Welcome to Part II of a series that I started earlier in which I recalled my jobs prior to owning my own Internet business. You can read about my exploits at the food court from ages 14 to 16 here.
Once I turned sixteen, opportunity opened up before me. My brother had secured a job at Venture, a wal-mart-like discount store. I got hired to work in the Health and Beauty department under a manager named Dave Herlihy (sp?). Dave was a good guy and easy to work for. The job was basically stocking shelves with shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper and make-up. The rest of the time was spent helping customers.
I made a number of friends at Venture and even referred a family member and a friend to work there as well. Whether getting carts from the parking lot or staying late for inventory, I learned about dealing with customers, preparing for the big weekly sale and relating to co-workers.
There are many memories from my time wearing the orange vest, but one particular episode really stands out.
As is common in the big box stores, many items can be displayed too high for a customer to reach. Rolling staircases are used so employees can ascend and descend with merchandise in hand.
One day while strolling through the domestics department, a lady asked me if I would get something down from the high shelf for her. I\’m not sure if I was upset or just being a cocky teenager, but I retorted with \”get it yourself.\”
Needless to say, she wasn\’t happy with me. She contacted the store manager on duty, who I recall was named Frank Giardina, and I was summarily paged to his location over the store intercom. I knew I was in trouble. In the customers presence, Frank asked if I had wisecracked to her as she said. I told him that I did and he proceeded to fire me.
Now I wasn\’t happy!
After the customer left, I went up to Frank in a huff. He was smiling and told me I wasn\’t really fired, but that I shouldn\’t do that again. He was just putting on a show to satisfy the customer who to this day probably remembers the story of the snide teenage punk who she got fired from Venture. More proof that perception is reality, huh?
By the time I had turned seventeen, I was growing weary of working at Venture. However, I wouldn\’t leave my secure position until something better turned up.
And it did. Or you might say that I sought out a better opportunity.
From the time that I was a young teenager, my favorite store in the area was called Video, Etc. Owned by Sonny Cohen of Chicago, the store was on the cutting edge of electronics. Big-screen televisions, Apple Computers, Sony Betamax recorders, Laserdiscs, video tape rentals and the earliest video game systems were all sold there.
I LOVED visiting the store and remember when the Fairchild Channel-F video game system first showed up in the store. I was twelve-years old and I knew I had to have one.
Not only did my parents buy me the game unit from the store, but I also talked my father into purchasing a large-screen television set. It was one of those units where you had to unfold the front for the three color tubes to reflect off a mirror and create the picture on the screen.
I knew if I could ever have a dream job, it would be to work at Video, Etc.
Sure enough, Sonny hired me to be the store \”grunt\” when I was seventeen. Having a driver\’s license, a love for electronics and a history with the owner as a customer made me a shoe-in. From delivering big screen televisions to homes throughout the Chicagoland area and picking up merchandise from wholesalers to helping customers through the mad rush of Pac-Man releasing for the Atari 2600 and catching up with the latest Apple II software, I found my dream job. To this day, I look upon my time at Video, Etc. with great fondness. Those were the days…
I worked at Video, Etc. through my senior year of high school, and then again over holiday break from my first year at college.
It was then I was to enter the next phase of life and was to discover talents that I didn\’t know I had. Stay tuned for part III.
What about you? What do you look back upon as your \”best job ever\”? Please let me know in the comments field below!