Before we were interrupted by sexual pursuits I was left
unemployed and in a high rise apartment in New Jersey. Olson Brothers’ Eastern
Regional Operations had collapsed, the Blue Anchor plant would never be built
and I and the General Manager did the final functions of closing it down, and then I was unemployed in a strange land.
Lois had left the
University of Pennsylvania’s chemistry department when we moved across the
Delaware River, so we were in somewhat tenuous shape that January of 1973. I
received a few week’s severances pay, hardly enough to see us through the month.
I had immediately gone to the Pennsylvania Labor Office and applied for
unemployment. (I was now living in New Jersey, but the job had been located in
Pennsylvania.)
Unlike the difficulties I would someday face with the
Delaware Employment Insurance, Pennsylvania approved me very quickly. Meanwhile
I was sending out resumes and checking the want ads. One ad that caught my eye
was for a job with a company called Bestline. I dialed the number and they gave me a date and
time to go to the Cherry Hill Inn.
I went expecting an interview. Instead I was ushered down a
hallway outside a large ballroom filled with chairs. There were finger foods
and drinks on tables lining this corridor. A man with a clipboard greeted me,
took my name and invited me to indulge in the edibles. There were quite a
number of people nibbling at finger sandwiches ambling about. After a while we were each handed
a folder and directed to find seats in the ballroom. The folder
contained a
small booklet and several forms. Once
seated the lights dimmed. A spotlight picked up a well-dressed
fellow stepping out on a stage down at one end and he enthusiastically began explaining Bestline
to us. The products were cleaners and waxes. It sounded like we would be selling these items
like some scrub-it-up Amway peddlers.
A sales job, I had no interest in a sales job. I had tried
training to sell Encyclopedias door to door for Colliers a few years earlier
and left the training after a week. I did not consider myself any kind of
salesman.
But no, we weren’t sales
staff and this was not some salaried position. This was a great opportunity. As
they say on TV, there’s more. This wasn’t just a peddler’s position. We would be like little individual franchises for Bestline designated local distributors. It wasn’t that we would take simply take customer
orders and Bestline would ship out the product to fill what we sold. No, we
were expected to buy the products up front, like buy a whole garage full of the
stuff, at a discount beneath the retail price, of course. The initial discount was 30%.The greater your
sales, the higher discount you would receive, up to 52%. Sure, Bestline would
get their money and we would have to actually sell all the junk to get back our
investment plus any possible profit.
Yet, that wasn’t all
at all! Selling wasn’t the main point. If you
really wanted to make money then you
would recruit other local distributors. You yourself wouldn’t wear out your
shoes going door to door, you would bring in your friends and neighbors into the
scheme to order their own garage-size supply to sell and you would collect a commission on their sales. You only needed to recruit ten people to do it and then convince
them to recruit ten of their acquaintances to also do it. Those ten would sent a
cut to your original ten, and in turn your ten would pass on a percentage to
you for of all these now 110 people. You would soon be rich as Bill Gates.
It was clear to me this was a good old fashioned Ponzi
scheme. If you were at the top of the pyramid perhaps you would actually make something,
but there would be diminishing returns down the line as each spin off group
attempted to find ten suckers to be their own salesmen. For the scheme to work
each person involved had to hook up ten more people. Think about it. If I got
ten people and they got 10 people each, then I’d have 110 people passing a
share up to me. And if those additional 100 people each got 10 recruits there
would be 1,010 people sharing the loot with me. But for those people to earn
anything they would have to keep recruiting. Twelve layers down and you would
need to have 100 Billion Bestline dealers. You’d have to be recruiting on other
planets because the population of Earth in only 7 Billion.
They really put on
the pressure to sign an agreement right there and then. It felt as if they would let you out of the place until you did, but despite their ganging up on me and calling me names, I managed to break through the gauntlet and angrily stomped out.
Bestline was taken to
court more than once and judgments brought against them for fraud and false
claims.
People v. Bestline Products, Inc.
[Civ.
No. 46034. Court of Appeals of California, Second Appellate District, Division
Three. August 25, 1976.]
