When I came home from Northwest, the reception wasn’t exactly warm. My decision to leave college was not popular with my parents.
Especially Big Ab.
He was pissed.
As far as he was concerned, I had wasted my time, squandered his money, and walked away from an opportunity plenty of other kids would have been grateful to have. He wasn’t interested in what I had learned in the Phillips Hall stairwell. He was interested in what I hadn’t earned.
A degree.
Once it became clear I wasn’t going back to college, the next move was obvious. I needed to get a job.
The job I found wasn’t exactly part of a long-range career plan. I became an assistant manager at a tuxedo rental store. It was actually a pretty good job. Every day brought in a different cast of characters. Grooms who had no idea what they wanted. Fathers of the bride who knew exactly how much they wanted to spend.
Teenagers getting ready for prom.
Drunk best men trying to keep the groom out of trouble long enough to get him measured. Everybody was preparing for some big moment in their lives, and for a little while, I got to be part of it. I talked to people all day long.
Different ages.
Different backgrounds.
Different stories.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was still learning how to read a room. The job also came with one benefit I hadn’t anticipated.
Bridal fashion shows.
Every so often, I got recruited to model the tuxedos. We’d walk the runway while people stared at us and decided which gowns and tuxedos they wanted for their weddings. I’d stroll out in formalwear, pretending I knew what I was doing, alongside some exceptionally attractive female models. Suddenly, dropping out of college didn’t seem like a complete disaster.
At least not to me.
Big Ab probably remained unconvinced.
The bridal-show models weren’t the only attractive women who made the tuxedo business interesting. There was a women’s clothing store next door, and a really cute girl worked there.
We started talking.
Then we started going to lunch together.
Several times, as I recall.
Nothing ever came of it.
Nearly fifty years later, Debbie and I went out to hear a local band.
And there she was.
The girl from the clothing store next door.
Let’s just say…
She looked a little different than I remembered. Of course, I’m sure I looked exactly the same. Debbie didn’t ask many questions when I told her the story.
She just laughed.
Debbie is a good sport.
The tuxedo business lasted about six months. I was still playing a little music at night and on weekends, mostly in coffee shops, but music wasn’t paying enough to qualify as a career.
Then the company where Dad worked started hiring.
They paid really well.
That got my attention.
So I filled out an application. Before I turned it in, Dad gave me one piece of advice.
“They won’t tolerate lying.”
Fair enough.
Then I reached a question on the application.
It was one of those old-school employment applications that apparently wanted to know everything you had ever done except what you were actually qualified to do.
The question read something like:
“Have you ever used hallucinogenic drugs?” I stared at it for a while. Dad had just told me they wouldn’t tolerate lying.
So I told the truth.
I checked yes.
I’m not sure whether honesty impressed them, they simply needed people badly enough to overlook it, or Big Ab had quietly put in a good word for me.
Whatever happened behind the scenes…
Somehow, they hired me anyway.
Big Ab had wanted me to find a real job.
Now I had one.
I started at the absolute bottom. The lowest guy on the totem pole. On top of that, I wasn’t simply the new kid.
I was Bob’s boy.
Big Ab was a legend in that company.
Everybody knew him.
They respected him.
And if you happened to get on his bad side…
They feared him.
He managed four different production plants and operated by one simple rule: Do your job, and do it well. If you did that, you stayed on his good side.
If you didn’t…
Well…
You get the picture.
Being Bob’s boy probably helped me get the job. Once I had it, though, the name came with expectations. People knew who my father was. They knew how he ran his plants. And they were watching to see whether his son could measure up. I never worked directly for Big Ab. That would have been an obvious conflict. He stayed out of my way and treated me like everyone else.
At least officially.
But I’m sure he kept an eye on me. Big Ab had a way of knowing what was happening in all the plants.
Not just his.
I doubt his boy was the exception. Every promotion had to be examined. Every opportunity had to be justified. Nobody wanted it to look like they were showing favoritism to Bob’s boy. So I moved up the ladder a little more slowly than I expected. Supposedly, that was because they couldn’t give Bob’s boy any special treatment.
Funny how that worked.
Being Bob’s boy got my foot in the door. Then it became the reason they kept stepping on it.
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