service vans stocked with repair parts. Within about six weeks, though, JCPenney offered me an opportunity to open my own product service center in Dayton, Ohio. The service center would be serving a large store in the Centerville Mall, a decades-old downtown store in Xenia, Ohio and an outlet store in Cincinnati.

I worked at the Columbus, OH Service and Parts Distribution Center while the company searched for a suitable building for the new service center. What they found was near the mall but hardly ideal. The building was located in a small industrial park in Centerville, but it was just a huge empty warehouse with three offices in the front. There were two restrooms located in the warehouse area and a gas heater that was mounted in the ceiling near the back wall. It provided heat for the entire warehouse area so having enclosed offices in that area was out of the question.

Luckily, my family was still at home in Pennsylvania because it would take many long days of work to hire my staff, buy desks, file cabinets, work benches, tools and trucks. In addition, the "warehouse" had to be partitioned off to make three separate work stations, a parts department and one more office. In addition to the heater problem, there was no money in the budget for construction.

Assigning the offices was easy. The Call Center would take the large front office at the entrance. Contract Sales would take another front office, and the Bookkeeper could take the small office located between the two larger front offices, although it had no window. The Call Center would get two desks and three file cabinets. The Contract Sales office would need four small desks and the bookkeeper would have a desk, a file cabinet and a small safe.

The plan I came up for the warehouse area can be considered nothing short of genius. First, I created three workshops by placing work benches along one wall, two benches end-to-end for electronic repairs, two for appliance repairs and two for gas engine repairs. Between every two benches I positioned two sections of 24" deep steel shelving perpendicular to the wall. The shelving separated the three work stations and was used for storage and as holding bins for the repairs. In order to create "walls" between the shops I bolted 4'x 8' panels of particle board to the backs of the shelves. The weight of the steel shelving and the particle board made solid walls and still allowed the overhead heater to heat the entire warehouse. Gas engines repairs were at the back of the building near the overhead door for easy access to working outside.

Now I needed a parts department and an office for myself. I located the parts department on the opposite the repair shops and near the side door of the building to allow convenient access for carry-in repairs. Again, I used steel shelving and particle board to create the walls. Here I used 12" deep shelving with two more rows of shelves inside the parts department. My office was located between the parts department and the main front office. The "shelves" in my office served as bookcases.

After the building layout was complete there was staff to hire and train, independent service contractors, who were servicing JCP products, had to be notified that they would no longer be needed and the stores had to be taught the new Product Service procedures. I hired three electronic techs, three appliance techs and one gas engine tech. I hired two call takers, hired and trained the bookkeeper and hired two contract sales people. Within a month the JCPenney Dayton Product Service Center was open for business.

One of my early challenges was dispatching technicians. Calls had to be scheduled so that a technician was not driving from one side of town to the other on any given day. In Audubon they used a large map attached to a magnetic board. Service areas were outlined on the map and colored magnets represented service calls for electronics, appliances and gas engine items.

I had no space for such a monstrosity so I made six letter-size copies of the Area Code map that was in the telephone book. I labeled the copies Monday through Saturday and stapled them, three across and two down, to a cork board. Instead of magnets, I bought red, blue and green "push pins." Each time a service call was scheduled an appropriate colored "pin" was stuck in the customer's area code on the map for the day of service. The idea was to keep all the red pins together, the blue pins together and the green pins together for each day of the week. I had to replace the maps occasionally but the idea worked great. I would later program a computer to dispatch service calls using the same logic.

My unique little service center soon became a regional award-winning center. I eventually added two more contract sales people and another parts department worker. My biggest rival was the Pittsburgh Service Center. My boss wouldn't accept the excuse that Pittsburgh had three large metropolitan stores and I had just one. The 3-story, main-street store in Xenia sold mostly clothes not merchandise. The outlet store in Cincinnati did not sell service contracts or offer in-home service.

The P&L statements for the JCPenney stores and product service centers was generated at headquarters in New York so they were not available until 10 days after the end-of-month business. Therefore, managers were required to give a "flash report" of their month's P&L. I kept daily records of four important figures in my Day-Timer pocket calendar so my "flash" was always closer than any other product service managers in our region. I was so good at Operations that when JCP decided to put computers in Product Service I was selected to be the manager of the very first one.

