I was burned out from working in retail and was looking for other work. After all, I had worked at Belk, Sanger Harris and JB White's. It was time for a change. I looked everywhere for a job. I had taken a little time off from my Charlotte experience to unwind, but I was still looking.
I went back to Columbia Mall to put in an application at Rich's Department Store. I really didn't want to work there, but I was getting desperate. I had rent to pay. I went into the Human Resources office, and the lady there asked me if I had worked for Phil Barrett. I said yes. He was our store manager at Belk. She said that she didn't need to check my references, because I was coming to her from a good person in Phil. It pays to know people.
I was hired to work in their Luggage Department. I had experience in that area from other stores, so it was an easy fit. The department was next to the employee breakroom. I had two stockrooms in the department. Across from Luggage was Housewares, and next to Luggage was TV's. I liked spending my time in TV's, as it got kind of boring in Luggage. One day, the supervisor for Housewares came to me and wanted me to do stock work in her department. She was not my supervisor, and I told her that was not my area. It was made clear to me that I had to do what any supervisor assigned me to do. I grumbled but did it.
Word got around town that I was in Luggage, and the business started to pick up. I only worked in that department for three months. I would be transferred to another department, which I will cover next. One thing about Rich's: if they liked you, they would move you around. I thought the goal was to make a statement in your assigned place. Their goal was to move successful sellers to other places. Interesting concept.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Bankruptcy
In 1995, I had a lot of credit cards and no money to pay them. In fact, I had one with a $10,000 line, and I couldn't afford the minimum monthly payment. In all, I had $52,000 in debt. I was living way beyond means. Using credit cards was an addiction for me like being on cocaine. I had collection agencies calling me all the time. Morning until night. It created a bad case of anxiety for me. I was afraid to answer the phone. This was before cellphones, so I got these calls only when I was home. My answering machine took care of a lot of them, but I got to the point that I would roll up into a ball when the phone rang. I had to stop it, so I decided to go the bankruptcy route.
The first thing I had to do was get a lawyer. One was recommended to me. She was supposed to be the best. I went to see her and set up a payment plan for her fees. We then got to work. She gave me some forms to list everything I owned, including furniture, pictures, records, memorabilia, and more. I brought the list back to her, and we began assigning a value for each item. I came up with a figure, and then she told me to not do what something is worth but rather what something could be sold for. Then, I came up with that figure. She then asked what I could get for it, if I sold it at a flea market. I came up with that figure. It was considerably less than the first amount I had done. It was that amount that we used to access my "wealth".
It was then time to go before a bankruptcy judge. A paralegal went with me to court. This was in the Spring of 1996. There were others there to plead their cases before the judge. One man lost his truck. I was sure I was going to lose my assets, the majority of which were my records. There was an auctioneer in the courtroom who determined how much they could get for selling the stuff that people had. When my case was heard, the judge asked me one question. He asked if my records were worth anything. I said that they were worth something to me. I had not planned on saying that. It just came out. The judge looked at the auctioneer who shook his head no. The judge declared my case to be a "no-assets" case, and my debt was cleared. It meant I could keep my stuff. I was relieved.
All of my debts were wiped out except one. Sears refused to accept the judge's decision. They said they would set up a payment plan with me to pay them $15/month. I agreed to that. The first bill I got from them was more than the $15/month that we agreed to. I called them and told them they had made a mistake on the bill. They apologized and said they would send another bill. I never got another bill from them. I was afraid to go into Sears for several months after that, but slowly I returned there. No one said anything about my debt.
The only real downside to it was that the bankruptcy was on my credit report for several years, but I could answer the phone again.
The first thing I had to do was get a lawyer. One was recommended to me. She was supposed to be the best. I went to see her and set up a payment plan for her fees. We then got to work. She gave me some forms to list everything I owned, including furniture, pictures, records, memorabilia, and more. I brought the list back to her, and we began assigning a value for each item. I came up with a figure, and then she told me to not do what something is worth but rather what something could be sold for. Then, I came up with that figure. She then asked what I could get for it, if I sold it at a flea market. I came up with that figure. It was considerably less than the first amount I had done. It was that amount that we used to access my "wealth".
It was then time to go before a bankruptcy judge. A paralegal went with me to court. This was in the Spring of 1996. There were others there to plead their cases before the judge. One man lost his truck. I was sure I was going to lose my assets, the majority of which were my records. There was an auctioneer in the courtroom who determined how much they could get for selling the stuff that people had. When my case was heard, the judge asked me one question. He asked if my records were worth anything. I said that they were worth something to me. I had not planned on saying that. It just came out. The judge looked at the auctioneer who shook his head no. The judge declared my case to be a "no-assets" case, and my debt was cleared. It meant I could keep my stuff. I was relieved.
All of my debts were wiped out except one. Sears refused to accept the judge's decision. They said they would set up a payment plan with me to pay them $15/month. I agreed to that. The first bill I got from them was more than the $15/month that we agreed to. I called them and told them they had made a mistake on the bill. They apologized and said they would send another bill. I never got another bill from them. I was afraid to go into Sears for several months after that, but slowly I returned there. No one said anything about my debt.
