Personal and Confidential
Mayer, Milton
Personal and Confidential by MILTON MAYER Mr. F. B. McConnell, Chairman Board of Directors Sears, Roebuck & Co. Chicago, Illinois Personal and Confidential Dear Mr. McConnell: I should not...
...A little late for this winter," said Mommy, opening the package...
...Then I got an appointment with General Robert E. Wood, in those days Chairman of the Board, to discuss personal and confidential business with him...
...It's as hard as a mess-sergeant's heart...
...Rock wanted money...
...I was confident that I'd get 1 ea...
...Besides, I don't dare write to the Management, or they'll put my complaint in the works and I'll get another brass Handle, this time from Minnesota or Spokane...
...Do Not Send New Style Handle...
...will have to carry me and my 27c, plus lc tax, on their books until the end of time...
...I may say, at this point, that in my opinion Sears has to yield to no one, including Ward's, in promptness...
...You may send coin, postage stamps, money order or check...
...It happened down the track from the town they were in, and as soon as they heard about it my big brother hot-footed it down the track, like the born newspaperman he was and is...
...While our regular terms require cash in full with each order, we did not wish to delay your order, so we shipped it without the full amount of money...
...Inside was the Handle...
...I was too far gone, in any case, to be angry or insulted at the demand for the 27c, plus lc, tax for the Handle (New Style), when I had ordered the Handle (Old Style...
...There wasn't a crust in the house— and Mommy needed crust for the stuffing for the Christmas turkey...
...McConnell, you will understand my temerariousness in writing to you in the instant matter...
...2041 Blower Door Handle for 143.421 Franklin Heater...
...The letter said 157-198 Spec, 151/ao, d/22...
...Something happened...
...Then I called in James Kenney, of Carmel, Calif., Second Vice-President of the West Coast Area of the N.A.A.W.T., and an international specialist (of whom you may have heard) in the installation of Blower Door Handles...
...No Blower Door Handle, and no fire in the Franklin Heater...
...The lady was glad to see me, and I asked her, now that I could no longer move, if she had a drawing compass in the house...
...The outside label said, "Sears, Roebuck and Co., Los Angeles 54, Calif.," but the package was postmarked South Pittsburgh, Tenn., so help me, Mr...
...I'll keep the Handle, refuse to pay for it, and Sears, Roebuck and Co...
...Fact is, I have gone to the top of your organization before, with such singular success that I am convinced that yours is an organization to the top of which I should go...
...Listen, McConnell, you bunco-artist, you come through with that Handle (Old Style), or else...
...On February 28 I got another letter from Sears: "Dear Customer: "Just a few lines regarding the order we shipped you about two weeks ago...
...Customer Wants Old Style Cast Iron Vertical Handle...
...I went home and waited...
...McConnell, how shall I say it?—it was the New Style Handle, Brass, Horizontal, unattachable to my 143.421 Franklin Heater...
...Wasn't that fun...
...I want to know if it is the policy of your Mail Order Division to let the customer have the goods he orders or to send him, instead, any old thing you happen to have lying around...
...Mommy got the package open and the Handle out...
...But it wasn't the Handle I had ordered...
...I had not been able to work for more than a month...
...Yours truly, "Sears, Roebuck and Co...
...it's a reliable organization...
...Don't tell me to go to Russia if I don't like it here...
...What have I done to deserve this...
...If you wish to write us about your order, please return this letter or refer to the file number below...
...The reason I remember the date is that the package came that afternoon...
...no word from you regarding it...
...McConnell, I put it to you— have I suffered or haven't I? And why...
...She said I could, so I did...
...I lived, but just...
...There was no trombone...
...I was beginning to despair...
...I curled my blue lips...
...That," I said to Mommy, "is what I call service...
...It wasn't...
...My big brother was burned up, just as I am now, but he knew what to do...
...McConnell—raised my spirits...
...You want—what}" said the General...
...The burden of all their pleas was the same, and the pleas became more and more frantic: Would he please cash the check...
...I am the West Coast Area Director of the National Association for the Advancement of White Trash, and I write to you as one Director to another...
...The first time I ordered 1 ea...
...It—oh, Mr...
...Kindly send the amount due by return mail...
...Next winter," I murmured, "next winter I'll have my fire...
...Sears, Roebuck and Co...
...No money...
...She said would I come back after the first of the year, and we'd go into it then...
...I spent two days trying to attach Handle to Blower Door...
...So wise up, McConnell, wise up, or that's what I'll do to you if you don't send me that old cast-iron vertical Handle...
...That was her idea, and a good one...
...2041 Blower Door Handle (Old Style...
