Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Queens County Revisited: The 1970's (24)

My morning hours as the Bulova Parts Department Clerk would be spent sitting behind an office desk, and opening up envelopes and reading the letters mailed by the various U.S. jewelers and jewelry stores or jewelry department mangers that indicated which clock or watch replacement parts they required.

In the 1970's, business firms and stores were still generally not using either faxes or emails to communicate with each other, and long-distance calls between business firms and stores were still generally more costly than was the price of a u.s. first-class postal stamp.

After reading each letter from a jeweler, a jewelry store or a jewelry department manager, I would then indicate on a Buloval parts order form which replacement part was being replaced and type in the name and address of the jeweler, jewelry store or department store to which the replacement part was to be delivered; and on the Bulova parts order form I would also indicate what were the total charges (including the shipping costs) for the replacement parts order .

Then, after returning from my 12 noon to 1 p.m. lunch hour break, I would gather up the order forms that I had worked on in the morning and take the typed-up forms with me down to the Bulova basement, where its watch and clock replacement parts stored and where any defective Bulova watches or Bulova clocks that jewelers were unable to repair themselves would be repaired by an African-American worker in his late 40's named Walter--who spent his whole day working in that same Bulova basement location.

And after I gathered and packed in boxes all the replacement parts which the various jewelers and jewelry stores or jewelry department managers had requested that day, I would finally put all the boxes in a shopping cart at around 4:30 p.m., roll the shopping cart to the elevator and take the elevator up to an upper floor where the shipping and mailing department was located.

In the shipping and mailing department around 7 guys in their twenties, who didn't seem to have attended college, collectively spent the most of their whole workday mailing out boxes of new clocks and watches to Bulova's various store customers around the U.S, besides mailing out the boxes of replacement parts that I brought to them at the end of the day.

And after delivering the boxes to the shipping department upstairs, I brought the now-empty shopping cart back downstairs to the basement, before returning to my desk in the upstairs office at around 4:45 p.m. for the last 15 minutes of the workday..