The end of retail the beginning of wholesale.

My big break came when a friend of mine turned down a job offer to run a wholesale book business. He could live on the draw the offer and the base salary wasn't enough. Hey, I'm used to retail wages so it was a step up for me.

The job was marketing and distributing books to schools.  Mostly classroom reading material (such as classic and modern literature books). We also sound new and used textbooks, mainly to private schools. The public schools got their textbook from state agencies.

I was in full charge of a branch office. The owners were in Brooklyn and I was opening a Dallas office. We were an independent company. I was soon to realize I found the perfect job. 

I was almost totally autonomous. The owners left me with the keys to the building, two folding chairs and the telephone laying on the floor. Time to get started. Little did I know this would be my career for the next 20 years.

The end of retail.

Well, I was realizing that retail was becoming a dead end career.

Some of what was happening was that as one moved higher up the rank, there would be a built-in roadblock  The management system was that at every level the person above you wanted to keep his job and protect his position. This culture evolved in several chains, The person above you wanted only to surround themselves with people who were incompetent. This accomplished two things. One was that at least temporarily their position was secure. Two it made them look better by comparison. This kind of de-evolved into survival of the un-fittest.

I could postulate on several reasons how this developed but suffice to say it just did.

Escape or slide into the mediocrity rut and self-protection mode of firing competent people and keeping the losers around for job security.

I had to find a way out.

Next steps.

Well Its been a while since my last blog post. I am going to try to be more active.

I was called out of retirement to do some consulting for my old company. That and working at my business development role for an I.T. company I have been prey busy post retirement.

Since my blog started out journaling my work and career history I will add a paragraph or so.

In the late 70's a retail career was not the promising fast track it once was. Too much transitions and buyouts. You would climb the ladder then the company or store chain would sell or merger and one would be back at the bottom again.

I tried many things to move out but now in my early 30's the possibility of a new career seemed a daunting challenge. Back in those day's the 80's it was still old school, you started down a career path and you followed it for life. There wasn't a fork in the path so to speak. So I had to re-invent myself and that became the framework of how I want to move next in post retirement. I want to be a life coach.