 
Camden was a well-established service center serving metropolitan Philadelphia, its suburbs and South Jersey but it was not without its problems. It was not a profit-making center, morale was low, there was a rivalry among technicians for a supervisor position, productivity was poor and contract sales were far from desirable. And now, Camden was scheduled to be the first computerized product service center. Its size and its easy commute to JCPenney headquarters in New York City made it a good test site.

When I was assigned to Camden, my work was cut out for me. First, I had to settle a technicians' rivalry. One of the TV technicians expected he should be made a supervisor because of his excellent service and longevity. However, he spoke with a heavy accent and lacked some common communication skills. A popular and personable appliance technician was a much better choice for this position. I gave them both a promotion but the appliance tech became the technician supervisor. My solution worked so well that it became a case study at the annual JCPenney manager's training seminar. Maybe it even made the In-Basket.

Careful dispatching was important to fixing the morale and productivity problems. Camden's dispatch system was a map on a large magnetic board with colored magnets like the one in Audubon, NJ where I trained. However, the only "division" on this map was the Delaware River separating Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Traffic between Philadelphia and New Jersey was heavy, especially on Fridays with traffic heading to the Jersey shore. When technicians have had a long day, the last thing they need is to be stuck in a traffic jam on their way home. I used a marker to divide the map into 4 zones, three in Pennsylvania and one for New Jersey. The idea was to keep each color of the magnets close together in smaller zones. It took some practice among the schedulers but the divisions worked and productivity began to improve.

I was excited about having the opportunity to manage the first computerized product service center. The company had chosen to use Motorola computers because of the backlog of orders for IBM computers. The purpose of putting computers in Product Service was to boost service contract sales on appliances, home electronics and gas engine products. However, I quickly learned that the initial software had nothing to do with service contracts. It was simply time-consuming data entry and duplicate work when a sale included an Assured Performance Plan.

Before the computer, a copy of every customer's sales receipt for hardline merchandise, referred to as "sales slips," were sent to Product Service. A service contract was typed if one had been sold and then the sales slips were filed away for reference when a customer needed service. After the computer was installed, all the information on the sales slip had to be entered into the computer and contracts still had to be typed before the sales slip could be filed away. Sales slips began to pile up on the dispatchers' desks and then they couldn't be found when a customer called for service on new merchandise. Everyone was frustrated and everyone "hated the computer."

I had to fix this problem and hiring data entry clerks was not going to be my answer. During the initial computer setup and data entry, I watched the programmers make changes and fix "bugs" in the program. I had even made some minor changes myself following their directions over the telephone. A lot of time was spent typing in cities like Conshohocken and King of Prussia in Pennsylvania (PA) or Pennsauken and Cherry Hill in New Jersey (NJ). I had the idea to use zip codes to eliminate typing out the city and state and approached the Motorola programmers with my idea. They explanated it was possible but only by creating a "zip code file" with a record for every zip code. They were not about to make such a change. But I was.


Motorola's explanaation of how the zip code file would work seemed simple; one record for each zip code with the city and state in it and change the computer program to use the zip code file. Piece-of-cake! So one night while I was running the back-up tapes I decided to try my idea.

Using the zip code to fill in the city and state
Zip codes were published in the telephone book so I used the book to create a zip code file with. I created one record for every zip code in my service area and each record had the city and state for that zip code in it. Next came the challenge of changing the program in the computer to use the file. Following the procedure they had laid out, I began making changes one at a time; "opening" the file, skipping over the city and state, fetching the zip code record, "reading" the city and state from the record and finally "posting" the city and dstate to the customer's record. IT ALL WORKED.

The next morning I announced to my two typists that they no longer had to type in the city and the state.

Using the model number to generate the product information
With the zip code success I had another idea. I had learned that computers can use "Julian dates." January 15 is Julian date 15 and December 31 is Julian date 365 (366 in a leap year). With that in mind I decided I could create a "model number" file and use the model number to eliminate the entire process of typing in a product description, looking up and calculating the warranty expiration date and typing in thr date. The model number file would contain a record for every model appliance, electronic and gas engine product that JCPenney sold. Each record would have a description of the product and a number, 30, 60, 90 or 365 that represented the number of days that that model was under warranty.

