In my life, I have been known by a lot of names, including Joey, Joe, Joseph, Pooch and Mister Puccio. There was also a short period when my boss called me Bobo. I did not appreciate it then, and a half century later, the thought of it still summons a feeling of irritation.
It was the summer of 1975, and I had just graduated from community college. The next step was to pursue a BA degree in mass communications/filmmaking at the University of South Florida in Tampa starting in September. Although a nearby community college had been very affordable, that would not be the case for the planned two years in Florida. It was a must that I earn as much money as I could that summer while still in Philly.
Unfortunately, my boss Danny at the deli could only give me weekend hours at that point as he already had on the payroll a fulltime employee who served as driver, delivery person, and general helper. He was concerned about me, however, and worked out a deal with his brother Morty, who ran a shoe warehouse. I could work at the warehouse Monday through Friday, but if Danny needed to fill a staffing hole, I was to shoot back to the deli as needed. It was not a typical arrangement, but it seemed like it would work for the three of us. Most importantly, it would allow me to bankroll tuition money.
So, I became an employee of Dial Shoe Company, which operated a well-established, fairly large chain of stores selling low to mid-priced shoes in the Philadelphia area and beyond. The warehouse was a large, somewhat new building located in far northeast Philly. On my first day, I succeeded in locating the facility (no GPS back then) and walked into a space with row after row after row of high warehouse shelving holding tens of thousands of boxes of shoes.
I was wearing my normal work attire – a tee shirt, jeans and red sneakers. Morty took one look at me and said, “Welcome to Dial, Joey. I think I’ll call you Bobo.”
I was confused. “Bobo?” I asked.
He pointed at my sneakers. “In this business, cheap sneaks are called bobos, and that’s what you’re wearing,” he explained.
Well, it’s true that they were cheap sneakers, but as I have noted, money was a real concern for me. Nevertheless, I shrugged it off, since Morty had said it in good humor and was starting to show me around and introduce me to the few other workers in the warehouse.
By the end of that day, I had been put in charge of the slipper department! Morty said that I would be the “slipper schlepper.” Once again, not the nicest thing to say, but he laughed as he said it. I didn’t know what to think since I knew nothing about the shoe business and even less about slippers.
Over the next few days, I learned from the other workers what was happening and how someone such as I could be given the exalted position of slipper schlepper on my first day. In turns out that Dial was in serious financial difficulty, and it was closing down stores at a rapid pace. In fact, it was the warehouse crew that would go into closed stores to remove the unsold merchandise and all of the store fixtures. In normal times, the warehouse would act as a distribution point, with restock orders coming in from the stores and the merchandise then being delivered throughout the region in Dial’s one large truck. The summer of 1975 was not normal. My experience was that I spent more time in taking back unsold merchandise from the stores than in pulling items to fulfill new store needs.
Honestly, except when we were at a closed-down store, there wasn’t a lot of work to be done. Morty tried to keep me busy, but usually the bulk of my day was spent doing nothing and waiting. I waited until the morning visit in the parking lot of the mobile coffee truck, then I waited until lunchtime, and then waited until the blessed end of the day.
The boredom meant looking at my watch every five minutes or so. Within the first week, I stopped wearing my watch. Despite that, I usually knew what time it was.
Piped into the warehouse was an “easy listening” FM station that played all of the instrumental music I did not want to hear. There was not a DJ, but at the top of the hour there would be a couple of minutes of news, then right back to the “beautiful” music. Every 15 minutes, there were commercials. Subconsciously, I kept track of them and usually knew about what time it was even though I was trying not to think about it.
After several weeks, Danny’s underpaid fulltime driver quit. On that marvelous day, Morty yelled, “Bobo, get yourself to the deli. Danny needs you.”
I walked out of the warehouse and never returned. Working at the deli was arduous and demanding, but I was never bored, and the time flew by.
My Bobo summer taught me that it is always better to have a job where you’re busy rather than one in which not much is required or expected. I also learned that if you are the recipient of an unearned promotion or appointment, such as being told that you were the head of the slipper department even though you had no experience, there is something unusual happening or the boss is messing with you.