Working For a Living: The Retail Years

“Somedays won't end ever and somedays pass on by,

I'll be working here forever, at least until I die.”   Huey Lewis

Mulling over my working life.  I do that on these days when I come home burned out, wrung out, office politicked out and ready to opt out.  It’s been a forty year sampler of jobs.  Stocking shoes as a teenager at Kinney Shoes working for a little dandy name Marvin and watching the letch, Mr. Slick shoe salesmen try to sneak a glimpse up a skirt while forcing a pair of boots on some young thing.  Working one shift as a busboy at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor and quitting because it stunk of chocolate, couldn’t see doing that for more than the brief time I put in and I preferred going home to watch the (then) Los Angeles Rams play the (then) Baltimore Colts on Monday Night Football.  That was a good game in those days.  Beer tended at a local Round Table Pizzeria.  Then college. 


 

A short stint at an artsy movie theater in San Francisco.  Mostly foreign films, but there was that month long or so run of The Grateful Dead Movie.  How do you describe working a snack bar and serving candy and popcorn to the chronically stoned?   “Hey man, I’ll take some of those, yeah, uhhhh, those, uhhh, I’ll have some, uhhh, yeeeah, ummm, some uhhh, popcorn man.”  Then, as if they were foreign tourists confused by the local currency, they simply stared at the bills in their hands until I deftly plucked the correct currency, handed them their change and sent them floating back to their seats.   Dealing with Deadheads was somewhat along the lines of dealing with the undead. 

The theatre job was a second job to help make ends meet with the added perk that it impressed the young Korean girl I was seeing at the time.  She considered it a sign that I wasn’t a lazy, shiftless American loser.  Had her fooled.  My fulltime job was at a downtown San Francisco hardware store; retail. 

Fresh out of college, brand new degree in hand and I was doing what you go to college to avoid.  Retail was in fact my career for most of my twenties.  I dabbled in some graduate classes and some computer classes but for the most part I chose, yes chose, retail.  No I wasn’t a “victim” of a bad economy; a bad attitude maybe, but not a bad economy.  I suppose I was spending those years trying to figure out just what in the hell I was going to do for the next 40 or 50 years.

Fox Hardware

It wasn’t all that long ago that I called those my wasted years.  There are times now as I leave work and scrape the office dog shit off my shoe that I look back on those days at Fox Hardware with a good deal of fondness.  Maybe some of the most enjoyable working years of my life.   Fox Hardware on Fourth Street near Mission was a venerable old business that had been around for many years when I started working there in the seventies.  The store proprietors, Fred and Alexander Fox owned the building along with the three story building across Jessie St, an alley actually, which housed the store’s offices and administrative staff.  Fox was the classic, old school hardware store. There wasn’t a spare square inch on the main floor, basement or mezzanine levels and every shelf and wall display overflowed with tools, fasteners, hardware and just about every conceivable gadget you could think of.  I got the job after one interview with Alexander who must’ve sized me up as someone who would show up to work, wouldn’t rob him blind or insult his customers.  The pay was subsistence which meant my American Dream was hoping one paycheck would tide me over until the next. 

“Everyone should work retail at least once in their life.”  It’s a popular saying among retail workers meaning all of us, if only briefly, should have to deal with the rude, entitled, self-centered elements of society called customers; also known as assholes with money.  The theory is that the experience teaches us to be better customers by walking miles and miles in retail shoes.  The fact of the matter is that I rarely encountered rude customers while I worked at Fox.  Maybe that’s because it was still a time before manners went out of style and retail workers actually approached customers with a friendly, “Can I help you?”  It was as if there was an understood, unspoken contract in place; I’ll help you to find what you need without a side order of attitude and you won’t bust my balls and treat me like a lackey.

I was young and green when I came to San Francisco from a suburbia that was, in those days, sheltered and white.  And I’d landed a job at Fourth and Mission; a confluence of San Francisco cultures.  A couple of blocks east is the financial district; banks, high rises, the PSE, and trendy watering holes.  A few blocks west and Market Street turns seedy; pawn shops, adult theatres grizzled winos and rough looking hookers.  At Sixth and Market seedy could turn into downright dangerous.  Sixth wasn’t a street for a stroll.   A couple blocks north is the swank shopping district of Union Square; Macy’s, Gucci, Tiffany, Gump’s and Neiman Marcus.  The suits from Montgomery Street; busy and rushed.  The different ethnicities; Filipinos, Hispanics from the nearby Mission District, the Chinese riding down from Chinatown on the 30 Stockton the bus line known as the Orient Express.  The homeless and down and outers curled up in doorways and corners amid their worldly possessions; toothless and grimy.  Some are humble and pleading, others angry and belligerent and still others answering to voices that only they can hear. They’re passed by wide eyed camera toting tourists shivering in summer clothes on a chilly, windy, foggy day because they assumed that since San Francisco is in California it must be sunny and warm.  I still tell people about what an interesting and exciting area it was to work in.    