It took many nights but I created the model number file and modified the computer progran. When the typist entered the model number the modified program found the record for that model and posted the description to the customer record. Posting the warranty expiration date was tricky but quite ingenious on my part. I converted the sales date to a Julian date and added the number of days from the record to that Julian date. Then I converted that Julian date back into a calendar date and posted that date as the warranty expiration date to the customer record. If the total of the new Julian date exceeded 365, I subtracted 365 from the number and added 1 to the year. In a leap year I subtracted 366. It worked.

With no prior programming experience, I had eliminated typing in the city, the state, the product description and the warranty expiration date. These changes reduced data entry time so much that my two dispatcher/typists could now keep up with getting customer records into the computer with no delay. Sales slips were promptly filed away and never had to be retrieved again. The computer was now an instant source of information when a cutomer called for service. Moral jumped and everyone "loved the computer."

Printing Assured Performance Plans
Typing Assured Performance Plans after entering all the information into the computer was duplicate work and a program for the computer to print APPs wasn't scheduled to be installed for another year. So, when a truckload of APP forms was delivered to my office one day, I figured I was good enough to write the computer program to print the APPs. But up to this point I had only modified the existing computer program and this project would require writing an entire print program from scratch. However, this programming stuff was not just fun to do but it was also very rewarding. Throwing caution to the wind, I took up the challenge.

I decided I would use another file, a "contract" file, like my zip code file and model number file. The file would have a record with the "customer ID" for every customer that purchased a new contract or renewed an existing contract. The print program would use these records to get the customer and product information to print the contract. However, I had created the other two files myself but for this project the computer would have to create the file automatically. So, I started by modifying the computer progran to put a record with the customer ID in the contract file each time a new APP effective date was entered. It worked and soon I had a contract file. Next came the print program. Writing this program from scratch, it opened the contract file, read the customer's ID from the record, fetched the customer's record and printed the contract. I used a ruler and trial and error to get the name, address, product information and dates aligned on the APP forms.

The first day that we were ready to print contracts was exciting. We placed a stack of blank APP forms in front of the printer, loaded them into the printer, and started the program. The printer began spewing out printed service contracts faster than we could count them. My three dispatchers were jubilant that they no longer had to type APPs. But, they weren't alone. My Pitney-Bowes sales representative was also jubilant when he found out we were printing our service contracts. He had a machine that would take a stack of printed forms, remove the perforated edges, separate the forms, fold them, stuff them into envelopes, seal the envelopes and stamp them. I bought that machine. The entire procedure of typing and mailing APPs was 100% automated. The miracle wasn't that I succeeded. It is that I had the courage to start.

Scheduling service calls
Now I was so good at programming this computer that I had the confidence that I could write an entire new program that would schedule our service calls. I would design the system to keep the service calls close together by using the customer's zip code just the way I scheduled service calls using the customers' telephone area codes in Dayton. I wrote the program and it worked. When a call came in for service, the dispatcher would find the customer's record using their telephone number and select the product that needed service. My new program then gave the dispatcher a choice of three days for service. The customer could pick one of those days or the dispatcher could override the selections for an emergency service call or special needs. All of our service calls were now scheduled with the click of a key. Goodbye magnetic dispatch board!

However, without a dispatch board I also needed a program to print out a list of all the in-home service calls that were scheduled for the day. One list for electronics, one for appliances and one for gas engines. The dispatchers used the lists to assign about seven in-home service calls to each technician and typed their route sheets. Eventually, I converted the lists that we printed into printed route sheets, one for each technician. The dispatchers no longer had to assign the calls and type the route sheets. At this point almost all of our typing was eliminated. Goodbye IBM Selectrics.

Camden becomes a "district" service center
Camden's service production became one of the best in the nation. I hadn't informed anyone that I was programming the computer and, without questioning my success, my boss, the Regional Manager, had me take over the Wilmington Delaware Service Center. Through the telephone company, I arranged for service calls from Delaware to be directed to Camden and the service calls were dispatched from Camden. The technicians' route sheets were sent to Delaware for the next day by over-night courier.

