On a Sunday night, a guy was riding his bicycle not far from his house. He went around a corner rather fast, and a car hit him. The force was so great that he flew into a tree. As he lay dying on the ground, the first car that arrived on the scene was a woman who knew the man from church. She knew how to get in touch with his mother. An ambulance came and took him to the hospital, where he died. The man worked at Belk in the warehouse, which had moved from downtown out to Columbia Mall. I had known this man for a long time. It was very sad.
Upon hearing the news of his death, our store manager called me into his office and offered me the job of this guy. I was interested, but I told the manager that I would have to think about it and decide after he was buried. I thought it was out of respect for the deceased. After leaving the burial service, I was walking with the store manager and told him I would take the job.
The job was to check merchandise receipts against the purchase journals, which determined whether the inventory was more or less what was supposed to be in the store. This helped the buyers and finance folks know how much inventory we had at any given time. I also had to investigate if there seemed to be a major discrepancy. When an item came into the warehouse, it was counted by the clerks in the warehouse. They would put price tags on them and send them to the floor. The sales associates would note on the receipt what the count was and turn the receipt back to the warehouse. I would then get that receipt and compare it to what was ordered. It was tedious but necessary. I would then take the receipt to accounts payable, where they would compare the receipt to the invoice and then pay it accordingly. I had an office off of the warehouse floor. I brought my cassette player/radio with me, and jammed to music while I worked. I could also wear jeans and casual shirts, because I was no longer directly dealing with the public. Because my predecessor had died, there was really no one to show me how to do my work. I settled into it okay. Another big plus was that the warehouse closed on holidays, so I got Memorial Day and Labor Day off. Sales people were not so fortunate.
As I controlled the inventory numbers and checked behind the buyers, there was a time when it got bad. I was approached by the store higher-ups to find a reason to fire one of the buyers. They didn't like one of the woman buyers, but they couldn't find a reason to fire her. They came to me and told me to find that reason. I poured over all of her purchase orders. Everything seemed okay. I did find one order where the markup she had done was not quite up to what it should have been. She had put the markup at 40%, when it should have been more like 60%. I went to the managers to show them that order, and they used it to fire her. I felt very badly about it, but it was part of my job. A few years later, she and I worked at another store. She had not known that it was me that found this mistake that got her fired. She was very cordial to me. I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth.
I stayed at this job for a couple of years, until I was promoted to the Accounts Payable Department. More on that later.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Shoes
I had been in "exile" at the downtown Belk store for about 9 months. It was time for me to come back to Columbia Mall, and there was a full-time opening in Men's Shoes, so I took it. I didn't know much about selling shoes, but I immersed myself in the different brands and qualities. I got to know a lot about tennis shoes, running shoes, cross training shoes, dress shoes, you name it shoes.
One Saturday, we were very busy with a back to school sale. Our small department space was swamped with customers. I had one other sales person helping me. We were trying to take them in the order they had come into the area, but it got increasingly difficult to do so. As I began waiting on a woman, a man stepped ahead of her and announced rather rudely that he and his son were next. I apologized to him, but I said I thought she was ahead of him. She agreed with me. This man, who I will not name, was a well known African-American in the community. He got madder with me, and then yelled out that I was a racist for not waiting on him first. He may have been trying to score some points with his son, and I apologized again. I told him I would get to him as quickly as possible. He was demanding to speak to my supervisor. He told me he wanted to have me fired. He asked me what my name was, and I told him "Walter Durst". He said, "Durst? Are you related to John Durst?" I said "Yes, he's my brother". To which he kind of calmed down and said that he knew my brother, so he wouldn't have me fired. The ironic thing about this story that the man didn't know what that he knew my brother from his days in Public Relations. This man hired my brother to do some work on a five-year plan for his group. My brother didn't have time to do that job, so he gave the job to me to do the research and write the plan. I then gave it to my brother, and he put his name on it, and gave it to this man. So, the man, who wanted to have me fired, had no idea that I was the one who wrote his plan. I don't think he ever did.