And old Fox Hardware was a diverse confluence all its own.  There was lecherous old Daniel Alonso, the locksmith from Mexico who taught me how to change out a lockset and spent most of his workday cutting keys while keeping one eye on young Debbie Alvarez’s ample rack.  Irascible George Chew worked in the plumbing department in the store’s basement except when he was summoned to various other points in the store to translate Chinese.  Fox Hardware was where I worked with Mary Wilson and the Gipson twins Howard and Horace.  They were the first black people I’d actually interacted with on a consistent basis.  I did say that I grew up in sheltered white suburbia, didn’t I?  Mary, in her fifties and a strict Baptist from Texas would banter with gay Ray who would lean against the front counter and give a smiling, laughing, bawdy running commentary about the gay men coming into the store.  Mary would chuckle, “Ooooh Ray, you’re bad.”  Yeah this is where I learned that gay people are people just like you and I (unless you still carry bigoted baggage). 

There were the East Coasters, John from New Jersey and Jim (J. Dobbs) and Julie from New York.  I’d never met people who talked with such accents; only heard them on TV.  Another East Coast expatriate was Cuban John who smoked bushels of pot, sported a Castro beard and sympathized with the Cuban dictator.  He called me “animal” and introduced me to homemade Cuban food.

Joe Gonzalez the portly delivery driver was a loyal Giant’s fan who I, as a Dodger fan, often argued and bet with.  Joe's lifelong ambition was to visit The Mustang Ranch.  His ambition, and I suppose he in the process, was finally fulfilled when the bordello was made the site for a co-worker's bachelor party (No I didn't go).  Joe always walked around with a huge wad of bills in his pocket.  He was the company loan shark.  Sometimes paycheck didn’t get you to paycheck so if you were a little short before paydays you went to Joe to bridge the gap.  Joe charged usury rates but was nonthreatening.  Everyone paid him back with the interest because we knew that Joe was a good guy who wouldn’t resort to anger let alone violence even if we stiffed him. 

The lunch counter at Woolworth's

It was a diverse and colorful crew and with a few little hiccups of drama we got along like an extended family.  We loved each other’s company and while we groused about work I think all of us not so secretly enjoyed it.  When things were slow we took our breaks across the alley for a drink or two at the little dive bar in the old Victorian Hotel; a couple shots and a beer in 10 minutes at 10 in the morning.  The boys in the mezzanine would drift further down the alley and “burn one,” returning with glazed eyes and peaceful smiles.  We took lunch in the cramped little downstairs lunchroom or grabbed a burger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the old Flood Building at the Powell Street cable car turnaround.   On occasion we’d hop on the Orient and grab lunch in Chinatown sometimes bringing back dim sum or barbecued pork.  On paydays we splurged and went to the dimly lit, wood paneled, historic old (Since 1908) John’s Grill for a steak sandwich and three martinis.  When properly fortified J. Dobbs would lean on the mezzanine railing and serenade the downstairs customers.  On rainy days he would reach back into the thirties and croon “Stormy Weather;” “Don’t know why, there’s no sun up in the sky, stormy weatherrrrrrr.”  J. Dobbs’ musical career culminated when from downstairs we heard his version of The Village People’s, In the Navy; “In the Navy, when we ain’t got nothin’ to do. In the Navy, you blow me and I’ll blow you.”  The episode generated spontaneous laughter for days afterwards. 

Home of the 3 martini lunch

It’s been my observation these days that co-workers keep to themselves; work together but play with others and keep to themselves.  We took outings together; picnics, camping trips, deep sea fishing trips and baseball games.  We exchanged gifts at Christmas, not because somebody organized a Secret Santa but because we wanted to. We often went home late on Christmas Eve because we gathered after work at the dive bar and then boozily drifted off to our bus stops hours later in a chill rain. We ate at each other’s homes and out children played together.  We were friends, we socialized, we dated, we became families and we made families.  The two middle aged hippies, Barbara from the mezzanine and Steve, the paint guy from downstairs had been living together long enough that they were common law.  They hosted gatherings in their Sunset District flat every Christmas season to decorate Christmas cookies.  It was a tradition that ended when they legally tied the knot and then separated and got a divorce.  Larry who worked downstairs in paint married the owner’s assistant Colleen, and Paul who was the company handyman before graduating college married Jeanne the downstairs cashier.  Bill in the electrical department got Diana, one of the cashiers, pregnant and married her, then got another cashier, Abra, pregnant, divorced Diana and married Abra.

