After losing my job at the nightclub, I had to scramble to find another job. I didn't have any money saved up because I was spending it on gas and eating out. (I was hardly ever at home because sometimes, I'd wind up working 10-hour days, from 4pm to 2am six days a week.) I didn't really get to make a lot of my meals.
I was going through the want ads. One of the things I frequently looked for was "Customer Service." I found this one place on Emerson just north of Colfax Avenue near Downtown Denver. The business was in what used to be a regular two-story house. This was the corporate office for JM Enterprises. JM Enterprises was the parent company for Unimart, US Direct and other entities that were wholesale buyer's club. People could join and get discounts on things like furniture, TVs, stereos and so forth. They recently started a subsidiary company called Unimart/Rent City, which was a rent-to-own business and right next door. It was located in an actual store front.
I came into the corporate office and applied. I was then brought into an office to interview. There was a woman behind a desk. She appeared to be in her mid-30s, had bright red hair and was rather attractive. She also smoked during the entire interview. Her name was Dind. She told me that the job would be working in the showroom, helping customers decide what items they wanted to rent to own, do credit checks, complete contracts, help on deliveries and every once in awhile, make calls to collect on delinquent accounts. It didn't sound too bad. I thought I would be able to do all that and that's what I told her. The manager of Rent City came in and talked to me. His name was Brud. He was from Texas and talked like it. He gave me a little more of the rundown on the collections aspect of the job. Dind went ahead and hired me and told me to show up for work on Monday morning at 9am. They were going to pay me $5.50 an hour. It wasn't as much as the nightclub, but it was much better than minimum wage.
Around 7am Monday morning, the phone rang. It was Dind. She asked me to go down to the DMV to get a copy of my driving record. That meant I had to get ready to go right then and there, instead of waiting another hour and a half. That kind of irritated me. I went to the DMV and miraculously got out of there in 30 minutes, so I was able to make it to work on time. One of the things I noticed about my driving record was that something I had gotten a ticket for in December of 1988 had a "UR" next to it. I looked at the glossary and "UR" stood for "Unpaid Referee." I had gotten a ticket for speeding in the town where my Uncle Ord lived in Douglas County. I had sent in a money order for $50 for the ticket. I figured they had received it. According to my record, they didn't. I thought for certain they wouldn't let me work there with that black mark on my record. I had no way of proving otherwise because I had thrown away my receipt for the money order.
I went into the corporate office and handed the DMV record to Dind. She glanced at it and had me fill out paperwork so I could begin working there. After I finished, she walked me next door to the store. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was about to begin THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD IN MY LIFE!
The first thing the manager did was hand me a computer print out of names and phone numbers. He told me I needed to call everyone and get them to come in and make payments on their accounts. There were TWO-HUNDRED names on this list. I got absolutely no training on this. I was just supposed to sit at my desk (which was located in an office in the back of the store) and cold-call everyone. I did get some guidance from Hild, the other person working in collections, but he had his own list of 200 names to call. Most of the time, I couldn't catch the people at home, so I would have to call everyone again. I spent no time training on the floor, so I had no idea how they were running the business.
I was aware that the store closed at 6pm and I could hardly wait to go home. But at 5:55pm, the manager said, "Oh, you're not going home yet! Monday and Tuesday nights are the nights we go out and try to catch the more delinquent accounts at home!" WHAT? No one said anything about this all day. Honestly, I should have just walked right then and there, but I knew that I would be getting overtime for this, so I went out with one of the drivers. The driver I accompanied actually used to be one of the collectors, but he transferred into doing the deliveries. He was willing to do the driving on Monday and Tuesday nights. He told me anecdotes about his experience and those of other collectors. He told me not to stand directly in front of the door when knocking because he knew someone who got shot right through the door.
We weren't really able to find anyone at home. (I was actually relieved about that.) I got home after 9pm and went straight to bed. When I got up the next morning, I went to work and did the whole thing all over again.