Another fun day was the day of the gang fight. We had heard that two rival gangs were in the mall and had come into the upstairs entrance to our store. There had been a skirmish upstairs, but there was a full-blown war that erupted in the Men's Department. The kids were all in high school. They were throwing punches and pushing guys into fixtures. Many of them broke. They also picked up plastic hangers and were hitting each other with them. One guy found some walking canes with ducks on the handles. They used those as weapons and broke many of them, One guy picked up a boot from Shoes and hit another guy in the head with the heel causing blood to get on the shoe. Most of the customers and associates were stunned watching this. One associate yelled out to them, "Who's going to pay for all of this?" We were afraid they were going to turn on her, but she stood her ground. I went to my phone and called security. They came out of their office, which was nearby, and got the gang members out into the parking lot. They could fight out there without harming any more merchandise. The police came and broke up the fight but didn't arrest anyone.
There was a lot of down time during the day where nothing was happening, so I used that time to write songs. Some of them were pretty good like "She Said Yes", "She Said No", and "Dream Girl". Chris and Del would record them later on, and I'll write about that later.
One day, a man came into the department and wanted to order a pair of Stacy Adams lace-up boots in grey. He had always wanted a pair, but we didn't have them in stock, so I had to order them. When they came in, I gave the man a call, and he came in to get them. The man was in his 70's. He was so proud of them that he wanted to wear them straightway. As they were new shoes, he had not gotten used to them. He went outside, and one heel caught the curb, and he fell into the parking lot. He came back into the store. His pants were torn, and he was bleeding on his hands and knees. The first thing out of my mouth was asking him if he was okay. He said he was, but he was just embarrassed that he had fallen. The heel had come off of the shoe, and he wanted me to order another pair, which I agreed to do. About a week later, I got a call from the Belk Legal Department in Charlotte. They told me that a customer of mine was suing me for damages for selling him a faulty pair of shoes. Not only was I being sued but also my supervisor; the Personnel Department for hiring me; the store manager for hiring the HR person; the corporate office for hiring the store manager; and the shoe company for making the shoes. It seemed that the man had two sons. One was a doctor, and the other was a lawyer. They saw some big bucks in their eyes. I told our lawyers what had happened, and I filled out a sworn document. Everybody else that was named in the lawsuit backed me up with my story. The judge threw out the case. The man admitted that his sons put him up to filing the lawsuit. He just wanted the shoes. We gave him a free pair of shoes, and he was a happy man.
One Saturday, we were very busy with a back to school sale. Our small department space was swamped with customers. I had one other sales person helping me. We were trying to take them in the order they had come into the area, but it got increasingly difficult to do so. As I began waiting on a woman, a man stepped ahead of her and announced rather rudely that he and his son were next. I apologized to him, but I said I thought she was ahead of him. She agreed with me. This man, who I will not name, was a well known African-American in the community. He got madder with me, and then yelled out that I was a racist for not waiting on him first. He may have been trying to score some points with his son, and I apologized again. I told him I would get to him as quickly as possible. He was demanding to speak to my supervisor. He told me he wanted to have me fired. He asked me what my name was, and I told him "Walter Durst". He said, "Durst? Are you related to John Durst?" I said "Yes, he's my brother". To which he kind of calmed down and said that he knew my brother, so he wouldn't have me fired. The ironic thing about this story that the man didn't know what that he knew my brother from his days in Public Relations. This man hired my brother to do some work on a five-year plan for his group. My brother didn't have time to do that job, so he gave the job to me to do the research and write the plan. I then gave it to my brother, and he put his name on it, and gave it to this man. So, the man, who wanted to have me fired, had no idea that I was the one who wrote his plan. I don't think he ever did.
