Saturday, January 22, 2011

Saturdays are paydays.... and cheespuffs.


In California it was Thursdays for some reason, perhaps it was because the employees needed money to buy food for the weekend. If they got paid on Mondays, it would probably be frittered away way before the weekend.

Mondays nobody had any money. You had to go to the bank or if you had a checking account, find a friendly neighborhood merchant who would cash your check. It would help if you actually bought something there or it was common for families to have a account at the stores and would settle up once a month. You signed a little ticket on a pad of paper that was about 3 inches square At the end of the month you were handed a tab along with all the little 3 inches pieces of paper.
No minimum payment, no interest, just pay up.
All the clerks at the grocery store knew you, so did the butcher but the baker, he was from Germany we had to pay cash.

We didn't shop at the bakery as regular as we did at the grocery store or at the butchers, I am sure that if had daily wreath-cakes, something could have been arraigned.

My first job was a security man for Carnival of Toys on Haight street. I was about 10.
Walking around unsuspecting kids would never figure it was me who dropped the dime on them for stuffing a matchbox toy into their jeans.

But then I didn't get a paycheck , I got paid with Lionel bucks.......two or three weeks worth of work, would get me some track sections, couple more weeks maybe a Ravell model. During the summer when I could work more hours, is when I could get a crossing gate or maybe even a barrel loader and matching barrel car.....

My first real job, being defined, as where the check had lots of deductions, we were paid twice a month, and the first check took almost a month to get. There was nothing to be set up on a "computer" everything was by mail, Telex or fax. Wow, Telex, that was sort of a primer to computer email...I am sure it was about 30 baud......lightning fast!

The checks arrived in a large envelope and were handed out by the accountant on Thursdays at around 11.

That gave you time to go to the bank during lunch if you had to.
There were no ATM's no credit cards, no debit cards, Nada.
But on the bright side, you didn't need tons of money to live on.

I liked working at Philco. It was the first place that had about 30 or 40 people working in one place, and it was my first job at corporate America.
Lots of personalities. We had cigar smoking sales managers that only came in a few times a week but were usually golfing and schmoozing big clients.

We had outside salesmen that screwed up the orders and had us fix them and always told us they would make it up to us.......yeah. I am still waiting on that one.

We had our nice looking secretaries and even had own Lonnie Anderson sitting at the front desk, always in a nice tightly knit sweater, greeting customers as they walked in.
It was a nice environment, And I enjoyed being in inside sales. I got to know what an RD17HG was real fast.
That happens to be a upright right hand door, 17 cubic foot, refrigerator in Harvest Gold.
You do remember Harvest Gold don't you?
How about Dark Coppertone or Avocado?
I have a hard time admitting that I had a complete kitchen set up including washer and dryer in Avocado........
I am glad it is not one of the popular colors anymore.

In Mexico Saturdays the workers stop working by mid day. They really stop putting lots of effort into work around mid day Thursday, but still show up and look busy until Saturday afternoon so that you can be grateful that they showed up for work.

I would also rather pay them on Friday, which would then give me a day off on Saturday not having to worry that I risk starving their families for much needed beer and puffy orange dye covered air inflated ground up cheesy worm looking puffs.

Now if they were Cheetos, I could understand that. Cheetos at least have some flavor, and the dye will stain your finger times pronto.

So, we go to the bank usually on Thursdays, we usually can just hit one ATM machine.

When we were building the house, there was only one ATM in town and it was usually empty.

I don't enjoy standing in lines for hours, so I really appreciate ATM machines now. The only issue now is the ATM's spit out 200 and 500 peso notes.

There is a slight hesitation on the acceptance of 500 peso notes.
Times have changed now, employees readily accept both 500 and 200 peso notes.

During our construction employees always asked for 20, 50 and no more than 100 peso notes.
At that time, we didn't have the Super Codallos down the road, no Soriana, no Big Bodega nada..... No place for big money, cash register transactions.

If you went to the mercado in the center of town, you best not have anything but metal money.
If you handed someone 20 pesos they would leave their stand and wander around looking for change.
Now it seemsthat 20 pesos is the normal for a lot of transactions. And you don't get much change like before either.

Well it's time to enjoy the rest of the day , the sun is out, it is in the mid 80's and I am 63% done on my latest Kindle purchase that arrived wirelessly earlier in the week.

3 comments:

JerryL said...

You are right, they taste nothing like Cheetos.

Don Cuevas said...

The "pufitos", as I call them, don't taste much of anything, but they do come in vivid colors.

http://tinyurl.com/4v3rmst
"Pufitos" de sabores, por ejemplo, de queso, Ranchero, chilito. I don't eat these, but they should make good insulation.

Saludos,
Don Cuevas

Tancho said...

I did the mistake of buying a bag once when I was hungry, I am amazed that they look decent but taste is something between dry sand and chopped salted cardboard. When I see a bag of Cheetos I will usually buy one, since they are not that easy to find.
Pufitos....actually they remind me more of the packing peanuts...