So, this was the deal with rent-to-own. If you see something you want in the store, you can rent it on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly contract. It's a way for people with low incomes to be able to afford furniture, appliances and electronics in an effort to improve their credit rating. If you keep up the payments until the end of the contract, you own the merchandise. If something happens and you're not able to make the payments, you agree to return the merchandise back to the store. The one setback is that you pay an astronomical interest rate.
What set Rent City apart from places like Rent-A-Center was that we would allow people on welfare to rent from us. The store was actually located near the heart of Denver's Welfare City, which had a bunch of really cruddy, run-down apartments. And this was the problem: People who barely had enough money to feed and clothe their families were coming to us because they couldn't buy a TV from a thrift store or pawn shop and they couldn't get credit from anyone else. We were literally a last resort.
More than the unexpected long hours, the jerk supervisors and the fact that we were ripping off people who couldn't afford it, what made this THE WORST JOB EVER was that it caused me to temporarily lose faith in mankind. Almost every single person with a delinquent account would LIE to me every time I made contact with them. They'd promise me they'd bring in the money that afternoon. They wouldn't show up. They'd tell me they left a money order under the door. We didn't get anything. Well, someone must have stolen it. And then there were people who would move and leave no forwarding address, but had no problem taking all our stuff with them without ever contacting us again.
Understand that we made it easy for everyone who had delinquent accounts: If they weren't able to make the payments, they were welcome to call us to come pick up the merchandise or bring it in themselves and they wouldn't have to pay us a dime more. We just wanted the merchandise back so we could rent it to someone else.
I was working at Rent City when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area in 1989. After that happened, I said, "I'll bet you anything someone is going to call us up and use that as an excuse for not paying on time." Sure enough, I got a call from one of our frequent delinquents. He said he wife went to San Francisco because her mother lives there and she took all the money with her. (Uh, you had enough money for an emergency plane ticket, but you can't ever pay on time? RIGHT!)
After about a month of working there, I decided I couldn't handle it any more. I called up Dind before work one morning and told her that I wanted to quit. It seemed like my supervisors were always yelling at me for being too tender-hearted and allowing delinquents to slide a little. She told me she hadn't heard anything negative about me from my supervisors. I said that the job wasn't as she originally described it and all I was doing was calling on the delinquent accounts. She told me to come in to work and she would try to straighten things out.
I went in and did my calls. Then, I was asked to go out to someone's apartment to do a collection. I'll go into more detail about this tomorrow, but I actually repossessed a dresser. For me, that was a major accomplishment and made me feel like maybe I had what it took to do this job.
After I got back to the store, Dind asked me to come into her office. She told me she talked to my supervisors and they were surprised that I tried to quit. They said that I always showed up on time and did what I was told. She wanted me to continue working there, so she agreed to have the supervisors lighten my load on the collections and I would be doing more work on the deliveries. I felt like that would make things more tolerable. And it did. However, I got into a big fight with Brud after my immediate supervisor had told me I could take off early that afternoon. I said I had already been told that I could leave and I was going to do just that. The next day, Brud told me I needed to start looking for another job. Two weeks later, I was fired.
The one good thing that came out of the job was that I was making money faster than I could spend it. In the three months I had worked there, I had saved up enough money to buy an engagement ring for Bez. I never did buy that ring, but this was the only time in my life I ever had enough money to carry me through for a few months after losing a job. In fact, my Dad had come to visit me a couple of months later. He was in a bind because he left his wallet behind and he asked me to loan him a hundred dollars. I was able to do that without hesitation. It's the only time I've ever been able to help my Dad out with cash.
I moved out of Denver in 1991. I came back the next year during my vacation. I drove by the store, but it was no longer Rent City. I wasn't surprised. However, Unimart was still operating, but that entire operation went defunct by 2006.
And I have a lot more to share about all the stuff that happened working as a collector. I may have been done with Rent City almost 27 years ago, but I'm not done on this blog.
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