YOU CAN BANK ON THAT BOOK 1 takes you on a tour of the Consumer Credit Industry from Collection Agencies to Finance companies to the Loan Departments of Chartered Banks. You will be a "fly on the wall" and eavesdrop on conversations when these workplaces are open and also when the doors are closed. Aside from these insights you will track the personal life of the central character Leslie Swartman as he works his way up the ladder of a Credit Granting career. You may chuckle at some of the situations that develop, but there are also some tugs at your heart on the home front. Anyone that ever worked in Credit will relate to many of the scenarios in this story.
YOU CAN BANK ON THAT BOOK 1
The early yearsBy Brian L. CoventryAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Brian L. Coventry
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4678-4934-0Chapter One
In the late 1960's and early 1970's how did one get started in the Banking Business. For some, they started off at the very bottom of the ladder. That could be as a teller/customer service representative. Or maybe get a university or college certificate and start off at the management trainee level. Sometimes related experience and skills made an applicant interesting to a Bank. Such was my case, Leslie Swartman in the late 1960's.
I had got a job out of high school working as a shoe salesman at Bata Shoes but became increasingly aware that this was not what I wanted to spend my life doing.
Enter Jack Morris.
My parents were taking in a Room & Board person to supplement their meager income as Janitor of a 14 unit Apartment building in Ottawa.
Their latest boarder, a Mountie (Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer) had just moved out to share an apartment somewhere with a fellow Mountie at "N. Division" in Rockliffe Ontario.
Their first new applicant for Room and Board was a handsome, well dressed, well spoken young man in his early twenties. Jack Morris had just been transferred in to Ottawa as the new Branch Manager of Beneficial Finance on Sparks Street in downtown Ottawa.
He was a perfect replacement upstairs and moved in immediately.
He and I hit it off right from the start. Jack had two sisters but no brother. After a while a friendship developed between Jack and I and we started hanging around with each other. Jack one day came out with an interesting observation. He said: "Leslie look at you and me in the mirror. Anybody seeing us together would think we were brothers!"
It was true, almost uncanny. He was taller than I, but the same black hair, same brown eyes, same build same facial features. But I was four years younger and could easily be taken for Jack's younger brother.
And that's exactly how it unfolded.
The next thing Jack was planning Friday and Saturday night club hopping and partying with his newly minted younger brother. And I didn't mind at all. It was a nineteen year old's dream come true.
Jack had bought a Plymouth Valiant convertible and each weekend we two cruised around to his friends in Aylmer and up in Arnprior. Jack really got into the brother thing and introduced me as his half-brother.
"This is my kid brother Leslie and he's as smart as me but not as cute!"
This would get a big laugh but I was immediately accepted as his brother like it was the gospel truth.
Sometimes during the week, he'd ask me if I wanted to go up to his office while he did his collection calls. I would listen in fascination how he would be very smooth and soft spoken on some calls and very rough and aggressive on other calls.
He even invited me along with him on a couple of repossession calls to repo T.V.'s and stereos people had financed through Department stores and were way behind in their payments.
He used to say: "By the time you pick this junk up it's maybe worth ten cents on the dollar."
Chapter Two
THE CREDIT BUSINESS
Jack continued to encourage me to get into the Consumer Credit Industry. He insisted I could do well. He couldn't hire me at Beneficial because he was already at full staff. "You're not cut out to be a sales clerk in a shoe store! Think bigger!!"
I was in fact getting fed up with the shoe business and I was reading the want ads every night. Soon there was an ad for Citizen's Finance on Richmond Road in Westboro. They were looking for a "Credit Trainee".
It paid $45.00 per week. I applied and was hired.
The Manager, Bill Knight was a very sleazy type person. He wore shiny polyester suits and never had his tie pulled up to his collar. He also smelled of BO. He was originally from the USA where he had a lot of experience working in HFC and other small Finance company operations around Ohio and New York State. The Assistant Manager Brad Wollum was a real good person, always dressed neatly, was nice to the customers and staff and the only reason I stuck around.
Then there were multiple back to back experiences that I survived but just barely.
We had a company car. It was a blue Volkswagen Beetle. The Manager didn't like me much. I wasn't hardened enough to suit him.
One of my first assignments was to go and get a Wage Assignment from a delinquent customer. He had phoned in and told the Manager he was back to work and would pay him so much per pay until he got caught back up. The Manager told him that would be OK but he'd have to sign a Wage Assignment in case he defaulted. Back then Finance companies could use this which was like a voluntary wage Garnishee for 33% of your wages.
So I went to this man's home which was an apartment in Lowertown. (Lowertown was anything back then on the north side of Rideau Street after Sussex and consisted back then of mostly lower class tenements and apartment buildings).
He was a huge black man married to a small Chinese lady. They had three small girls ranging from three to eight years old, all beautiful kids. We had a great visit and I got the Wage Assignment signed.
When I got back to the office, the Manager told me to mail it to the customer's pay office. But I said: "You made a deal with him to accept so much per pay!!"
"To hell with the deal, he's so far behind he'll never catch up. My job is to collect this shit!!"
The next day he sent me out on two collection calls one in Gatineau the other in Pointe Gatineau.
The one in Gatineau didn't go well. As soon as I identified myself as an employee of Citizen's Finance looking for a payment the lady cursed at me in French and slammed the door in my face.
I went to a payphone and called into the office to report my lack of progress on that double write-off file. The Manager told me that the lady in Gatineau had called in after my visit and said to him "If that little bastard in the blue Volkswagen ever comes here again, I've got a 12 guage Shotgun loaded with rock salt and I'll nail him and that VW with both barrels!"
My boss thought that was real funny and let out a hearty guffaw. I wasn't enjoying the humour one bit. Then he seals the conversation with: "Don't forget your collection call on those Ouellette deadbeats in Pointe Gatineau."
This one turned out to be the deal breaker in my short lived career in the Finance Company business.
At first everything went well. I pulled into the Ouellette's laneway. They lived in a rundown shack next the Gatineau River. There was garbage and junk and old rusted cars laying around their yard. I introduced myself to Mrs. Ouellette and surprisingly enough she was quite friendly and invited me in. I explained I was there to collect a payment on their loan which was six month's overdue (actually a triple write off!)
She told me she had just received her welfare cheque that day and would I mind driving her to the Pointe Gatineau IGA so she could cash her cheque and buy her groceries. Then she could give me $20 out of her cheque as a payment. I was fine with that as at least I'd get back to the office with a positive result from my trip to Quebec.
We went to the IGA and loaded up with groceries, I carried most of them to the car, then from the car into the house. She handed me the $20. Everything was going great. I pulled out a duplicate...