Another fun day was the day of the gang fight. We had heard that two rival gangs were in the mall and had come into the upstairs entrance to our store. There had been a skirmish upstairs, but there was a full-blown war that erupted in the Men's Department. The kids were all in high school. They were throwing punches and pushing guys into fixtures. Many of them broke. They also picked up plastic hangers and were hitting each other with them. One guy found some walking canes with ducks on the handles. They used those as weapons and broke many of them, One guy picked up a boot from Shoes and hit another guy in the head with the heel causing blood to get on the shoe. Most of the customers and associates were stunned watching this. One associate yelled out to them, "Who's going to pay for all of this?" We were afraid they were going to turn on her, but she stood her ground. I went to my phone and called security. They came out of their office, which was nearby, and got the gang members out into the parking lot. They could fight out there without harming any more merchandise. The police came and broke up the fight but didn't arrest anyone.
There was a lot of down time during the day where nothing was happening, so I used that time to write songs. Some of them were pretty good like "She Said Yes", "She Said No", and "Dream Girl". Chris and Del would record them later on, and I'll write about that later.
One day, a man came into the department and wanted to order a pair of Stacy Adams lace-up boots in grey. He had always wanted a pair, but we didn't have them in stock, so I had to order them. When they came in, I gave the man a call, and he came in to get them. The man was in his 70's. He was so proud of them that he wanted to wear them straightway. As they were new shoes, he had not gotten used to them. He went outside, and one heel caught the curb, and he fell into the parking lot. He came back into the store. His pants were torn, and he was bleeding on his hands and knees. The first thing out of my mouth was asking him if he was okay. He said he was, but he was just embarrassed that he had fallen. The heel had come off of the shoe, and he wanted me to order another pair, which I agreed to do. About a week later, I got a call from the Belk Legal Department in Charlotte. They told me that a customer of mine was suing me for damages for selling him a faulty pair of shoes. Not only was I being sued but also my supervisor; the Personnel Department for hiring me; the store manager for hiring the HR person; the corporate office for hiring the store manager; and the shoe company for making the shoes. It seemed that the man had two sons. One was a doctor, and the other was a lawyer. They saw some big bucks in their eyes. I told our lawyers what had happened, and I filled out a sworn document. Everybody else that was named in the lawsuit backed me up with my story. The judge threw out the case. The man admitted that his sons put him up to filing the lawsuit. He just wanted the shoes. We gave him a free pair of shoes, and he was a happy man.
Monday, August 13, 2018
Del and Chris
When I was a buyer at Belk, I needed to hire someone for the Record Department. I told Personnel that I wanted someone who knew a lot about music. They told me they found someone, and they wanted me to interview them. His name was Del. He came in my office, and his eyes lit up when he saw a Beatles poster on my wall. He said he was a big fan of The Beatles, and I knew we would get along well.
Del and I went to record shows and antique stores. We were both collectors of The Beatles. It also turned out that we knew a lot of the same people. He and I became friends. He introduced me to his distant cousin Chris. Chris was younger than us, but he had an old love for The Beatles. He was also from Columbia, but he was going to school in Memphis, TN. We also had more in common. Del and Chris had been in a band, where they sang mostly cover songs. I had been writing songs since I was in 4th grade. So, we decided to form a partnership, where Chris would write the music, and I would write the lyrics. Chris also wrote lyrics, and on some occasions he would add some lyrics to mine. It was a good arrangement.
When Chris was home from school, the three of us would go to record stores in Charleston, Charlotte, Augusta and Atlanta. We would also go to record shows to build up our collections. One game you play with dealers is to try and get something worth a lot more than what they are selling it for. If you can outwit the dealer, you have been successful. Del didn't have much of a poker face. He would see something in a bin that he wanted and yell out "Yes!" That would tip of the dealer that he needed to up his price. Chris and I would get mad at Del for doing this, but he couldn't help it. There were many times where Chris and I would go into the hall and move to another area from Del to distance ourselves from him. That way, we got better deals before Del got there. During our trips, each person would make cassette tapes to play in the car. I would mainly do classic rock. They liked surf and drag. I hated that kind of music. They didn't like much of my music, so it worked out well or not. Another thing we liked was going to amusement parks. During our time together, we rode on six of the top ten roller coasters in the country.
