Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas
RedLS1GTO, Larry, Joecooool, who do you hold responsible for the current economic condition of our country? Who's fault?
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I"m taking a stab at that one.....I blame the CRA under Carter for most of it, certainly the real estate inflation/collapse taking out major banks and fanni/freddy along with them.....
Now to tell of a large hardware/home improvement chain in the DC region some years ago....HECHINGERS, they were around for years, and so I came to know two good employees of theirs in the kitchen dept....they used to hand out my card as one of many for bidding on kitchen installs....the company stock was selling for the magic number 25 bux/share, things were good, they sold the appliances and cabinets, my cab maker made the tops, I did the installs with subs for plumbing and electric, who I learned those trades from.....
So the Hechinger family had a real estate holding company, that actually held title to all those stores and shopping centers all over the mid atlantic region, it was a separate entity than the Hechinger Hardware sales operation that paid rent to the R/Estate company.....
and when the likes of HD/Lowes appeared on the horizon, they exited stage left from the field....first taking the installers in to the company as basic employees, taking 30% off the top of the labor for the company, just like SEARS used to do, maybe still does in their kitchen/bath departments.....
that lasted maybe two years for Hechingers, and the company folded...leaving my friends with worthless stock seeing their 200k 'investment/retirement' funds decline to 50 cents/share before going to nothing at all.....
Trick is, Hechingers carried much better merchandise grades across the board than the others chains....but at higher prices....tough to compete....
Strange how most employees seem to last just shy of 20 years and operations find a way to fire them, seen that happen many times over the years, one operation famous for that is the Joe Zamoisky company, distributors for Zenith electronics, and Armstrong tile in the mid atlantic region....they did a bunch of guys like that over the years, even the field tech rep and parts head Marvin.....much less a GOOD parts counter guy like Neil.....
so seeing Joecool's story there about his old company is not all that surprising, it's done all the time, normal course of business,.....
