Although being an employee at the Pizza Wagon was ideally suited to meeting up with friends while working there were two distinct drawbacks. First, even though Mr. P was fair about allowing each of us to take certain nights off for special events, we all sacrificed the chance to go to many school and social activities. Second, the pay sucked. Sure we all got our nickel raises and busboys split tips with waitresses, but our ten percent of their fifteen percent of a four dollar pizza amounted to about $1.35 which when divided three ways came to eight to ten cents an hour, which in turn limited our financial strength when we were able to attend those special events.
That winter, a short time after we started to drive, M went to work for his uncle. When wrestling season was over he approached me about a position at his uncle’s wholesale drug company. In my wildest dreams the idea of working at Wiro Drug would never have occurred to me, but when M told me I would be making $1.60 an hour he could have told me I would be shoveling horse manure and the only thing I would have wanted to know was whether or not I needed to provide my own shovel. A fifty cent raise, a forty-five percent increase in salary, this was my ticket out of poverty.
Wiro Drug provided daily inventory for most of the pharmacies in the Milwaukee area. A typical order might include a 24 pack of Excedrin or Bayer, a few dozen packages of A&D ointment, a dozen Vicks Formula 44, a couple dozen Phillips Milk of Magnesia, a few dozen Kotex regulars or supers, a dozen Breck super hold and 3 Clairol number 31. My job most of the time was to stock the shelves on the main floor and fill orders.
When M and I arrived after school we entered the front door. M would grab a lab coat and sit at a desk in the front office and take orders from customers. I would put on a shop apron and head to the main floor where I would grab a shopping cart and push it around the aisles pulling the items listed on the invoice off the shelf and placing them in the cart. M and Uncle Max kept filling out new orders for Bob, Harvey and myself.
Uncle Max was always smiling and jovial when we arrived showing a true interest in how we were doing. However, once we were on the clock his demeanor would shift from soft and fuzzy to stern and authoritarian taskmaster.
Bob was a pre-med student at Marquette University who had worked for Uncle Max for a number of years and could tell where everything was located in the warehouse with his eyes blindfolded. He stayed calm and was the guy everyone turned to when Uncle Max became excited and started to charge into the warehouse hollering about something missing from an order or an extra item in an order or wanting to know why the order he asked me to complete fifteen minutes ago wasn’t complete ten minutes ago.
Once I learned where the inventory was located the amount of time it took to complete an order shrank significantly, but somehow it was never fast enough for Uncle Max. Now, admittedly this was one task M was definitely better at than me, and while he usually spent most of his time taking orders on the phone when he needed to fill an order he did it as fast or faster than anyone.
Fortunate for me there was Harvey. A soft-spoken man with Clarabelle the clown hair, he was a veteran of numerous tirades and handled most confrontations with a smile, although he occasionally would walk away muttering.
At the end of the day no matter what had happened Uncle Max turned into the same smiling jovial guy who greeted everyone courteously when they arrived.
Did you have any memorable jobs or bosses? Tell us about them in the comment section.
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