12-23-12 THE MAIL ROOM
I was eleven years old when I asked Mr. Brambles who lived across the street at 450 Harvard Ave, 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 with Mr. Brambles who was the Comptroller for Auerbach’s Department store. Auerbach's was a big five story building on the corner of Third South and State Street in Salt Lake City. Before long, Mr. Brambles asked me if I wanted to be a stocker/delivery boy at Auerbach’s.
“Sure,” I said, I was elated. The job paid 75 cents an hour, which was 50 cents an hour more than doing his yard work. The third and last time that Mr. Brambles hired me was in 1952. I was attending South High school at the time. He, bless his big heart, took me into his office and called me his “mail boy,” then and there. No application form needed. Once again I was elated. It’s who you know not what you know that counts, that’s for sure.
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 loved 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 me about twenty minutes to deliver each mail run. After a short introductory period, I was irreplaceable. I was Mr. Bramble’s Auerbach’s Manager- Comptroller, mail boy, and neighbor too boot.
About a week after working, Social Security applied for and all, I placed a flattened out big empty cardboard box on a deli table next to the back wall at the dark end of the dingy mail room on the mezzanine. I used the table top area for cat naps, reading, and studies, day dreaming, hiding, and so on. I would punch in at Auer Bach’s, time clock, and then walk two blocks over to the post office for the mail. Then I would return, and 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 department’s 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 through the back halls, unseen by either the store’s neither 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, carrying 60-70 pounds of mail back and forth to the post office twice a day. Additionally, I was under-appreciated, criticized, slack time non-existent and my time card had to be validated by a security guard each time I came and went.
Another thing that pissed me off, the mail didn’t have the department numbers or the buyers’ names, which caused me to often deliver mail late or to the wrong place. I was giving mail to the “Lingerie Department,” when it should have been left at the, “Women’s Ready- to -ear Department.” and mail at the “Men’s-Wear Department” when it should have been dropped at One time in particular, a short lady buyers that 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 the department buyers themselves weren’t sure a letter, magazine or sample belonged at their department. 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 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.
I don’t remember the exact date, but one day in 1951, I walked nimbly into Mr. Brambles’ office with the intention of telling him about the prior mentioned suggestion and asking 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, goss receipts and expenses envelope off at the post office. All this just to please Brambles and Richie Mrs. Auerbach in New York.
“Just do my 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?”
“Just one example is you put the wrong date on the mail yesterday.”
“The post office put the wrong date in the stamp machine when I took it over on Monday. The post office clerk put $800 dollars on the stamp meter and Monday’s date on the stamp machine and I didn’t use the mailing machine until Tuesday.” It was no use, so I said, “I give my two weeks’ notice.”
"Don’t bother turn in your time card.,” He said calmly, no emotion.
The next day, I hired in at the department store a half block west of Auerbachs, 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 to boot?
Mr. Brambles, I’m sorry Mrs. Auerbach closed your store shortly after you fired me.
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.
KARL WALLACE
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