In 1988 I was hunting for a job. My previous gig as a coffee salesman had come to an end and once again I was on the hunt for gainful employment. I saw an ad in the help wanted section for relief manager at Public Storage and thought this job would be right up my alley. I had managed movie theater and then a vitamin store. I could do this!
At the interview, a shit head named Gary Ott, told me Public Storage was a happening company and I began imagining growing with this company. My goal was to eventually me a district manager. Little did I know was my position as relief manager was where I would be stuck at until I got sick and tired off the job and quit. It seemed to be some sort of requirement that their district managers had previous experience in the fast food industry. You mean because I never flipped a f***ing burger I wasn't smart enough to become a district manager! Bullshit!
I was paid little more than minimum wage. The only benefits they provided was a dental plan that had so many exclusions it wasn't worth using. I had five sick days that if not used were not rolled over in the next year; the days simply vanished. Well, at least I got five days vacation. Whoopie! It was a Mc Job: low salary. No benefits. No chance for advancement. But dick head Ott was always telling me how good I had it. Yeah. Right.
One time, Ott suggested to me that my soon to be ex-wife and I get back together to co-manage a property(the hired husbands and wives, mostly elderly retired people, who lived on the premises. He said," I think you'd be so good at it." At time my wife had a job pulling in $25.000 to $30,000 a year. I told her about Ott's offer. I said, and not with a straight face, with Public Storage she'd be making around $13,000 a year. We had a good laugh about that.
Ott always made the live in managers do his work for him. When one of the live in managers complained about this he replied, " I'm good at delegating authority." I wanted to say to him that since he made more than twice what they did, he should do his job and earn his keep and not palm his duties off on them. Since I wanted to keep my job, as underpaid as it was, I kept my mouth shut.
And then there was Bill Dunn, Gary Ott's higher up. I talked to him on a couple of occasions about a possible promotion. I might as well have been talking to a f***ing tree stump. I was known as a hard worker yet received no real raise, beyond a yearly twenty cent bonus. Yet Ott was always calling me Superstar. Shouldn't a Superstar be making decent money with benefits? All I ever got was empty flattery. You can't buy things with flattery. Flattery cannot be put into the bank. I put up with this shit for two years.
Ott was also a henpecked wimp. He once told me his wife had him on an allowance. A grown man working as a district manager on an allowance? Grow a pair of balls, Ott! No wonder he was always throwing his weight around. At home wifey poo called the shots. If I didn't dislike the prick so much I'd feel sorry for him.
Another annoying district manager was Roseanne. The poor thing was as flat as an ironing board, yet she thought she was the shit. Even Ott had a perpetual hard on when it came her. Perhaps it was because his own wife with underdeveloped and he had a thing for flat chested women. At one of the storage facilities where I worked, live in manager Randy came into the office one day with two light globes holding them to his chest saying, " Breasts for Roseanne." and we both cracked up.
Anyhoo, there are some people get big headed when given positions of power and Roseanne, like Gary Ott, was a textbook case of power going to ones head. On one memorable day, Roseanne bounced-no I can't use the word bounce-since she was flat chested and had nothing to bounce-more like strode into the office with an announcement: All relief managers would be working four days a week instead of five. The company now considered thirty two hours a week to be full time.
I knew damn good and well Public Storage was cutting our hours so they didn't have to give us the benefits as they would have if we worked a forty hour work week. Roseanne made this proclamation with a big smile on her face. No f***ing wonder. Her salary wasn't going to diminish and she'd still be getting full boat benefits. Why should she give a shit. I realized it was time to look for a new job. Four days a week wasn't going to cut it for me financially. Even with the side hustle I had going on. If a customer came in needing help loading their storage area I'd help them move in and they always paid me between ten to twenty dollars. That extra money sure came in handy. The kicker was that management frowned on their relief managers doing that. My attitude was f***' em, I needed the money.
Oh, while I have your attention here's an interesting side story: my friend Larry's father co-owned a storage facility but was thinking about leasing it to Public Storage. At this meeting, one of the Public Storage muckety-mucks said to him ," We run your storage area. You make the money." One of those muckety-mucks happed to be Bill Dunn. When Larry mentioned my name, Dunn said," He's a good worker." If I was such a good worker where was my decent salary, my benefits package, my chance for advancement?
Eventually I found a better paying job, gave them a one week notice instead of the customary two, said Adios and never looked back. Although for a number of years there was some rancor concerning Public Storage and Gary Ott. When Pulp Fiction came out on VHS, I went out and bought it because my friend were raving about how good it was. Anyhoo, there's a scene where Ving Rhames character tells Bruce Willis's character, " You've lost your LA privileges." As I was enjoying the film, I imagined myself punching Gary Ott in the face telling him," You've lost your Delaware privileges." But that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I'd just give him the finger and call him an asshole. The same as I would for Bill Dunn.
