I was recently contacted about a job opportunity. Someone at the Real Neat Novelties and Party Favors Company in Woodland Hills, California called me. It seems they needed someone to write copy for their new online catalogue. I wasn’t sure how many new ways you could describe plastic dog poop and rubber vomit, but I thought I’d go see what they had to say. I always wondered what kind of people work at a place like that. I was about to find out and it was nothing I could have possibly been prepared for.
“We are the Lexus of novelties and party favors”, CEO Melvin Miller began, “I started here twenty two years ago as an outside salesman I still hold the record for selling the most complete sets of the Gilligan’s Island cast standees, and that was before they came with the light up eyes.” The pride in his voice was inspiring. As he waxed nostalgic, a knock came at his office door. “Ah, here’s the guy you want to meet. This is our general manager Kim Kimball.” Kim nodded and shook my hand, never quite looking me in the eye. “Howya’?”, he said. Trying to sound as sincere as possible, I told Kim it was a pleasure to meet him. Melvin told us to “…go off and discuss the project”.
Kim and I made our way down the corridor to his office, which was brilliantly appointed with Star Wars standees, plastic dolphins, and a five foot tall Statue of Liberty. I asked how Kim started at Real Neat. “I started as a designer in the drink umbrella division”, he told me. I remarked that that was quite a leap to general manager. “Yes”, he said, “and it’s all thanks to Louis Rukeyser.” Kim went on to explain that, one night, while waiting for a re-run of “This Old House” to come on PBS, he happened onto the end of “Wall Street Week” with Louis Ruckeyser. Then it happened. “Ruckeyser used the phrase “fiduciary responsibility” – the rest – as they say, is history.”
The next day, Kimball was at his desk putting the finishing touches on his “Happy Face” drink umbrella, when he heard a discussion in the next cubicle about accounting procedures. “Sorry”, he said, entering the cube, “I couldn’t help overhearing. I think we need to tighten up our accounting methods here. After all, we have a fiduciary responsibility to the owners of Real Neat.” “Fiduciary responsibility” was like a magic potion to the career of Kim Kimball. He was asked what he felt needed to be done. Trying to look as pensive as possible, he said, “It’s all about defining tasks and re-defining goals. There is so much that can, dare I say, needs to be done on a subjective and objective level.” He nodded an affirmative punctuation to his meaningless statement.
And, it worked! Kim was added to the attendee list of every staff meeting at Real Neat. In fact, after a while, staff meetings became a full time job for him. At one meeting, he declared, “We are a novelty company, this job should be, dare I say, must be, fun.” All in attendance agreed, and Kim was made the general manager of the company. He set about re-organizing things to streamline the operation, and increase the “fun-factor”. The first thing he did was to layoff half of the cleaning crew. He replaced them with placards that read, “Let’s Try to be Real Neat at Real Neat”.
The next thing he did was to initiate a feeling of teamwork and camaraderie in the office. Line dancing lessons were just the thing to accomplish this. Nothing said “team” like the entire hourly staff getting sweaty together to “Achy Breaky Heart”. Similarly, the salaried employees would need the same infusion of team spirit. Kim’s answer for this was a trip to Hawaii, where upper management could compete against each other in long boat races. “A little pricey”, he said, “but I got to see Don Ho too.”
The next step for Kim was what he calls, unashamedly, “creative accounting.” “The first thing we did was to take all our temporary employees and have them hired as “cab drivers” for the GO_GO Car Service. GO_GO has twenty five “drivers” but no cars”, he said with a wink, while still avoiding eye contact, “When an employee comes to work each day, say as an order picker, he is given a voucher. We process that voucher as if it was a travel expenditure. If a person works eight hours at ten dollars an hour, we process it as an eighty dollar cab ride. It’s all sorta’ legal, and really makes our bottom line look tight.”
Proudly, he told me that it was his idea to buy office supplies out of the Christmas party fund. “We just have parallel meanings for items. Chips and dip are post-its and staples, etc” He went on to say that the Christmas party was a ".. pain to most employees. They preferred to be home with their families. Besides, at several parties, the lack of a Christmas bonus brought the “nastiness out in some people” and a couple of times the authorities had to be called." During this tutorial, Kim’s phone rang, and he was summoned to another staff meeting.
With his apologies, he loaded me up with novelties and party favors, asking me to “…go home and put something together.” Again, trying to sound as sincere as I could, I assured him I would. I left the things he gave me on the table in the receptionist's area, I think, because I felt no fiduciary responsibility. I also wanted to hurry home, because I wanted to, dare I say needed to, "freshen up".
Marge the Barge and the Sure Thing
January/04
There’s no such thing as a sure thing. My friend Finkel the bookie used to tell me, “When they say don’t worry ----- start worrying.” It was my junior year in college, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. I was sitting with Bobby McVay in the Castle Bar and Grill on Lexington Avenue. Behind the bar, Marge Flannery was calling in bets. It was what she did. Sure she was the barmaid, but calling in bets was where her “real money” was.