Frank, another of the Chinese in the crew was occasionally pissed off at me for dating Linda Wong, one of the other cashiers.  He wasn’t interested in Linda, he just didn’t think she should be dating a white guy.  I was summoned into Arthur’s office a few times to explain why I was always calling in sick when Linda was scheduled off.  I offered that I might be less sickly if I was given the same days off as Linda and hallelujah, I was cured.  A couple of years later and probably with some reason, Linda decided that I wasn’t worth the effort and fired me.  A short time later I met a newly arrived, innocent, good Catholic immigrant from The Philippines who worked in the accounting department.   Apparently there was some hesitancy on her part to be publicly associated with the long haired, bearded American who hung out with the unruly mezzanine guys and took breaks in the dive bar so she tried with limited success to keep our relationship a secret.  There were no secret relationships at Fox.  Everyone knew when there was trouble in one of the domestic circles and everyone also knew why two employees might be taking an extended inventory in the basement warehouse in the building across the alley.  Knowing smiles where shared when two employees left together after the workday was done and one came in the next day wearing the same clothes as the day before.  And that innocent good little Catholic named Cora would become my wife of more than thirty years.  When we go to The City we often park the car at the convenient Fifth and Mission Garage and on our way to Union Square, pass by Fox, the place where we met.  On occasion we go inside.  When our kids have been with us we point it out as the place where it all began for us.  It still displays a myriad of gadgets, is packed to the gills with stuff and things and is as old school as a hardware store can be; but at the same time it's different.

The hardware store, now under new ownership, is really all that remains largely unchanged in that little pocket of downtown.  The brothers who’ve probably long since passed away sold the business a few years after I’d moved on.  The Victorian is now the Mosser and the little dive bar is a bistro.  The Moscone Convention Center sprouted up and expanded, upscaling and sterilizing the whole area, ripping out its character.  Sony opened the Metreon complex a block away.  Woolworth’s with its bargain deals is gone, having been replaced by The Gap which offers trendy clothing at unreasonable prices. The homeless still hunker down in the corners only now there are more of them.

I wonder if Mary, the Gipsons, George or Alonso are still around.  They weren’t youngsters thirty years ago.  Did Ray’s carefree and unfortunately careless lifestyle, just before AIDS scourged the community, catch up to him?

And just as that little corner of San Francisco has changed so has the workplace in general.  It’s run by lawyers and HR administrators who would have fired us a dozen times over in a single day just for being ourselves.  In the vernacular of today’s corporate world just about everything we did would be “inappropriate,” despite the fact that we got our work done and took care of customers.  The workplace has become a buttoned down, straight laced, sterile, rules laden hermaphrodite; no singing ( particularly In the Navy) or joking, or dating, or showing cleavage or looking at said cleavage.  No personal calls, no gambling, no flirting, no inappropriate use of company equipment, no fun, no honesty, no life, no hunting, no fishing, no trespassing, no dogs allowed, no nothing.  Get to work, get in your cubicle, put your nose in your computer screen and don’t you dare enjoy yourself on company time. Your “personal space” may be safe in the hands of HR but beware the nasty office politics that could make you the topic of malicious stories, land you on double secret probation or get you fired; sometimes you can’t find an HR nanny when you need one.  And watch that professional jealousy that gets you an email from a so-called teammate pointing out a mistake you made and by the way your supervisor and his supervisor and his supervisor were all copied; gotcha.  I can’t recall that thirty years ago anybody ever asked me, in an official capacity, what books I read or movies I saw except to make conversation but now I’m just waiting for someone from H.R. to ask me for my Facebook password; “Take my life, please.”

You could say, from the way I’ve described it, that we were a juvenile, unruly bunch and at times yes we were.  But we usually disciplined ourselves.  I can’t recall anybody ever getting fired.  There was no theft of either store property or personal property even though purses were stored in open cubbies in a coatroom at the back of the store  Nobody ran to the boss or to HR (well there wasn’t really any HR, just someone who handled “personnel").  We took care of our conflicts on our own and in those rare instances when management tried to get involved in a dispute we usually just told them, “It’s a personal matter, we’ll work it out.”

I make much more money now and I handle much greater responsibility.  I spend millions of dollars in corporate funds and I take my work home with me even when I leave my computer at work.  I take home the concern that something was left undone or worry about the drama that’s going to unfold the next day.  And when I get an email from the fussy old woman (he’s really a middle aged man) in HR admonishing us what constitutes an “inappropriate” t-shirt on casual Friday I harken back to Clint Eastwood’s quip in his role as Dirty Harry; “Personnel?  That’s for assholes.”