There was a time period in my early youth when I didn't know what I wanted to do vocationally. Okay, let me be honest about this. I wasn't sure what I could do let alone wanted to do. I graduated from high school because the administration was reluctant to fail me. Seriously. I was the Master of Ceremonies at pep rallies and most other school activities, my band played at the school sock-hops, I was the lead male voice in the choir, and I gave the morning announcements from the principal's office..."Hey you Rams and Ramettes!..the wrestling team is taking on rival South Division in the gym at 4:30...let's be there to support our guys!" Nobody ever showed up to watch the wrestling team. Not even me. Wrestling is a boring spectator sport. Anyway, you don't fail a guy who is that prominent in school social activities, even if the only classes he ever passed were Choir, English, Literature and Boys Glee Club. So there I am, recently graduated with the country in the middle of a serious financial recession and manual labor jobs are tough to find and I don't have the educational background to do anything else. I remember walking in to the office of Milwaukee's Transportation Department thinking of applying for a bus driver position and telling the receptionist that I'd like to speak to the person who tells me that there are no jobs available. That got me a laugh but no job interview.
My mother kept insisting that I should look into a career as an undertaker. She liked the image of her son working in a professional setting with a suit. My father agreed with her but for a different reason, saying, "...even you couldn't piss off dead people." I think I could but that's not relevant to this post.
One morning I was browsing through the help wanted adds when one of those Management Trainee Wanted ads caught my eye. No matter how bad times are there are always those kinds of ads, usually involving scrubbing toilets at slave wages. This one looked different so I called the number and made an appointment for an interview.
The company was a consumer finance company, which in those days meant they made small loans to regular people. If I remember correctly the laws that governed those types of businesses limited the amount of a loan to $2500. I was interviewed by the office manager, hired, and entered a six-month training program during which we were taught to interview loan applicants, do the investigative work, and make the loan decision. Our customers were mostly people who had been refused loans by banks. As a result loans were frequently made knowing that we would have to work hard to get our money back. At the extreme of that were the deadbeats...people who skipped out or simply refused to pay. I actually enjoyed that part of the business...tracking down deadbeats and finding some sort of assets to attach. I loved it when someone who hadn't made a payment in months and in some cases years would come into the office after learning that I had discovered where they worked and garnished their paycheck. They never had the cash to settle the debt so I'd have them sign a new contract with a strong co-signer. Normally there wouldn't be a problem collecting after that. The company loved it too because the debt had been written off as uncollectable so the money recovered was pure profit.
At the completion of the training program I was promoted to manager at an office in a small central Wisconsin town. There was just me and the receptionist/secretary. The manager prior to me had made a lot of risky loans so I spent my time tracking down deadbeats. I did well and my office was near the top in Wisconsin in bad debt collected. In loans made I was near the bottom. I didn't like to make loans because I didn't like to exploit people. Let me explain that.
Most applicants never asked about the interest rate. When someone did ask I would quote directly out of the training manual..."The interest rate is 8% on the first $300 and 7% on anything over that." The response would usually be a happy, "Eight percent! That's less than the bank charges!" I would just smile and say nothing. But what I was thinking was that 'you need to add the 8 and 7 to arrive at 15%. And you didn't notice the life insurance fee or processing fee that I added to the contract for a total of 18%.' Many of them probably would not have objected even if they had done the math, but to me I was cheating them and it bothered me.
The logical question to ask is why, after the six-month training program and a year as an office manager I suddenly developed a conscious. To this day I don't have a good answer for that. It ended when one day the area supervisor from Chicago visited my office and got on my case about my "poor loan performance." I looked at him, scribbled out a resignation, told him I didn't belong in this job and walked out.
What prompted this post is two weeks ago Maribel and I were walking in a small nearby town when I saw the sign of a finance company that I remembered from the old days. I walked into the office, told the manager of my background and asked if he had ever heard of my old company. I was surprised when he said no because the company at that time was one of the industry leaders. I Googled the company name when I returned home and learned that it had been swallowed up and disappeared in the early 2000s after it paid a $486 million settlement for predatory lending. I've got to admit that brought a smile to my face. The phrase delayed vindication comes to mind. I wonder what they did with those old training manuals?
Fascinating!
ReplyDelete