Lest It Be Forgotten After I Am Gone: The Difficult Years -2
....One of my fellow salesmen was an Australian boy, in England travelling the world as I had done when going to America a few years earlier, and I took him under my wing so to speak. He had never seen or experienced snow before and, when there was a fall of it that winter, he was fascinated by it, playing like a child with it outside the store in Regent Street....
Raymon Benedyk becomes a salesman in the jewellery department of Liberty's store in London.
To read earlier episodes of Raymon's life story please visit http://www.openwriting.com/archives/lest_it_be_forgotten_after_i_am_gone/
By the beginning of the sixties, it became obvious in many ways that our business was floundering, and first my uncle finally retired - he was by now in his mid 70's and agreed that it really was high time he gave up his
heavy routine within our little organisation anyway. Then his nephew, whom we had always accepted as a cousin in our family although in reality he was not a blood relative, left the business to start up on his own, an ambition he had always indicated he wanted to take on. By then the business had very much reduced in capacity and was obviously barely able to support one family, let alone two and, after a little discussion within the family, at the end of 1962 I agreed to resign too, leaving my father to manage on his own in a very reduced way with a minimum number of employees.
I was not prepared to start up in the same line of business, which I felt would have been in direct competition with my father, with each of us using the same sources for raw material and customers for the sale of goods. So I tried something different. Some friends in the refrigeration maintenance business offered me a partnership - after six months - if I could increase their business. Their problem was that they were both foreign born, and their knowledge of the English spoken and written word was minimal and they needed someone who could speak and write for them. They offered me £10 per week, plus the use of a small car and expenses.
Potentially, I thought, I could make something of this and, with Elsa's total agreement, for the next six months I trudged along every main street, High street, and any street in North West London offering our maintenance business to every shop, hotel and restaurant that used refrigeration. I got a few contracts and think I earned my keep. However, at the end of six months the friends reneged on their verbal agreement to make me a partner and only offered a continuance of the same financial arrangement. I refused, again with Elsa's sanction. A few months later they sold their business and opened up a shop selling electrical goods.
About this time I started evening and night work driving for a mini cab company in Wembley and, for the next few years worked several nights a week and at least one evening over each weekend. We were paid so much a shift and, of course, also kept any tips we made. It made a nice little income and provided the means for some extras in the house.
It was then that I was successfully interviewed for a sales job in the Liberty's store of Regent Street, working in the real jewellery department. I emphasise real, because it was separate from the costume jewellery section, which was entirely different. We not only sold the most beautiful jewellery, pearls and the most expensive watches, but jade, silver and gold and other exquisite items. I was paid £15 per week plus commission. One of my fellow salesmen was an Australian boy, in England travelling the world as I had done when going to America a few years earlier, and I took him under my wing so to speak. He had never seen or experienced snow before and, when there was a fall of it that winter, he was fascinated by it, playing like a child with it outside the store in Regent Street.