We took one trip to Six Flags over Georgia. It was 70 degrees when we left, and it freezing cold and snowy in Atlanta. We were not dressed for the cold. There were very few people at the park. We had to hold onto the metal bars on the roller coaster through the pockets of our light jackets. We went into one gift shop there just to get warm, and the employee called security on us, as she thought we were going to steal something. Another Six Flags trip was around Halloween. We went into the Haunted House. I have never been so scared before in my life. It was pitch dark in there, and some guy started a chainsaw right next to my head. I ran over people to get out of there.
One memorable trip was one that Del and I took to Memphis to meet up with Chris. He was majoring in music recording, so we got to go to a real recording studio. Del and Chris cut two songs there. One was a cover song, and the other was one of my songs. It was cool. I got to work the board. Del played the piano and bass. Chris played guitar. We had a drummer that Chris knew. We also went to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis. After doing that for a couple of days, we went to Six Flags over Mid-America near St. Louis, MO. We got on a roller coaster and got up to the top of the first hill, when it suddenly stopped. Off in the distance, we could see a tornado coming. It had just gotten dark. We had to walk down the frame of the ride to the bottom. Most of the other park goers went for their cars to get out of there. The employees went to an underground shelter. The three of us stayed with a security guard and watched the tornado spin in the clouds over us. Thankfully, it didn't touch down until a few miles further on. Since most of the folks had left, we pretty much had the park to ourselves. That was fun.
I will write more about the music collaboration with Del and Chris in the next story. Needless to say, we were really good friends and had a lot in common.
Del and I went to record shows and antique stores. We were both collectors of The Beatles. It also turned out that we knew a lot of the same people. He and I became friends. He introduced me to his distant cousin Chris. Chris was younger than us, but he had an old love for The Beatles. He was also from Columbia, but he was going to school in Memphis, TN. We also had more in common. Del and Chris had been in a band, where they sang mostly cover songs. I had been writing songs since I was in 4th grade. So, we decided to form a partnership, where Chris would write the music, and I would write the lyrics. Chris also wrote lyrics, and on some occasions he would add some lyrics to mine. It was a good arrangement.
When Chris was home from school, the three of us would go to record stores in Charleston, Charlotte, Augusta and Atlanta. We would also go to record shows to build up our collections. One game you play with dealers is to try and get something worth a lot more than what they are selling it for. If you can outwit the dealer, you have been successful. Del didn't have much of a poker face. He would see something in a bin that he wanted and yell out "Yes!" That would tip of the dealer that he needed to up his price. Chris and I would get mad at Del for doing this, but he couldn't help it. There were many times where Chris and I would go into the hall and move to another area from Del to distance ourselves from him. That way, we got better deals before Del got there. During our trips, each person would make cassette tapes to play in the car. I would mainly do classic rock. They liked surf and drag. I hated that kind of music. They didn't like much of my music, so it worked out well or not. Another thing we liked was going to amusement parks. During our time together, we rode on six of the top ten roller coasters in the country.
We took one trip to Six Flags over Georgia. It was 70 degrees when we left, and it freezing cold and snowy in Atlanta. We were not dressed for the cold. There were very few people at the park. We had to hold onto the metal bars on the roller coaster through the pockets of our light jackets. We went into one gift shop there just to get warm, and the employee called security on us, as she thought we were going to steal something. Another Six Flags trip was around Halloween. We went into the Haunted House. I have never been so scared before in my life. It was pitch dark in there, and some guy started a chainsaw right next to my head. I ran over people to get out of there.
