From the time I was a young child, I had a savings account at PSFS – the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. My mother had opened it for me and said that if I wanted to go to college one day, I would need to pay for it myself. She didn’t say that just once – it was a continuing refrain.
I never thought of my family as being poor because we always had a home and food to eat. Mom was a waitress, and Dad was a guitar player. I guess their combined income placed us in the lower middle-class category. Although they impressed upon me the importance of education, my parents’ well of financial support was dry as they had already assisted my older brother through college. As a child, every dollar that came my way went into my PSFS account, and in high school I was eager to start building up the balance.
So, it was exciting for me at sixteen to start my first my part-time job as the Sunday morning bread boy at Dave’s Deli, never mind the minimal number of hours offered and the incredibly low pay – $1.25 an hour. I had a real job, and I could start to grow that college account.
My duties included sweeping behind the counters, in the back kitchen area and throughout the customer area of the store. Shortly after I began there, I was sweeping up after the morning rush of customers had subsided. As I systematically made my way through the store, propelling the wide push broom ahead of me, I noticed something green on the floor in the cereal section. It was a five-dollar bill!
It took me four hours of work to make five dollars (before taxes). If I had found that bill out on the street, I would have celebrated my good luck and put it aside to go into the savings account. But I wasn’t outside. I was in Dave’s Deli. My Sunday School instruction and/or my mother’s schooling told me what to do.
I left the broom propped up in the corner and went up to the cash register. Betty, an older woman who was one of the four family member owners, was on duty that day. Holding out the bill, I said, “I found this on the floor in the back. Somebody must have dropped it.”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything and just looked confused. Then she took the bill from me and smiled saying, “They will probably come back for it. You did the right thing.”
The next thing I know, she summoned her husband, old man Dave himself, to the register to let him know what had happened. He was surprised as well and said to me in his thick Eastern European accent, “You’re a good boy, Joey.”
I didn’t understand their reaction that morning since turning in the bill was the correct thing to do. But looking back, the family that owned the deli was in a constant battle with dishonest people – customers who claimed to have not received something they paid for, suppliers who tried to take any advantage imaginable, even a pickle man who was stealing one pickle from every bucket he delivered.
Before I knew it, I had moved from the limited Sunday morning shift to working ten hours every Saturday. As their trust in me grew, the owners gave me more responsibilities. After a few years, I was working fulltime during the summers, doing a wide range of work including driving the delivery truck. They eventually showed their trust by allowing me to occasionally run the cash register when there were no family members available to do so.
For six years, starting in high school, I worked at Dave’s. How to turn a five-dollar bill into a college education? For me, it started with a simple honest act.