THE
PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. BESTLINE PRODUCTS, INC., et al.,
Defendants and Appellants
(Opinion
by Potter, J., with Allport, Acting P. J., and Cobey, J., concurring.)
COUNSEL
Humphreys,
Berger & Pitto, P. C., Donald A. Drumright, Cotchett, Hutchinson &
Dyer, Joseph W. Cotchett, Meis & O'Donnell, Owen P. O'Donnell, Gallucci,
White & Kelley, Thomas E. White and Irving Reifman for Defendants and
Appellants.
Evelle
J. Younger, Attorney General, E. Clement Shute, Assistant Attorney General,
Herschel T. Elkins and Michael R. Botwin, Deputy Attorneys General, for
Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
POTTER,
J.
Appellants
Bestline Products, Inc. (hereinafter "Bestline Products"), Bestline
Corporation (hereinafter "Bestline Corp."), William E. Bailey, Robert
W. Depew, David L. Eastis, James Rohn and Larry D. Huff appeal from a judgment
dated December 21, 1973, in favor of plaintiff the People of the State of
California. The judgment (1) permanently restrained defendants from operating
or participating in a marketing program embodying proscribed features which the
court found were in violation of Business and Professions Code section 17500
fn. 1 prohibiting "untrue or misleading" statements; (2) required
defendants Bestline Products, Bestline Corp., and Bailey to offer to make
restitution to victims of the Bestline marketing program, and (3) imposed civil
penalties of $1 million jointly and severally, upon defendants Bestline Corp.
and Bestline, Inc., $250,000 upon defendant Bailey, $100,000 upon defendant
Eastis, and $50,000 each upon defendants Depew, Huff and Rohn. [61 Cal. App.
3d 885]
I needed have fretted about my situation for long. Three weeks after I applied for
unemployment compensation my first check came. However, by then I had acquired
a job with Welded Tube Company of America. I went from nothing to having a good
salary and the extra bonus of three weeks of unemployment checks.
Welded Tube was
located in South Philadelphia on world-famous Weccacoe Avenue. You’ve all heard
of Weccacoe, haven’t you? It is a slanted street running between Snyder and Oregon
Avenues, paralleling Christopher Columbus Boulevard about a block over along
the docks. The plant and
offices of Welded Tube took up most of the west side
of the street, there wasn’t much on the east side. Railroad tracks ran
alongside the plant. There was a little shack down near Snyder that sold
hoagies and other sandwiches, one of the few places to buy lunch nearby.
The offices and
plant are still there, but the sign says Hyundai
Rodan, which doesn’t seem to
have anything to do with cars. But across Weccacoe it is not some wasteland anymore it
is a large shopping center containing a Lowe’s, a Best Buy and an Ikea (right).
Welded Tube had another plant in Chicago, but Philadelphia was the headquarters. The
founder was a native Philadelphia named Lou Baylis. He had started out in
business with a push cart collecting and selling scrap metal. From that he
built the largest manufacturer of structural steel tubing in the USA.
Baylis was Jewish
and the upper management of the company were all Jewish and mostly his relatives.
It had stock, but it was all privately held by the management. The vice-president
was Lou’s son, Melvin Baylis. Another executive was Allen Baylis, either a
nephew or cousin. Didn’t see him much. Melvin often put him down.
The real
force was Jean Wexler (right) She was the Secretary, both to Mr. Baylis and on
the Board. She is who hired me and she was a tough cookie who carried out Lou
Baylis orders with an iron hand. Her brother, Sam Wexler was the main salesman
and Ann Cooper, a sister also worked there. The controller was Dick Shafritz.
The rest of us were gentiles.
My first position was as an assistant bookkeeper and I
reported to the Head Bookkeeper, an older man whose name escapes me.
Even in
this lowly position my salary was higher than what I had been making at Olson
Brothers. For some lucky reason, every time I changed jobs I began at a higher
wage. I had been making $7,800 a year when Olson’s closed; I started at Welded
Tube at $8,060 a year. When I left Welded Tube 6 years later in 1978 I was
making $17,000. My next position was with a medical center and I started at
$18,200. Two years later I got my first position at Wilmington Trust at
$20,000. That was 1980 and when I retired from Wilmington Trust my salary was
$65,000 plus an $8,000 Bonus and a number of stock options.