The only real downside to it was that the bankruptcy was on my credit report for several years, but I could answer the phone again.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Charlotte
After Belk closed all of their stores in Columbia, I was out of work. In looking around, I found a company that wanted to hire me. It was Prudential Insurance. They liked my ability to sell. So, I went to their orientation and found out quickly that this was not the place for me. They wanted me to sell insurance, mostly to my friends and family. That was the first strike. They also wanted me to go through the phone book and make cold calls to people. That was the second strike. The third strike came, when they informed me that I would not get a commission from the sale for the first year. A mentor would basically get the money I had worked for. I would be paid enough to pay for rent and gas. I never went back.
I was needing money for rent. I saw an ad in the paper for someone in a marketing firm. That sounded doable. I went to their office in my three-piece suit and found it was a telemarketing place, and all of the women on the phones were in shorts and t-shirts. I was very overdressed a d walked out of the door.
Then, one day the phone rang. It was my old Belk store manager, Phil, wanting to know if I wanted to help them close the books on the stores. He said the former warehouse manager, Don, was going to do it, and he needed someone familiar with Accounts Payable. So, I said yes. The job was in Charlotte at the headquarters for the Belk family that owned our stores. We had a van, and we left the Columbia Mall parking lot every morning at 7:30 and drove to Charlotte to be up there by 9:30. The offices were on Tyvola across from South Park Mall. When we got there, we had all of the held invoices and the stock receipts in several boxes. We would take a receipt and match it to an invoice. We would check to see if they matched. Once that was reconciled, we would send that invoice to be paid. We sometimes could only pay partial invoices, which usually meant a call from a vendor when they got their check. We would try to get out of the office to return home by 3:30-4:00 to avoid the rush hour traffic. If we didn't, we wouldn't get back to Columbia until 7:30-8:00. That happened some at first.
Charlotte has a lot of nice restaurants. We tried to go to a different one each day, since Belk was paying for it. One reason we would go to a different one was that Don had bad luck with some of them. Either he got sick on the food or get hurt. One time, he bit into a sandwich that had a staple in the meat. He cut his lip, and it wouldn't stop bleeding. Our food was free that day.
We also would go up in all kinds of weather. It snowed twice. We braved the snowy roads one day, but the other we turned back before we got to Rock Hill. Our safety seemed kind of important. Another thing we did was stop for gas along the way on I-77. We stopped at all of the gas stations at least twice and got to know the workers inside. They got to know us too.
The job was starting to last longer than we had planned. We were supposed to take 3 months to close the books. We weren't anywhere near that to finishing, so we started a new plan. Pay the invoices without checking the stock receipts, as long as it was not over $10,000 each, We started okaying checks like crazy. We even joked that we could issue ourselves $10,000 checks without authorization and no one would no. Of course, we never did that. Too bad.
We finished up our job in February 1996. We had started just after Thanksgiving in 1995. The books were closed, and we went home. Phil got a job as a Belk store manager in Orangeburg. Don got a job at a bank. I was still looking at the want ads.
I was needing money for rent. I saw an ad in the paper for someone in a marketing firm. That sounded doable. I went to their office in my three-piece suit and found it was a telemarketing place, and all of the women on the phones were in shorts and t-shirts. I was very overdressed a d walked out of the door.
Then, one day the phone rang. It was my old Belk store manager, Phil, wanting to know if I wanted to help them close the books on the stores. He said the former warehouse manager, Don, was going to do it, and he needed someone familiar with Accounts Payable. So, I said yes. The job was in Charlotte at the headquarters for the Belk family that owned our stores. We had a van, and we left the Columbia Mall parking lot every morning at 7:30 and drove to Charlotte to be up there by 9:30. The offices were on Tyvola across from South Park Mall. When we got there, we had all of the held invoices and the stock receipts in several boxes. We would take a receipt and match it to an invoice. We would check to see if they matched. Once that was reconciled, we would send that invoice to be paid. We sometimes could only pay partial invoices, which usually meant a call from a vendor when they got their check. We would try to get out of the office to return home by 3:30-4:00 to avoid the rush hour traffic. If we didn't, we wouldn't get back to Columbia until 7:30-8:00. That happened some at first.
Charlotte has a lot of nice restaurants. We tried to go to a different one each day, since Belk was paying for it. One reason we would go to a different one was that Don had bad luck with some of them. Either he got sick on the food or get hurt. One time, he bit into a sandwich that had a staple in the meat. He cut his lip, and it wouldn't stop bleeding. Our food was free that day.
We also would go up in all kinds of weather. It snowed twice. We braved the snowy roads one day, but the other we turned back before we got to Rock Hill. Our safety seemed kind of important. Another thing we did was stop for gas along the way on I-77. We stopped at all of the gas stations at least twice and got to know the workers inside. They got to know us too.
The job was starting to last longer than we had planned. We were supposed to take 3 months to close the books. We weren't anywhere near that to finishing, so we started a new plan. Pay the invoices without checking the stock receipts, as long as it was not over $10,000 each, We started okaying checks like crazy. We even joked that we could issue ourselves $10,000 checks without authorization and no one would no. Of course, we never did that. Too bad.
We finished up our job in February 1996. We had started just after Thanksgiving in 1995. The books were closed, and we went home. Phil got a job as a Belk store manager in Orangeburg. Don got a job at a bank. I was still looking at the want ads.
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