Adding Wilmington stores meant more sales slips and more service contracts. However, with my computer upgrades, the two dispatchers were able to keep up with entering the additional sales slips and scheduling service calls in Delaware. My APP sales staff, on the other hand, had to grow. I created a "supervisor of sales" position and I made a good choice for supervisor. She was personable, well liked and one of my top sellers. She hired the best sales people and managed her staff so well that the Regional Service Manager assigned APP sales for the Ephrata, PA service area and for the Wayne, NJ service area to Camden.

I was now selling APPs for all of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania as far west as Harrisburg. My sales staff was growing fast so I had to completely remodel the building. The electronics repair department occupied a large room, with an office, in the front of the building. I moved the three electronics service techs into the original telephone sales office and moved telepnone sales into the large front room. I had the entire room carpeted, installed 30 telephone sales stations and gave my sales supervisor the office. My two dispatchers were crowded into an area where the computer was located so I moved them into the new room and divided the room between dispatch and sales with a long row of file cabinets, all of which contained "sales slips."

Over the course of a year I had programmed the computer to reduce data entry and to eliminate the tedious work of scheduling service calls, all of our typing and even mailing out service contracts. Annual APP sales had increased from $15,000 to over $1,000,000 a year. I hadn't heard from my boss at the Regional Office and no one qusetioned how I managed such a huge operation that was unlike any other product service center in the nation. Everyone was still pretty much computer illiterate so I'm sure Region just assumed my sucess was due to the original computer software but they were about to get the shock of their lives.

When JCPenney finally decided to write a program to print APPs, they hired an independent contractor from New York City who was a specialist in Motorola software. However, the program he was proposing was lightyears behind the program I had written. At this point I had to confess that we were already printing service contracts. The JCPenney programmers, the Motorla specialist and my boss, all sat dumbfounded in my office as I showed them samples of printed contracts complete with the name and address of the closest service facility, a feature the "specialist" claimed was not feasable to do.

After confessing that the computer sorted and printed our APPs, I demonstrated the data entry changes to city, state, and warranty expiration date, pointed out that the computer automatically schedule our service calls and that the big magnetic map was history, that the computer printed the technicians' daily route sheets and I showed them my Pitney-Bowes machine that ripped, folded, stuffed and stamped APPs into envelopes, ready for mailing.

My boss was probably embarrassed that he had no idea that I was programming their million-dollar computer and he was still quite upset with me as they all packed up and headed back to New York City with printouts of all of my programs. The only person I heard back from after that meeting was one of the programmers from our New York office who called to tell me that my programs could not be improved and they would all remain on the computer as written. She and I had become friends during the initial setup of the computer and she was excited about what I had accomplished. She congratulated me by sending me an engraved 18" steel pica ruler that is used to align the print on a form. Thank you, Senetta wherever you are today.

The idea of programming all started with my "zip code file." I expanded that file to include new zip codes as my service and sales areas increased. It served to automatically schedule our service calls in three states and it was the secret to printing the name and addresses of all the service locations on the service contracts printed by my program. The only program the New York specialist wrote after that, generated a list of expiring APPs that my telemarketers could use when calling customers to renew their contract(s). His program had to be run when no one was using the computer. So, it was started on Saturday after work and would run through Sunday. Unfortunately, it often crashed delaying the list for a week. Needless to say, I ditched his program and wrote my own. My version could be run overnight, any night and it never crashed.

My biggest disappointment came in November 1982 just before Thanksgiving. The manager of Wayne, NJ and I were called into the district office where the district store manager announced that JCPenney was eliminating hardline merchandise from their stores and would be closing all product service centers and all automotive service centers in April of 1983. We were to announce it to our employyes in January, help them find jobs and liquidate all the centers' assets by April. We were terminated in April with three months serverance pay in a layoff that affected 3,200 JCPenney employees.

This was much more traumatic than I imagined. Today I realize that I have very little recollection of the struggle I suffered over the next four years. As for work, nothing fit. Nothing worked and I had almost no income. Eventually I moved from Bromley Estates into a furnished condo. I do not remmber the name of it. its location or what happened to my pool table or the furniture from Bromley. It would finally turn out that I would turn to computer programming as my salvation. Had I known then what I know today, instead of searching RCA, GE, Sears, Montgomery Ward, and every local retailer for a management position I would have tried to sell my fabulous software. There was nothing like it in the entire service industry.