I was at Welded Tube three
months when the head bookkeeper left the company suddenly. Dick Shafritz, (left)
the Controller, who ran the clerical and accounting operations put out an ad
for a new bookkeeper, but I went to him and told him I didn’t think he need do
that because I was sure I could handle the full bookkeeping. He therefore took
me up on my offer and I was doing all the book work.
By the way, Jean Wexler hated how messy Dick's office was. He had papers everywhere and his chair was festooned with notes. On one of Shafritz's vacations, Jean came down and cleaned up his desk and office. When he came back he was flummoxed; he couldn't find anything.
Anyway, as I began keeping all the books, I noticed a consistent discrepancy in the figures. This was constantly being noted as a balance
adjustment in the overall reporting. It bugged me and I began searching through
the records stored in a side room. I had time to do this because I once again
brought my organization skills to improving the processes. Finally, I uncovered the initial reporting
errors and corrected the books and brought everything into balance.
After six months on
the job, I was promoted to Assistant Controller. In this position I continued
with all the bookkeeping and added such accounting functions as the monthly balance sheets, income statements and other reports. Now I
also worked closely with the auditors and in the preparation of the annual report.
Lou Baylis
did hire an Accounting Manager and I reported directly to him instead of Dick Shafritz. His name was James Schlief, called Jimbo by his friends (right). He came from the accounting firm of Ernst & Young and had his CPA. He and I hit it off great and I loved working for him. This affinity toward each other would pay off eventually.
Baylis had a computer
system installed, the main piece being an IBM System 3. Hee also hired an Operation System
Manager, another person whose name I can’t recall (am I getting senile ) even though he and I got
along well. In the picture on the right he is the fellow kneeling down in
front of the Christmas Tree. (I’m not in the picture because I took the
picture.)
There were a number of malfunctions with the System 3 (right) and Lou Baylis fired the computer. He hadn’t liked the idea of getting the thing to begin with, but once he fired it he realized we probably did need some modern technology after all.
He had already booted the Operations System Manager out, though.
Next thing I knew I was off to IBM for schooling in the System 3 Computer, and
when I completed the course, I was named Operations System Manager as well as Assistant Controller. I got a
raise for now doing both
jobs, a situation that gave our outside Accounting Firn, which was Ernst and
Young, fits. They argued that it was a conflict of interest, but Baylis wouldn’t
be budged.
He wouldn’t be
budged on his hatred of the System 3 either, and despite having got me trained
on that machine, he decided to get rid of it completely and replaced it with a Sperry Univac
BC/7 System. I was sent off now to the Sperry Rand Corporation to learn the
BC/7 operation and how to program in a language called RPG-II.
I came back and reorganized the Computer Department, did all
the programming for the system and wrote the procedure manuals.
I had two young
women performing all the daily jobs, while I attended to keeping the books up
to date. One of my most firm rules was backing up the system. They were to do
this at the end of each day. Storage was done of these large hard disks and the
backup did take a bit of time to perform. One day there was a bad thunderstorm
and lightning struck a transformer on the roof of the plant. It fried the disks
in the computer. My workers were very upset, but I told them not to worry, just
get the backup. They kind of turned pale. It turned out they hated backing up
so much they had skipped doing it. We now had to reconstruct our billing and
other information from the paper records. If they hated to do backup, they didn’t
after that. They found working late manually entering months of records much more tedious
than the backup had been.
I did very well at
Welded Tube and it became my longest job since leaving ARCo, I was to work there 6 years. The picture on the right is me, well, most of me at the BC/7 console in the Operations Center. But life is always full of transitions.
A lot will change in my life during the time I worked for
Welded Tube, a whole lot!
2 comments:
Very interesting liar. You're right well. This is like a reality TV show. Matter fact could make a TV series out of it. I wonder who would star as you?
I eagerly look forward to the next chapter.
Ron
Hey! *I* started on a System/3 back in '77!!!
We used 128-column floppy disks for input, and it had a RPG-II compiler.
:-)
-Andy
Post a Comment