THE MAIL ROOM

                                                          KARL WALLACE
                                                          THE MAIL ROOM

      I was eleven years old, when I asked Mr. Brambles, a neighbor, if I could work for him doing yard work.

      “Ok!” he said.
    
      I got 25 cents an hour, I was elated, it was my first experience working for Mr. Brambles. He was Comptroller for Auerbach’s Deptartment store. Auerbach's was a big-five story building on the corner
of Third South and State Street in Salt Lake City, Utah. Before long, Mr. Brambles asked me if I wanted to be a stocker/delivery boy.
      “Sure,” I said,

      I was elated. The job paid 75 cents an hour, which was 50 cents an hour more than I made doing his yard work.

     The third and last time, Mr. Brambles hired me, I was attending South High school. It was in 1952. Bless
his big heart, he took me into his office then there and straight out called me his “mail boy,” No application form needed. Once again, I was elated. It’s "who you know not what you know that counts."

     When I first started the job, it was a cozy job paying 80 cents an hour, five days a week, with lots of
slack time. I love slack time!

      My responsibility was to deliver the mail to the thirty departments in the store twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It would take about twenty minutes to deliver each mail run. After a short introductory period, I was "irreplaceable." I was Mr. Bramble’s mail boy and neighbor too boot.

     About a week after working, social security and oher so called essential applied for, I place a flattened out big empty big empty cardboard box on a deli table next to the back wall. It was at the dark end of the dingy mail room on the mezzanine. I used the table top area for catnaps, reading, studies, day dreaming, hiding, etc. After punching in at Auerbach’s time clock I would then walk two blocks over to the post office for the mail. After my return, I would go to the mail room. I’d put everything on a large table letters, packages, magazines, etc., then open the letters with my pocket knife… (just kidding). I would open the letters with the automatic letter opener-stamp machine, put a rubber band around each departments mail, and put everything on a flat oversized cookie pan left there by the previous mail boy, Mr. Gordon Belnap. I would go around the five-storied building, up and down the stairs through the back halls, unseen by neither the store’s customers nor Mr. Brambles, for that matter.

      But then, after near a year, the good old days slowly dead-ended. Nothing lasts long in a mail boy’s
world. I was making the same old stinkin’ 80 cents an hour. I had to carry 60-70 pounds of mail back and forth to the post office twice a day. I was under appreciated, criticized, slack time was non-existent, and my time card had to be validated by a security guard each time a came and entered the employees entrance.

     Another thing that pissed me off, was the mail didn't have the department number and or the buyers' names, which caused me to often delive mail late or to the wrong department. I was giving mail to the "Lingerie Department" when often it should have been dropped at the "Boys Department,"  when it should have been left at the,“Women’s Ready to Wear Department.” Mail at the Men’s Wear Department” when it should have been dropped at the “Boys Department.”

     One time in particular, a short lady buyer who wore short skirts, said to me, “I don’t want to have to sort
through the morning mail you bring me, wasting my time, doing your job. Place all of my mail on my office
desk only at five o’clock from now on,” I felt like placing her mail you know where.

    Often times, the department buyers themselves weren’t sure a letter, magazine or samples belonged at their departments. There was one exception, the Credit Department. That department would send out self-
addressed envelopes with its billings and advertisements. They would be returned in an easily identifiable
self-addressed envelope with a check or concerns. It seemed reasonable to me that the other departments
could do as did the Credit Department.

     One fine day I thought to myself, why do so many places send us mail inadequately addressed? For one
thing, they do not realize that I’m a part-time student attending a social school (South High), getting loaded
down with sixty pounds of mail twice a day. It's not a mom-and-pop operation we’re running here.

     The exact date I don’t remember, but one day in 1952, I walked nimbly into Mr. Brambles’ office with
the intention of telling him about the prior mentioned suggestion and to ask him for a raise. Communication is
a two-way process, as Miss Nobel, my English teacher, used to say.

     Mr. Brambles turned a deaf ear, “Just do your job.”

     As I said before, times had changed for the worst. I had to wait until 5 pm or later to leave the store, to drop gross receipts and expenses now had to be placed in a registered large envelope and then I had to drop the envelope off at the post office. All this just to please Brambles and richie Mrs. Auerbach in New York.

     “Just do your job.” he said. At this point in time, I asked for a raise.

      Straight forward, and calmly he said, as if it were his money, “No! As a matter of fact, I’m rather
disappointed in you Mr. Hickenlooper.”

     “Why?”

      “You put the wrong date on the mail yesterday, for instance.”

     “The post office put the wrong date in the stamp machine when I took it over there on Monday. The post
office clerk put $800 on the stamp meter and Monday’s date on the stamp machine and I didn’t use the machine until Tuesday.” 

      It was no use so I said, “I give my two weeks’ notice.”

      "Don’t bother coming back,” He said calmly, no emotion.

     The very next day, I hired in at the department store a half block west, called “The Paris Department Store” as a night janitor, at 50 cents more an hour, with lots of slack time, did I mention I like slack time, and a yearly employees Christmas party.

     Mr. Brambles, I’m sorry Mrs. Auerbach closed your store after I left.

     Post Amble

At three in the morning while
Mr. Paris lies in bed
Ok Hickenlooper is cleaning the heads.
He vacuums the floor and sweeps the stairs.
He starts at the top and works on down.
No one’s aware that he was ever there.

At the Aurbach job it was the same way too.
If he starved, got swatted or went down the sewer drain.
No one would notice he was out of town.
No one’s aware that he was ever there.

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