One memorable trip was one that Del and I took to Memphis to meet up with Chris. He was majoring in music recording, so we got to go to a real recording studio. Del and Chris cut two songs there. One was a cover song, and the other was one of my songs. It was cool. I got to work the board. Del played the piano and bass. Chris played guitar. We had a drummer that Chris knew. We also went to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis. After doing that for a couple of days, we went to Six Flags over Mid-America near St. Louis, MO. We got on a roller coaster and got up to the top of the first hill, when it suddenly stopped. Off in the distance, we could see a tornado coming. It had just gotten dark. We had to walk down the frame of the ride to the bottom. Most of the other park goers went for their cars to get out of there. The employees went to an underground shelter. The three of us stayed with a security guard and watched the tornado spin in the clouds over us. Thankfully, it didn't touch down until a few miles further on. Since most of the folks had left, we pretty much had the park to ourselves. That was fun.
I will write more about the music collaboration with Del and Chris in the next story. Needless to say, we were really good friends and had a lot in common.
Saturday, August 4, 2018
Vids
As a student at Southwestern, I had a roommate for a short time named John. He had a Beta VCR. When we separated, he kept the VCR, and I got most of the tapes. I fell in love with taping shows off of TV, as well as buying prerecorded movies. I graduated from Beta to RCA Videodiscs, because they were the first to have both James Bond and Beatle movies on video. I had a lot of those. I then went onto Pioneer Laserdiscs. The quality was superior to anything out there, but the selection wasn't too good. That was when I broke down and went to a VHS VCR. I converted my other videos to VHS and found that there was a wide range of all kinds of VHS stuff out there.
One day, I found a guy in KY who was selling Beatles videos and advertising them in a magazine. I wrote to him for a list. He sent a list which blew me away. He had hundreds of titles. Most were compilations of TV appearances, concerts, interviews, and movies. He had them pretty cheap. What he did was record them on blank tape from his tapes and send them to me. Over the course of a couple of years, I had gotten around 150 tapes from him. I also found other collectors or video and audio tapes who were willing to trade what they had for what I had. One guy in NY wanted all Beatles, and he was willing to send me Rolling Stones, The Who, Elvis Presley, Howard Stern and others in exchange. Another guy in IL had cassette tapes of concerts, which he wanted to trade for my titles. It got to the point that I was dealing with collectors all over the world. By 1992, I had the documented second largest Beatles video collection in the world. Over 1800 hours. The guy wo had the most was the guy from KY. Some of his stuff was used on The Beatles Video Anthology release in the mid-1990's.
It dawned on me that I could make a little money on these tapes, so I looked into the idea of becoming a dealer at record shows. I had tables at shows in South Carolina and North Carolina. There was another guy from Georgia who also sold videos. I undercut him in prices. He had better labels than mine, but most buyers didn't care about the labels. There were other dealers there who sold "import" cd's or records. At one record show, the show got raided by the police looking for illegal items. One cd dealer had his stuff packed up and out the door before the police got to his table. I just put my stuff under my table, and they couldn't do anything.
I did an antique show in SC, which lasted for four days. I stayed in a motel across from the mall. After the third night, I went back to my room and found my key wouldn't work. I went to the front desk, and they told me that my credit card had been rejected and they were holding my stuff until I could make it right. It turned out that the girl at the front desk had written my number down wrong. It was their fault, but they never apologized. I wrote to their parent company when I got back home. They never responded. That motel closed up not long after that experience.
I asked the guy I dealt with from NYC once where he got his stuff. He told me never to ask him that question. It seemed that he had connections with the Gotti family. I never asked him again. He later killed himself. His brother worked for the NYPD and died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. My friend was so depressed over that, because he watched the towers fall from his kitchen window. He never got over it. I sent a couple of tapes to a friend in CA. He was watching them at work, when his boss asked him where they came from. He protected me by telling his boss that he got them at a flea market and didn't know what they were. He told me what happened, and I threw a lot of that stuff in the dumpster. The other things, I converted to DVD. That took me three years. Then, I got rid of the videos and cassettes. I stopped trading with others and doing record shows. It just wasn't worth it. Besides, that dealer who packed up his cd's and left one show? Well, he was arrested for selling cd's to a record store and did some time in a federal prison. No need to go there. And here is another thing you might find interesting: I have never watched all of the videos or DVD's I got during this period. I said I would if ever I got sick and was laid up in bed, but the thing is that when you are that sick, you don't want to watch old videos. It has been over 25 years since I did all that.
