You Can Bank on That Book 1: The Early Years

Chapter 1

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s how did one get started in the Banking Business. For some, they started off at the very bottom of the ladder. That could be as a teller/customer service representative. Or maybe get a university or college certificate and start off at the management trainee level. Sometimes related experience and skills made an applicant interesting to a Bank. Such was my case, Leslie Swartman in the late 1960’s.

I had got a job out of high school working as a shoe salesman at Bata Shoes but became increasingly aware that this was not what I wanted to spend my life doing.

Enter Jack Morris.

My parents were taking in a Room & Board person to supplement their meager income as Janitor of a 14 unit Apartment building in Ottawa.

Their latest boarder, a Mountie (Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer) had just moved out to share an apartment somewhere with a fellow Mountie at N.Division in Rockliffe Ontario.

Their first new applicant for Room and Board was a handsome, well dressed, well spoken young man in his early twenties. Jack Morris had just been transferred in to Ottawa as the new Branch Manager of Beneficial Finance on Sparks Street in downtown Ottawa.

He was a perfect replacement upstairs and moved in immediately.

He and I hit it off right from the start. Jack had two sisters but no brother. After a while a friendship developed between Jack and I and we started hanging around with each other. Jack one day came out with an interesting observation. He said: Leslie look at you and me in the mirror. Anybody seeing us together would think we were brothers!

It was true, almost uncanny. He was taller than I, but the same black hair, same brown eyes, same build same facial features. But I was four years younger and could easily be taken for Jack’s younger brother.

And that’s exactly how it unfolded.

The next thing Jack was planning Friday and Saturday night club hopping and partying with his newly minted younger brother. And I didn’t mind at all. It was a nineteen year old’s dream come true.

Jack had bought a Plymouth Valiant convertible and each weekend we two cruised around to his friends in Aylmer and up in Arnprior. Jack really got into the brother thing and introduced me as his half-brother.

This is my kid brother Leslie and he’s as smart as me but not as cute!

This would get a big laugh but I was immediately accepted as his brother like it was the gospel truth.

Sometimes during the week, he’d ask me if I wanted to go up to his office while he did his collection calls. I would listen in fascination how he would be very smooth and soft spoken on some calls and very rough and aggressive on other calls.

He even invited me along with him on a couple of repossession calls to repo T.V.’s and stereos people had financed through Department stores and were way behind in their payments.

He used to say: By the time you pick this junk up it’s maybe worth ten cents on the dollar.

Chapter 2

The Credit Business

Jack continued to encourage me to get into the Consumer Credit Industry. He insisted I could do well. He couldn’t hire me at Beneficial because he was already at full staff. You’re not cut out to be a sales clerk in a shoe store! Think bigger!!

I was in fact getting fed up with the shoe business and I was reading the want ads every night. Soon there was an ad for Citizen’s Finance on Richmond Road in Westboro. They were looking for a Credit Trainee.

It paid $45.00 per week. I applied and was hired.

The Manager, Bill Knight was a very sleazy type person. He wore shiny polyester suits and never had his tie pulled up to his collar. He also smelled of BO. He was originally from the USA where he had a lot of experience working in HFC and other small Finance company operations around Ohio and New York State. The Assistant Manager Brad Wollum was a real good person, always dressed neatly, was nice to the customers and staff and the only reason I stuck around.

Then there were multiple back to back experiences that I survived but just barely.

We had a company car. It was a blue Volkswagen Beetle. The Manager didn’t like me much. I wasn’t hardened enough to suit him.

One of my first assignments was to go and get a Wage Assignment from a delinquent customer. He had phoned in and told the Manager he was back to work and would pay him so much per pay until he got caught back up. The Manager told him that would be OK but he’d have to sign a Wage Assignment in case he defaulted. Back then Finance companies could use this which was like a voluntary wage Garnishee for 33% of your wages.

So I went to this man’s home which was an apartment in Lowertown. (Lowertown was anything back then on the north side of Rideau Street after Sussex and consisted back then of mostly lower class tenements and apartment buildings).

He was a huge black man married to a small Chinese lady. They had three small girls ranging from three to eight years old, all beautiful kids. We had a great visit and I got the Wage Assignment signed.

When I got back to the office, the Manager told me to mail it to the customer’s pay office. But I said: You made a deal with him to accept so much per pay!!

To hell with the deal, he’s so far behind he’ll never catch up. My job is to collect this shit!!

