My First Summer Job

By Glenn Froehlich, My Knowledge Matters

I’m not sure how I got the job, I think I just went in and ask the owner if he needed help. It was a TV store, were they did repair and sales of TV’s. Now understand, this was when TV’s were huge and heavy, when they had tubes in them and huge wood boxed around them! The owner of the store, Bob did everything; he sold the huge consoles, with names like RCA and Zenith. He worked on them, carefully testing the tubes and replacing them as needed to bring these huge boxes back to life. But Bob was getting a bit older and needed a young buck like me around for all the little things it took to keep the TV store going. So my job, when I wasn’t helping move TV’s from the showroom to customs homes, was to keep the showroom spotless. I would dust the TV’s using a special product on the wood consoles to make them shine, then dusting the screens one TV at time. I would watch as Bob would great customers, people would come in and tell him a problem they were having with their TV, like “it’s really green or there is no sound, or it’s wavy….and Bob would look up for just a moment and diagnose the problem with the precision a crew chief for a NASCAR team, I was always amazed….It was a simpler time. I learned the value of listening to the customer, about doing what needs to be done if you see its needs to be done and lots of other great lessons. After the summer, I went back to school, Bob ended up closing the store, something about “tubes are going away” I’ll miss Bob’s TV Sales and Service.