McVay was a degenerate gambler. “Win a few, lose a few thousand”, he used to say with an Irish grin. Bobby used to joke that each year he would watch the NBA playoffs from the airport, in case he had to leave town quickly. “You don’t know how fast you can talk”, he told me, “until you are calling in a thousand dollar bet on a pay phone and you have no spare change, for when your dime runs out.” He once told me that his dream was to go to “someplace like Guam” and build the McVay Hilton. It would be a hotel that catered to broke gamblers. All the rooms would be on the first floor so no one could jump out the window to their death.
As Marge, known lovingly to the patrons as “Marge the Barge” called in the bets this day, McVay nudged me. “She just called in a daily double”, he said. “So what?” I responded. Bobby went on to inform me that the first race went off at 1:15; it was now 1:50, which meant that the first half of the daily double was already over. He asked Marge how she could get a bet in after the race was over? She said, “They just let me do it.” This was in the days before off track betting, cell phones and ESPN. Current information on sporting events was at a premium. And, McVay’s brain went into overdrive.
Over beers at the Midway Bar, just around the corner from The Castle, McVay assembled his “A” Team. Tony Delvecchio, Rick Ramirez,and myself. “If we know the winner of the first race”, he began, “We can wheel it with the horses in the second race.” A broad smile came across his face. Wheeling simply is betting one horse as the front end of the daily double in combination with every horse in the second race. Barring the end of the world happening before the second race going off, we couldn’t lose.
McVay and I would station ourselves in the Big “A” bar right across from Aqueduct racetrack. In those days, the phones in taverns in close proximity to the track had to be closed down at the start of the race day. This was pre-cell phones, so this method limited bookmakers, or so the politicians thought. Why someone would leave the track and walk across the street to call a bookie was never made quite clear to me.
Our plan was simple. Delvecchio would stand in the track parking lot with binoculars facing the edge of the grandstand. In the track, Ramirez, wearing a wool overcoat on the 19th of July, in order to hide the poster board under it, watched the first race run. Back at the bar, the barmaid headed toward the phone booth to shut down the phone. McVay begged her not too. “My mom is in the hospital and this is the only number she can reach me at”, he said with a tear in his voice and a fifty dollar bill in his hand. She acquiesced I am sure it was more the fifty than the story.
Back at the track the horses in the first race headed down the home stretch. Number 3 a filly named Judy Jump Up won the race and Ramirez drew a big numeral 3 on the poster board with a Magic Marker. At the end of the grandstand he held it high over his head. In the parking lot Delvecchio spotted the number and raced toward the Big “A”. Tony was all of 250 pounds and this was a very hot day. He literally fell into the bar and gasped “THREE” as he hit the floor. I headed for the phone booth, called Marge and said I had a daily double to put in. She said, “Go ahead.” I wheeled the 3 horse with all eight horses in the second race for $50. The total bet was $400. It mattered not to us; we were a “sure thing”. I stepped out of the phone booth just in time to see Ramirez, in his overcoat, still carrying the big number 3, come through the door. The barmaid, shaking her head and pocketing yet another fifty said, “I don’t know what just went on here, but I think it was illegal. For the rest of the afternoon we drank and laughed and had a great time.
When early departees from the track arrived at the Big “A”, we asked what the double paid. We nearly fainted when we were told $320.80. We had won $8020 for a $400 investment. The barmaid got another fifty and we headed home. We decided to arrive at the Castle separately. First McVay arrived, then Delvecchio, me, and finally Ramirez.
McVay and Delvecchio were playing pool as I walked in. As she delivered my beer to me, Marge said, “I couldn’t get your bet in.” I looked at her like she was kidding. “Seriously”, she said, “I kept getting busy signals. Nothing got in”.I looked at my fellow conspirators, it was a scene reminiscent of “Ocean’s 11”. The only person who made any money was the barmaid at the Big “A”, or so we thought.
Tuesday was pay up day with Finkel. We were all at the Castle to settle up with him. He sat there buying drinks for his unlucky customers. Marge noted the tie he was wearing. “Hey Finkel, where’d you get that tie? Some guy couldn’t guess your weight?” Finkel smiled and said, “Look at you Margie, win a few thousand wheeling a double and right away you’re a wise ass.”
That line landed like boulder. McVay, Ramirez, Delvecchio and I walked out of the Castle for the last time that day. We headed to the Midway, where we sat drinking shots and beers and talking of sure things. Of course, sometimes McVay would introduce the definition of "justifiable homicide" into the conversation.