...2041 Blower Door Handle for 143.421 Franklin Heater appears in your current catalogue photograph of said Heater, on page 1035-D as an appurtenance which attaches to the Blower Door, but if you will study the photograph closely you will observe that the Handle has been drawn into the photograph of the Heater...
...he says now that he saw my color change for the better...
...I said to the lady, after we finished tracing...
...Or, at least, what have I done that Sears knows about to deserve this...
...By the time my big brother got back with the names of the victims, everybody else who had tried to get the wire for AP or UP or anybody had found it tied up by my big brother and had to go another fifty miles to file a story...
...I gathered all the papers together —they now included several duplicate bills for the Handle, 1 ea, 27c, tax lc, total 28c—and hitched up and drove over to the Order Office...
...I went to the General Offices, and the General waved me to a chair and, offering me a cigar, said, "And what can I do for you, young man...
...I've got stock in Sears...
...I'll come right to the point," I said, "and none of your stogies...
...At least the progress of my decline seemed to have been checked...
...On December 21 the package came from Sears...
...McConnell, that fingers as numb as mine could tear open a package as fast as they tore open that one...
...Manda wanted money...
...The lady in the Order Office suggested that we look at the catalogue together, and discovered that the horizontal Handle had been drawn in...
...I want my 1940 catalogue and I want it now...
...It was before your time, I dare say...
...I am aware that the Board deals only with matters of policy...
...I found out...
...Any day came and went, and I got a letter from Sears, Roebuck and Co., Los Angeles 54, Calif...
...I asked her if I should pay any of the duplicate bills I had received...
...I'll give you the old one-two the way my big brother Howard gave it to Capper Publications thirty years ago-Let me tell you, you grifter, what my big brother Howard did...
...Milton Mayer Carmel, Calif...
...Will you or won't you send me 1 ea...
...You'd have to have a diamond drill, and then it wouldn't work because the Handle would be attached to the Blower Door Draft Regulator Slide, which would no longer slide...
...Mommy wanted money...
...I shrugged my shoulders—which had become rheumatic from the cold —and said, simply, "C'est la guerre froide," and waited...
...I stood by the Sears Electric Two-Tone Heater De Luxe in the Order Office until I could fumble with my fingers and get the package open...
...I said I'd try, adding, cheerfully, "If I live...
...1 ea...
...Julie wanted money...
...Or are you anti-Semitic...
...Well," said the General, slowly, "I—am—damned...
...Yrs...
...The check was for $1.00...
...It was then that I went back to the Order Office, with the horizontal Handle and all the duplicate order and shipping sheets, which were beginning to accumulate...
...I should never be the same, of course, but, he said, calling me "old boy" and patting me gently on the shoulder, "It's better to be alive than dead, isn't it...
...This time," she said, "we'll draw a picture of the Old Style Handle...
...My big brother just inserted the story and names in the time-table, which the telegrapher was still sending, and Capper Publications got one of the biggest scoops in its history...
...They're still carrying it...
...She said it was, and seemed to be friendly, so I asked her if I could ask her a personal question...
...Early in January—I couldn't move now, at all...
...The Handle I got was—I didn't know it then—the Handle the artist had drawn in the photograph of 143.421 Franklin Heater in the current catalogue...
...It was a brass Handle, attaching horizontally...
...Old One Only...
...The Old Style Handle had been hand-forged by a craftsman in the hills, probably one of those Berea College graduates...
...It could mean only one thing...
...My big brother let them go on bearing it...
...She did, and she traced the Handle (Old Style) in red...
...The lady wrote out a new order, and wrote the following words, in massive letters, across the front of the order blank: This Heater Is Ten Years Old or So...
...rspy., & c...
...The Heater is $47.95 in the new catalogue...
...It contained the brass Handle...
...I said I guessed so, if only I could see the Handle and see Jake Kenney attach it...
...But I knew it wouldn't be long...
...He and Seymour Berkson were out in Colorado on a vacation, and there was an avalanche...
...So, Mr...
...Now my lower extremities, especially my feet, were getting cold...
...You wouldn't believe, Mr...
...Or is it that Sears, Roebuck & Co doesn't like me personally...
...I could no longer use my hands, so Mommy bundled me up and drove me to the Order Office, with the package and all the papers...
...Let's trace the Old Style Handle from Parts Diagram For Franklin Heater, which Diagram I have, as chance has it, with me...
...The heat," he said, "has annealed the iron...
...2041 Blower Door Handle, for 27c plus lc tax...
...Get that, McConnell— from the Chairman of the Board...
...This is a matter of policy...