The next day he sent me out on two collection calls one in Gatineau the other in Pointe Gatineau.

The one in Gatineau didn’t go well. As soon as I identified myself as an employee of Citizen’s Finance looking for a payment the lady cursed at me in French and slammed the door in my face.

I went to a payphone and called into the office to report my lack of progress on that double write-off file. The Manager told me that the lady in Gatineau had called in after my visit and said to him If that little bastard in the blue Volkswagen ever comes here again, I’ve got a 12 guage Shotgun loaded with rock salt and I’ll nail him and that VW with both barrels!

My boss thought that was real funny and let out a hearty guffaw. I wasn’t enjoying the humour one bit. Then he seals the conversation with: Don’t forget your collection call on those Ouellette deadbeats in Pointe Gatineau.

This one turned out to be the deal breaker in my short lived career in the Finance Company business.

At first everything went well. I pulled into the Ouellette’s laneway. They lived in a rundown shack next the Gatineau River. There was garbage and junk and old rusted cars laying around their yard. I introduced myself to Mrs. Ouellette and surprisingly enough she was quite friendly and invited me in. I explained I was there to collect a payment on their loan which was six month’s overdue (actually a triple write off!)

She told me she had just received her welfare cheque that day and would I mind driving her to the Pointe Gatineau IGA so she could cash her cheque and buy her groceries. Then she could give me $20 out of her cheque as a payment. I was fine with that as at least I’d get back to the office with a positive result from my trip to Quebec.

We went to the IGA and loaded up with groceries, I carried most of them to the car, then from the car into the house. She handed me the $20. Everything was going great. I pulled out a duplicate receipt book and started to write her out a receipt.

That’s when as they say: the shit hit the fan!

In walked Mr. Ouellette having spent half the day in the local tavern and half in the bag. He looked at me, then his wife and the conversation began in Pointe Gatineau French (which I understood completely). Here’s the English version:

Who’s this little prick, Jeanne D’Arc and what’s he doing here?

He’s from Citizen’s Finance, Jean and he was nice enough to take me to the store to get our groceries so I’m giving him a little payment on your loan.

Bullshit! No way! I’m not giving them assholes a dime!

Then he turned to me with a look of absolute rage in his eyes and shouted: "Give back that money or I’ll kick the shit out of you!

At this point I decided discretion was the better part of valour. I threw my unfinished receipt in my briefcase, slammed it shut, threw the $20 bill at him and sprinted for the door then all the way to my VW as fast as my legs could travel.

As I climbed into the car I saw him coming through the door cursing me in a loud voice and running for the car. The engine started, thank God, and I slammed it in first gear and spun out the yard in a cloud of dust and gravel. I didn’t slow down until I was crossing the Chaudiere Bridge.

The same day I resigned from Citizen’s Finance Company. The Assistant Manager Brad tried to discourage me from quitting, but I was adamant. He told me that things were coming down the pike and maybe you should stick around.

The truth were to be known, The Manager, Bill Knight had escaped from the USA with multiple fraud charges against him by his former employers. Citizen’s hadn’t done proper background checks on him as they needed a Manager in our Branch desperately. While he was there he was pocketing cash payments, giving the clients receipts, but never crediting their loans. In addition, he made phony loans to fictitious customers whose names and addresses he picked out of the Ottawa phone book.

Brad had his suspicions and even documented proof and reported to Head Office. Mr. Night I guess had a sixth sense about imminent danger and went to lunch just before Head Office security and Inspectors arrived, never to return.

So Brad became the new Manager and had to do double duty, since I decided not to stick around and fill his former position.

That week I scoured the Newspapers. There was an advertisement for Credit Collection Trainees at Interprovincial Collection Agency on Rideau Street.

I had told my buddy Jack about the ad and he said: Good place to learn collection procedures, Leslie… Go there learn the basics then get back into lending at a Bank, Finance or Acceptance company!

They paid less than Citizen’s finance as a base salary, but much better than Bata on commission as you got much bigger commissions based on the value of the account, not like a $10 shoe.

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Chapter 3

The Collection Agency

It wasn’t long before I clued into how this job went and was picking up much better dollars than my previous jobs. I would make double my previous income easily.

Soon after I made the grade as full-time collector, they hired a new recruit from Haley’s Station, a fellow named Mitch Klein. He had previously worked for the Hydro but injured himself on the job, so this was a fill-in way to make money as he recuperated. He had a real Ottawa Valley Accent and we were instant buddies.