December/03
I confess. I love the Soprano’s. They are all there; Tony, Uncle Junior, Carmela, and the rest. Paulie Walnuts is going to flip on Tony. Christopher is up to his neck, or in his case his toes, in heroin. And an FBI undercover agent has befriended his girlfriend Adriana. The weekly episode is always a must see for me. Then, once again, the flashbacks start.
When I was a junior in college, I met Augie. He was pre-med from Astoria, New York. He was a nice enough guy, always up for a touch football game, or a trip to Bruno’s Cara Mia, with the guys, whatever the diversion de jour was. Augie’s father owned a catering hall in Queens. It was always featured in the papers as the venue for a socialite wedding or political fund-raiser. One afternoon in the cafeteria, Augie asked if anyone wanted to make some “extra money” over the weekend working at the Pompeii Terrace, his fathers catering facility. Peterson, Tener, and myself said, “Sure”.
We all arrived at the Pompeii at 8am on Saturday. Someone named Peter T. greeted us. That was, we were to learn, the way of things at the Pompeii Terrace. There were no last names in use. The bosses were Peter T., Bobby G., and Johnny Boy. As fine a group as you would ever meet. Peter was the main man. His only advice to us was, “Dohn’ foolaroun, dis is a bizness”. They tapped Petersen to be the headwaiter and MC at the afternoon wedding. He was given a card with a selection of canned comments to make at different times during the reception. “Dancing for the first time as husband and wife”, “Now a word from the woman who knew you when, your mom”, and so it went. He was very excited at the chance and somewhat nervous too.
Jimmy “Steel Door”, yet another last-nameless member of the staff gave him some advice. “Don’t stand dere readin’ offa da’ card like a mo-mo, give an approximation of what’s dere. Ad lib some, dey’ll luv ya.” That bit of advice would ultimately end Peterson’s headwaiter career, and almost, it turned out, end Peterson. I took my place behind the bar, and Marty Tener headed outside to help with the valet parking.
The wedding was a nice affair. A young couple from Brooklyn, whose families were well acquainted with Peter T., Bobby G. and the rest. The groom was the son of a Deputy Mayor of New York City and the bride was the heiress to a huge bail bond fortune. The guests were all seated, the waiters had begun taking drink orders and Peterson took to the stage to announce the arrival of the wedding party. It all went like clockwork. Jimmy "Steel Door" stopped by the bar to assure me, with a wink that, “Youse guys are doin’ great!” Then it started.
Two uncles of the bride had arrived late and were sneaking into the hall after the bridal party entered. Peterson, who now thought that his stand up career had begun, said, in a distinct Don Rickles’ tone, “Hey look at this, two guys from the Mafia, trying to get in here unnoticed.” The place fell silent. I made eye contact with Peterson, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. He continued to smile, less broadly, however, when two of the uncles “associates” told him his humor was less than appreciated.
In the parking lot, Tener had just broken the taillight of an Alfa Romeo backing it into a parking spot. That problem was compounded by the fact that he broke the light by hitting it against the driver’s door of the Deputy Mayor’s limousine. A dejected Marty Tener, filled out a bunch of paperwork and then was sent inside to bus tables. On stage Peterson moved lightly from the “Chicken Dance” to the “Hokey Pokey”.
Ultimately, the bride threw her garter, which was caught by the groom’s cousin. As it turned out, the girl he was to put the garter on was the maid of honor, and sister of the bride. The canned line on the card Peterson was holding was, “Be careful when you slip that garter on, last week we had a guy who tried to make it into a necklace.” Not graphic enough for our new “King of Comedy”. Peterson said, to the astonishment of all in attendance, “My advice, when you slide the garter on, is just keep sliding until your hand is incredibly warm.” That was literally the showstopper. Tener later claimed he actually saw pistols drawn. I cannot verify that. But I know the crowd turned surly.
Augie, who had just arrived to work the wedding after this one was hastily summoned to take over the MC duties at this affair. Peterson and Tener were both shown the exit. As Jimmy “Steel Door” paid them for the day, he told them that “Usually you get tips too. But there are no tips for youse. I think youse should consider safe passage outta’ here to be your tip.”
Later, I finished my day behind the bar, got my envelope from Bobby G., thanking him for an interesting experience. Walking to my car, I almost pirouetted making sure no one was behind me. I checked my rear view mirror a couple of dozen times during the ride home. I was relieved when it was all just a memory. It was like the Bowery Boys meet The Sopranos. Later, Peterson claimed that his sense of humor was too “cutting edge” for the crowd. Augie told us that his father often spoke about that day and “wasn’t too mad.” The fact that we were still talked about at the Pompeii sent cold chills through me.
When reflecting upon that almost surreal experience,I am absolutely sure of one thing. Silvio, Tony, Ralphie and the whole Bada Bing Club crowd are much easier to deal with from the other side of a television screen.
