RUDIMENTS, pt. 100
Making Cars
When I first got a real, paying,
regular job, it was with a
commercial printing outfit; a
company, with regular payroll,
'benefits,' and all that manner of'
whatever it is make a job or a career
'desirable.' I was mostly bored stiff,
lackadaisical, and mostly annoyed at
all the really normal stuff I had to
put up with. I was often angry
at myself for having gotten into
such a situation, but I stayed with
it nonetheless. For a long time too;
until it just no longer made any sense
at all and no longer fit me, in any way,
shape, or form. It had worn out its
welcome with me, and I, in turn, had
for sure worn out my welcome among
it. You ask yourself about things, but
your 'self' doesn't always at first answer
forthrightly. I was duped. People would
come in, clients and customers, and end
up after a while just saying, as an aside,
to me 'What are you doing here? Get out.'
One day I just bailed. Nothing pretty,
none of that all-hail-fellow, see-you-
off stuff. Simply. Gone.
-
When I got there, about 1988, the first
account they pawned off on me was a
British textiles and fabric company,
pretty big-time, named 'Hanson Industries.'
They had a large suite of cubicles and
offices, Telex and 'new-fangled' fax
machines and all that international
commerce and market stuff, on two
floors in a high-rise at a corporate
center called Metropark, which was
also a major train station on the way
between NYC and Philadelphia, and
Newark and JFK Airports too. The
guy's name there was Doug Polhemus,
and was about 50 to my 28, roundabout.
Nice guy, as bland as they come. I didn't
know the first thing about him, but he
always had a young guy with him, whoever
was new into the corporation there, (lower
levels) and he'd be taking him through
the motions, learning the ropes and
procedures and all that. He, in turn, had
an office girl, lady, whatever, about 30,
Vivienne Recoppa. English too, and she
was his coordinator for all the office stuff;
and then just above him in the corporate
order was some other, fancier girl, name
forgotten right now, who answered to final
tier of people above. The real British board.
London and New York, for sure. There was
the really big guy, Lord Hanson. He was
mostly in Britain, but often enough too in
NYC - and then to this office. Whenever
he was coming you knew about it a few days
before - the place got all spiffed up, totally
regimented and by command, everything
fully tightened up, the place running smoothly.
This Lord Hanson guy would then eventually
sweep in, limousine, assistants, and the rest.
To an outsider like me, a stringer, as it were,
attached only peripherally to any of this, in a
service capacity (their 'printer'), it was all
eye-opening stuff. I got on with a bunch of
their people. It was pretty cool, except for the
long rows of cubicles. They made everyone
pretty miserable. I'd walk past 10 or 15 along
the way, wherever I was headed, to get to
where I was going, and you'd see each one,
set up, not the same but almost - kid pictures,
the husband or wife, a child's drawing, some
tokens of personal designs and possessions,
a trophy fish, say, or whatever else. You'd
hear all the different cross-talk and chatter,
phones ringing, talking, typing, machines,
and a hundred other things at once. Lots
of females and girls, big hairs, half-fancy
clothes, a tad overdone for office, by today's
lax standards, but this was British decorum
too. It was okay, but mainly because of
the vast assortment of females, frankly.
-
Most of the time I went there, I spent
half a morning or whatever, going over
the printing, getting copies of text. They
were constantly doing and redoing it, with
updates, new people, etc., making the
revisions always necessary. It was a
Corporate Directory, which they kept
current and always revised. It had a
head-shot of everyone, I mean all, of
the people in the company. Top to bottom.
Which meant that I got to see the little bios
and profiles of all the people there - from
Lord Hanson on down to the newest cubicle
girl I'd pass. It was segmented for NYC,
London, Iselin, etc., each of the offices.
And each person, plus their head-shot,
was listed for education, home, age,
interests, personal history, family info,
and even addresses. None of that, of
course, would be done today - first
off, security wouldn't allow it. Secondly
no one does paper anymore, and this
would all have been digitized, etc.
It was quite amazing - all these
young just-out-of-college guys, on
the make and seeking money, and
probably mates too, with all their
smiling, preppy, visages. It was pretty
cool, and a big surprise for me. I always
enjoyed looking up, girls and guys, the
names, addresses, and personal histories
of the people I'd see or meet inside.
Other times, Doug Polhemus ('Mr.'
to me) and his sidekick, or Vivienne,
by herself, would come to my office/desk.
I remember one time, under pressure,
all the profile stuff, changes, and
proofreading, she was there almost
the entire workday with me as we
pressed on to get the stupid updates
ready for press, as the book was really
due somewhere for a conference or
something, in about 10 days. It was
a real project.
-
Anyway - here's the point - I went to
a few of these bigger-deal companies like
this, and - watching carefully for what I
saw in the comings and goings, and seeing
and hearing the internals of the companies,
I began buying stock in a few of these
corporations - small lot stuff, 20 shares
here, 30 shares there. As I could. It was
long before today's world of day-trader,
house-account stuff with regular guys, like
janitors and teachers and all, augmenting
their incomes with this quick buy and sell
trading orders. I've seen known a number
of those phone accounts guys, and they're
oftentimes pretty brave and daring, and -
unless they're liars - pretty wealthy, from
what they say, by it. I figured why not? I'm
seeing l this stuff from the inside, I know
little else about it, and it was almost like
insider trading. I used a Philadelphia
trading with the brokerage-company
name of Janney, Montgomery, & Scott.
They had one or two local-enough offices.
I had a small account there, and a guy, or,
over time, three different guys, as they
each came and went in the position, on my
'account.' Certainly no big deal, and no
one made any money off of me, at maybe
60 bucks the occasional buy or sell. I kept
my own little ledger books, watched the
market stuff each day, learned the
ticker-initials of the companies. It
worked for like eight years. I went
from Hanson Industries (which eventually
separated itself into various companies,
split into different stocks, then got bought
out in pieces, and then just all disappeared.
I guess Lord Hanson is long dead, and
all those people are somewhere else now),
to Merck, to paint companies, franchise
companies, any company I dealt with
that was traded publicly on the stock
market, and for which I could get a
good feeling from working with and
seeing in action. It had all begun when
a guy I had contact with told me the
supposed story of his friends' grandfather.
As he retold it, the guy had lived like
a pauper, by himself, ornery and stingy
enough too, and when he died the family
found he'd been slowly and steadily
buying stocks for over 60 years and
had never let anything go. He died
a millionaire, in stocks, and no one
had ever known about it. Could be a
bullshit story, I know, but it was
enough to catch my attention.
-
By the turn of 2000, and then later
the WTC crisis, the market tanked
and all that stuff began becoming a
hard penny, I slowly started backing
out, and over the course of maybe two
years had sold (or lost) all of it, no longer
wishing to be dealing with it. Some
companies, like Jennifer Convertibles,
say, (later turned itself into Jennifer
Leathers, but still was a loser) and a
few others (Sbarro Restaurants) turned
out to be complete busts, losses of say
1600 to 2400 bucks each, and others,
in the opposite fashion, brought me gains.
Maybe 20 stocks in 12 years, total gain
just north of 35,000 bucks. Funny world.
-
Later, when I got to Barnes & Noble, and
began working there, they were always
pushing stock buys of the company, (about
18 dollars a share, then) as payroll deductions,
maybe even matching, I forget, but I never
went with it. I was a different me by then and
I just had no interest, and then everything
dive-bombed again, big-time, with the
2007-8 market crash and breakdown.
Better them than me.
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