Sometimes he’d call up a collection client and threaten them that he would have to garnishee their wages. But with his accent it came out "I’m gonna have to Garr-on shee you sir!!"

He really had the Ottawa Valley twang. For example the word sandwich came out of him as sang-gwitch and he didn’t wash his hands he warshed them. When he first met someone, the first words out of his mouth were: Gidday!

We’d all chuckle in the background.

I sat behind the company skip tracer. Her name was Alice Jenkins, a late 50’s early 60’s very eccentric woman who wore flowery old-fashioned dresses and wore her salt and pepper hair in severely pulled back style with a bun at the back. She always wore a different coloured hairnet over the bun. Everyday a new coloured hairnet.

She also had a bag of tricks that simply amazed me. To start with she had about a half a dozen voices she could use, whatever suited the occasion. Her Bible was the Ottawa City Directory. She would look up the debtor’s previous addresses, then from the City Directory, she’d start calling his or her former next door neighbours. Sometimes she would be Mrs. Jones legal secretary at Nelligan, Nelligan and Power Law Firm from which he was a beneficiary of an estate but Joe probably doesn’t know his Uncle had died and left him money. After one or two calls, she’d either get an address or his new job details. At this point she’d hand the file over to the Supervisor who would put a stamp after her last entry on the collection card that either say: ISSUE WRIT or ISSUE GARNISHEE (if we already had judgment in Small Claims Court). Joe Debtor never got a phone call at this point as he was constantly on the move and earnestly trying to avoid payments of his debts.

One time she located a debtor in a remote area in Alberta. He lived down the Road from an RCMP detachment. She had some nerve. She placed a collect call to the debtor care of the RCMP detachment phone number. The receptionist answered the call and informed Alice that Mr.Debtor doesn’t live here This is the RCMP office. Alice would say that she knew that, but it was urgent that she speak with him on an important family matter. After some conversation, it was agreed they would send a squad car to his place and inform him that he was to receive an important call at the detachment office. 30 minutes later Alice would make the second collect call and the phone was turned over to Joe Debtor. She then handed the call over to a collector who took over from there.

Her favourite line after pulling off a tough one was: I can find anyone, even if they’re hiding under a rock!! Then she’d cackle like the witch in Hansel and Gretel!

When the bosses weren’t looking we’d play games on the new recruits. I was the lead person because I could talk with various accents, almost unrecognizable. I could do French, Italian, Chinese and Pakistani. The new employee would leave to go to the washroom. We’d pick a card out of his bin and write down the name of someone he had just called and left a message for. We knew, for example, it was a Simpson’s Sears account that was $134.25 past due.

The new guy would return to his desk. The client was French. I would go on line 4 and dial the main line of the Collection Agency. With of course, a French accent. I would ask for the newbie collector by name. The call was transferred to Newbie. Everyone in the room was listening.

Newbie would answer the call, Hello Joe Newbie here, can I help you?

I said : Dis is da guy you call for dat goddamm Sears account dat I ain’t gonna pay for dem bastairs!!

Excuse me sir, but who am I talking to?

I’m Jean-Pierre Vachon, on Carruthers Street.

At this point he’d fish with his cards and find Mr.Vachon’s card and make his best pitch.

Mr.Vachon, you owe Simpson’s Sears $134.25 and haven’t paid your bill in over a year. If you don’t make arrangements today with me, Sir, we will have to take further measures with you!

So I’d come back with: Furder Measures! Furder Measures! You come and take dis useless piece of crap I bought from Sears and stick it up yer ass for de furder measures!!

Then I came in with the zinger. This is the one everyone listening was waiting for. A newbie was never ready for this next burst from the angry collection client…

Hey listen you fokker! I know who you are! Yer dat liitle prick wid de red hair an you leave dat place every night at five, right, Asshole?

Excuse me Sir, what are you trying to tell me?

I’m tole you, maybe you get run down by a fass car on Rideau Street. Maybe you get da shit kicked out of you for givin’ hard times to deceen personnes trying to pay der way and not get fokked by dem godamm Sears bastairs!!

At this point he’d hang up the phone and go running for the Supervisor, who knew right away he’d been initiated.

The Supervisor would come into the Collection room with everbody snickering (about 12 collectors) and say: Swartman, Would please lay off the new recruits!!

Then we’d stop snickering and bust into laughter…

One thing I was not impressed with at this company was the way they handled their Human Resources policies.