 
After JCPenney closed their product service centers the prosperous days of my management career came to a quick and unexpected end. Montgomery Ward had offered me a position in South Carolina bit I promised Bob we would not move anywhere so he could graduate with hid friends. I applied for service manager at a fuel oil company but the owner felt I had to know how to fix boilers in order to manage his service business. I applied for service manager at an office machine retailer but the owner said I was over-qualified. I applied for manager at an ITT Technical Institute but lost because I did not have any formal classroom teaching experience.

With no opportunity for me in management I took jobs in sales. All businesses need sales people and the sales people I knew were all successful. Barbara sold condominiums, Sherry sold houses, Dick Goodwin built and sold entire communities and Dick Schultz sold paper. I tried selling advertising, office supplies and computers but I was not successful. So my friends began urging me to go into Real Estate.

I took their advice and went to school at Fox & Lazo Realty training center. With my business experience the course was not difficult and I got my license on the first try. I was then given a job at Fox & Lazo's office on Tanner Street in downtown Haddonfield. Haddonfield is a wealthy area well known for its unique boutiques, inviting variety of eateries, its historic Victorian homes and the Tavistock Country Club. It was tough competing against the experienced and established agents but I was learning. From Jenney Raraha I learned that when a potential client questions the 6% commission, simply reply that it is negotionable and we'll start at 10%. She had so much personaality it was admirable.

Real Estate was a lot of work. We were in the office by eight each morning. Regular meetings were scheduled. There were days "on floor" to handle walk-in clients. Cold-calls had to be made in search of listings. The presentations for listings were often handled in the evening when both husband and wife were home. Open houses were scheduled on weekends. You were on call 7 days a week from morning to night with your clients who constatnly changed their minds on what they wanted. And, when you made a sale there was paperwork for mortgages, title clearances, home inspections, and scheduled repair work that all had to processed on a "time is of the essence" basis.

With so many friends in Real Estate I had no "center of influence." All of my clients came to me when I was on floor. One of my first clients was a divorcee whose ex-wife lived in Haddonfield with their daughter. He was interested in a condominium where he could spend weekends with his daughter. However, there was only one small development of condominiums in Haddonfield and he wasn't impressed. So, instead of the condo he decided to buy Haddonfield's only hotel (Today, I believe it is the Kings Highway Apartments). It was the only hotel in or near Haddonfield and I told him I didn't think it was for sale. He answered "Everything is for sale Charlie." As it turns out, he was wealthy enough to buy the hotel and drove to Haddonfield from New York on a snowy day with a a $10,000 cashiers check to get the negotiaions started. After setting up all the negotiations for an offer on the hotel, I lost out on the deal when, according to Fox & Lazo, I was creating a conflict with their Commercial Department. The hotel was eventually sold as a commercial property, about a year later, but not by me or to my client.

My first year in Real Estate I sold 2 houses and earned $8,000. This was a big drop from the $36,000 salary I had with JCPenney and the six-month severance pay from JCPenney was gone. To earn extra money I began doing wallpapering jobs, a skill I had learned as a teenager from Peg Walker. A coworker complained. "You are what you do," she said. "Do you want to sell Real Estate of hang wall[papaer?" The next year I sold 4 houses and earned $12,000. With such a disappointing income selling houses, the next year I switched to selling mortgages. I thought I could get all of my Real Estate friends to use Crestmont Federal Savings & Loan for their clients' mortgages. When none of these jobs worked out and with I secummed to the urges of my former JCPenney employees to take the job as service manager for American Appliances. American Appliances was a large Delaware Valley retailer selling new and used appliances and electronics. It had a sizeable service fleet but AA had a bad reputation among its customres.