One cool thing that came out of that experience was several years ago, I got an email from the author Desmond Morris. He wrote the best seller "The Naked Ape". He lived in London. He had heard that I might have a copy of a BBC TV program that featured him and John Lennon. It turned out that I did. He asked if I could make him a copy, and he would send me five of his books, each one from his library, and each one signed by him. So, I did. The books came in the mail in mint shape. Very cool. So yes, I had a reputation, but no more.
One day, I found a guy in KY who was selling Beatles videos and advertising them in a magazine. I wrote to him for a list. He sent a list which blew me away. He had hundreds of titles. Most were compilations of TV appearances, concerts, interviews, and movies. He had them pretty cheap. What he did was record them on blank tape from his tapes and send them to me. Over the course of a couple of years, I had gotten around 150 tapes from him. I also found other collectors or video and audio tapes who were willing to trade what they had for what I had. One guy in NY wanted all Beatles, and he was willing to send me Rolling Stones, The Who, Elvis Presley, Howard Stern and others in exchange. Another guy in IL had cassette tapes of concerts, which he wanted to trade for my titles. It got to the point that I was dealing with collectors all over the world. By 1992, I had the documented second largest Beatles video collection in the world. Over 1800 hours. The guy wo had the most was the guy from KY. Some of his stuff was used on The Beatles Video Anthology release in the mid-1990's.
It dawned on me that I could make a little money on these tapes, so I looked into the idea of becoming a dealer at record shows. I had tables at shows in South Carolina and North Carolina. There was another guy from Georgia who also sold videos. I undercut him in prices. He had better labels than mine, but most buyers didn't care about the labels. There were other dealers there who sold "import" cd's or records. At one record show, the show got raided by the police looking for illegal items. One cd dealer had his stuff packed up and out the door before the police got to his table. I just put my stuff under my table, and they couldn't do anything.
I did an antique show in SC, which lasted for four days. I stayed in a motel across from the mall. After the third night, I went back to my room and found my key wouldn't work. I went to the front desk, and they told me that my credit card had been rejected and they were holding my stuff until I could make it right. It turned out that the girl at the front desk had written my number down wrong. It was their fault, but they never apologized. I wrote to their parent company when I got back home. They never responded. That motel closed up not long after that experience.
I asked the guy I dealt with from NYC once where he got his stuff. He told me never to ask him that question. It seemed that he had connections with the Gotti family. I never asked him again. He later killed himself. His brother worked for the NYPD and died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. My friend was so depressed over that, because he watched the towers fall from his kitchen window. He never got over it. I sent a couple of tapes to a friend in CA. He was watching them at work, when his boss asked him where they came from. He protected me by telling his boss that he got them at a flea market and didn't know what they were. He told me what happened, and I threw a lot of that stuff in the dumpster. The other things, I converted to DVD. That took me three years. Then, I got rid of the videos and cassettes. I stopped trading with others and doing record shows. It just wasn't worth it. Besides, that dealer who packed up his cd's and left one show? Well, he was arrested for selling cd's to a record store and did some time in a federal prison. No need to go there. And here is another thing you might find interesting: I have never watched all of the videos or DVD's I got during this period. I said I would if ever I got sick and was laid up in bed, but the thing is that when you are that sick, you don't want to watch old videos. It has been over 25 years since I did all that.
One cool thing that came out of that experience was several years ago, I got an email from the author Desmond Morris. He wrote the best seller "The Naked Ape". He lived in London. He had heard that I might have a copy of a BBC TV program that featured him and John Lennon. It turned out that I did. He asked if I could make him a copy, and he would send me five of his books, each one from his library, and each one signed by him. So, I did. The books came in the mail in mint shape. Very cool. So yes, I had a reputation, but no more.
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