...I say that this is clearly a matter of policy, for Board and not Management decision...
...Toward the end of November I got a package from Sears...
...Now they have notified us that there will be an additional delay of 30 days before they can make the shipment...
...How do you like that, and what do you suppose it means...
...Don't worry," said the doctor...
...It also said: "Dear Customer: "When you ordered the heater parts we were sure that shipment would be made from our source of supply within a certain length of time...
...I copied the number off the Diagram, took it into your Catalogue Order Office in Monterey, Calif., and ordered it...
...We dislike asking you to wait longer, but we are sure the order can be filled on or before the new shipping date...
...On the new order she wrote in red: Do Not Send New Style Handle...
...I'll tell you what, my fine-feathered friend with your oversupply of brass Handles you're trying to unload on me...
...I was carried outside and left in the sun...
...I had no fire in my 143.421 Franklin Heater...
...In early March the cold weather broke and a miraculously premature late spring came in...
...Pretty soon he started getting letters from the accountant at Capper Publications, then from the President of same, then from the Chairman of the Board...
...I plead with you, Mr...
...In mid-February—I was too weak to read now—Mommy said we had got another letter from Sears, identical with the one we had got in late October, about the 30 day delay...
...That letter—would you believe it, Mr...
...2041 Blower Door Handle—that would have been last August or September -—I simply got out my old Parts Diagram For Franklin Heater furnished me by your organization when I bought the heater ten or twelve years ago for $39.95...
...2041 Blower Door Handle (Old Style...
...2041 Blower Door Handle (Old Style) any day...
...Or else what...
...you say, do you...
...My 1940 catalogue—now...
...But it was the same Handle I had got before —New Style, brass, horizontal, unat-tachable to my 143.421...
...She did, and I explained to her how to trace the entire Heater from the Parts Diagram three times the size of the diagram...
...I had to give up working mornings and evenings...
...Do Not Sub New Type Horizontal Handle...
...McConnell, as a matter of policy...
...Jake spent two days on the job, and retired both bowed and bloody...
...There was also another bill for 1 ea...
...The lady said would I do her a favor...
...When my big brother got back home he got a wonderful letter of thanks from Capper Publications, plus a check for his services in full...
...He didn't cash the check...
...When Mommy read me the letter, I asked her (she had to lean close to hear me) to read the words again, "the order we shipped you about two weeks ago...
...Is it a practical joke on your part...
...I suppose the artist who drew the handle onto the photograph gets the eight dollars...
...My 1940 Sears catalogue hadn't come, and I wrote and phoned and still didn't get it...
...I have an idea," I said, "a regular rainy-day idea...
...The item in point is 1 ea...
...They didn't even bother to bundle me up —I couldn't feel anything any more...
...The lady was real nice...
...I do like it here, all except what your organization has done to me...
...Seymour just sat there, dreaming that somehow, just sitting there, he would some day get to be publisher of the New York Journal American (which he now is...
...The doctor was there...
...I said that, after all we had been through together, I certainly would...
...all crippled up with arthritis—Mommy and Jake carried me outside and drove me over to the Order Office with all the correspondence about the Door Handle...
...I wanted 1 ea...
...By the time I got home the Handle had arrived, by mail...
...She asked me to step outside the Order Office with her, and when we got outside she said, "No...
...as Job asked the Lord...
...My brother got to the avalanche, heard the victims were all from Kansas, and tore down the track to the railroad station and got the telegrapher to start sending the contents of the time-table to Capper Publications (which owned half the newspapers in Kansas...
...The doctor came on March 18—I shall never forget the date—and said that the worst was over...
...Having to carry it on their books, year after year, was a terrible accounting burden...
...Does your organization believe in letting people have what they buy from you, or doesn't it...
...The one I had got twice before...
...The Handle I had ordered was a cast-iron Handle which attaches vertically to the Blower Door...
...The new order said everything the old had said, and, in addition, Customer Has Received Wrong Handle Twice...
...But I was confident, and a man can stand a lot when he is confident...
...I don't know about that, but I know I got my catalogue...
...It was October now, and the days were drawing in, and the evenings and mornings were fresh...
...According to our records, the account has not been paid and we have had...
...Send Old Style Handle Only as Per Attached Tracing...
...Dicken wanted a trombone...
...We felt sure that you would gladly send the amount due upon receipt of our statement...
...And that, my boy, will cost you more money than sending me what I ordered, so what do you say, Mac...
...McConnell: I should not bother you with this matter were it not for my organization's policy of going right to the top with all complaints...
...So we did, and wrote up a new order to send in with it...
...Christmas was coming...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