It was tough competing against the more experienced and established agents but I was learning. The next year I sold 4 houses but I needed extra money and began doing wallpapering jobs. That actually paid pretty well but So I became a salesman but I faild at selling advertising, office supplies, computers but now my friends were encouraging me to get a Real Estate license and sell houses. soon discovered that with all of my friends in Real Estate I had no "center of influence" and earned just $8,000. To help earn some money I started doing wallpaper jobs, a skill I had learned as a teenager from Peg Walker. With Real Estate not working I switched to selling mortgages. I thought I could get all of my Real Estate friends to use Crestmont Federal Savings & Loan for their clients' mortgages. When none of these jobs worked out and with my six-month severance pay from JCPenney just about gone, I secummed to the urges of my former JCPenney employees to take the job as service manager for American Appliances. American Appliances was a large Delaware Valley retailer selling new and used appliances and electronics. It had a sizeable service fleet but AA had a bad reputation among its customres.

and here I was starting over at age 42. With little chance of getting back into management I was encouraged by my friends to get a Real estate license. I went to school, got my license and found a job at the Haddonfield office of Fox & Lazo Realty on Tanner St in downtown Haddonfield.

unsuccessfully in sales; selling magazines, office supplies and even working at Radio Shack. I tried Real Estate and selling mortgages. I made extra money hanging wall paper, helping people use their personal computers and writing PC programs in DOS. But I was earning less than 1/3 what I had been making at JCPenney and rent, utilities, alimony, child support and the appetites of two high school boys were gobbling that up pretty fast.

Haddonfield is a wealthy area well known for its unique boutiques, inviting variety of eateries, its historic Victorian homes and the Tavistock Country Club. It was tough competing against the more experienced and established agents. The first year I sold 2 houses and the next year I sold 4 houses. Basically, I was starving.



 
AMy reputation as a manager preceded me and the owner of American Appliance seemed anxious to have me for his service department. Several of my former JCPenney employees had taken jobs as technicians and in service contract sales at American Appliances and were urging me join them. However, although American Appliances was a large appliance and electronics retailer with stores throughout the Delaware Valley, they had a very problematic reputation among customers in both sales and service. Finally, in desperation, I reluctantly accepted a service management position at American Appliances. To my surprise, the salary the owner offered would put me back among the decent wage earners.

In my first few days on the job, I immediately saw many problems. Basically, there was no control over any function of the service department. I carefully laid out a one-year reorganization plan but there were two major problems I had to tackle right away. My changes would prove to be very unpopular among technicians and store managers.

Technicians were free to help themselves to whatever parts they wanted from the parts department. There is no way to control an inventory with a setup like that. In addition, some technicians did home repair on their own after hours. They not only had a free truck but they had free parts to sell. It took a few weeks but I closed off the parts department, put someone in charge of tracking the inventory and only "exchanged" new parts for old parts. The old parts had to be returned with a work order signed by a customer to get a replacement part for their truck inventory. Not popular.

The other problem involved the store managers. When expensive electronics like VCRs, TVs and microwaves went missing from the stores the store managers simply said the items were sent to product service and never returned. There was no paperwork to substantiate that the merchandise left the store or that it came in for service. I began using signed shipping and receiving manifests to track items that came from the stores for repair. Also not popular.

Once again, I fell back on the dispatch system that I used at JCPenney to improve productivity. The two dispatchers, who had both worked for me at JCPenney, were happy to see organized scheduling techniques return to their office. My former contract sales supervisor was in charge of American Appliance's contract sales and I had no responsibilty in that area.

For me, the working conditions were not very comfortable. There was a ramp I had to climb to my office. Dispatching was across the hall from my office and I spent much of the day running up and down that ramp. Oh, my aching back! There were a lot customer complaints that kept me busy making phone calls, writing letters and spending time in Small Claims Court. JCPenney bent over backwards for the customer but my new boss felt that as long as he had the best price in town, customers would always come back regardless of how unhappy they were with their previous purchase. Amazingly enough it seemed he was right.

As the changes I put into effect to reduce lost merchandise became seriously unpopular among the store managers, the comptroller, who appreciated my changes, once warned me to "watch my back!" But after just nine months, although order and organization were in place at American Appliance, my boss complained to me that my plan was not working and I was fired. However, according to my old JCPenney employees working there, American Appliance kept all of my changes, including my dispatching system. The truth was that the technician supervisor wanted my job. He had worked at American Appliance many years, he was a "buddy" of the boss and now that service was organized and running smoothly, he was capable of handling the job. I decided it was time for me to throw in the towel on management and perhaps give computer programming a shot.