My first job out of college was working for a place called Cleveland typewriter and computer. I was hired originally because I had a computer science minor and they needed somebody who knew computers. Here I’m thinking that I would be doing something like helping set up computers or networking or who knows what it was back in ’91. The truth of the matter was that I was hired to sell computers and typewriters. The thing about Cleveland typewriter and computer was that the end computer part of the name was added on 3 months before I was hired. So one of my duties along with selling typewriters because nobody came into the shop for computers and if they did the manager or sales manager would jump all over that customer and do the sale…. But what am I duties was collections. Collections by going out to someone or a customer’s house who financed a computer or in this case mostly typewriters and was delinquent on their payments. So every Friday evening before close I would get a set of addresses and names of people who were delinquent on their payments. Saturday morning starting around 7:00 a.m. I would drive out to the furthest address and knock on the door no earlier than 8:00 a.m. when you have a stranger at your door at 8:00 a.m. requesting payment or the machine you give them one of the other. Mind you when I first started doing this all of the collections were out in the outer ring suburbs of Cleveland. So brecksville Shaker heights Bay village Avon cities like that. Those people almost always turned over the machine. There were a few that tried to write checks but I was instructed not to take checks as payment that I needed cash or a money order. One person gave me money order that paid for the whole machine plus interest. Two weeks later I was going out for the machine again because winds up it was a fake money order and when I went there to the house there was a for sale sign and the house was empty. But I digress. So as I was able to complete the pickups on these delinquent accounts I started to get more and more pickups that were in the inner city ring. Again when you have someone showing up at your house at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning asking for payment or a computer or typewriter people freak.
The very last collection that I ever attempted was over in the buckeye neighborhood of Cleveland. I got there at 8:00 and at 8:05 knocked on the door and a little kid no more than 6 years old open the door and I could hear his mother in the background yelling “who is it?” Two which the little kid yelled back to his mother “it’s the man” and slam the door in my face. I turned around went back to my car went back to the main office for Cleveland typewriter and computer told them the story handed in the collection sheet and said I am not doing that again.
A week later somehow I wound up as manager of one of the satellite stores out in Euclid and mind you at this time I was living on the complete other side of town. So it was a 45-minute drive there 45 minute drive back with traffic both ways and with the sun in my eyes both ways. I lasted 2 months there. And then was done. Went back to pizza delivery and was happy for 5 years until I started working at Kinko’s.
