BMO Financial Group's chief economist Doug Porter got a job working at London, Ont. electronic store Krazy Kelly’s in the summer of 1980, while studying economic.Salvatore Sacco/stock
BMO Financial Group’s chief economist Doug Porter has over three decades of experience studying economies and financial markets in action. The principles he now sees and studies on a global scale, however, were equally true while hawking electronics at Krazy Kelly’s in London, Ont. Here’s what the one-time delivery boy learned about buying and selling.
In summer of 1980, I was 20 and had just started studying economics at Western. The job market was actually really tough back then. You couldn’t just throw your resumé out there and land a job anywhere. You had to know somebody, which luckily I did: One of my best friends’ dad was the manager at the electronic store Krazy Kelly’s, and my friend worked there too, so they brought me in.
I would be paid something like $3 an hour, which I’ve done the math on and works out to about $9 or $10 in today’s money – well below minimum wage and we never got tipped either. Maybe at Christmas. I think it was a time before you tipped everybody and it just wasn’t part of the culture. Still, the money didn’t seem bad. It wasn’t great, but it was fine.
My boss was a solid manager and an easygoing guy, and as long as we did our job well, he was happy. If and when we didn’t, he’d tend to take it out more on his son than on me. The two of us were the stereo- and TV-delivery guys, which was actually a lot more than just deliveries. We’d have to set everything up and setting up speakers was a lot more complicated back then.
We had lots of people of all kinds come into the store, from some of the most affluent to the least in the city. I found it so interesting that even people of much more modest means would often buy the same systems as those who I’d describe as high-income. There were no actual prices on anything so everything was a negotiation. The seller would set the price based on what they thought the buyer would be willing to pay, but the buyer could bargain if they were any good at it.
Whenever there was a sale, we’d deliver it later that day or in the next few days. The electronics were enormous, especially the TVs. The biggest ones had screens that were like 26 inches, but they were in these huge wooden cabinets, which were almost a piece of furniture in themselves and could easily weigh over a hundred pounds. They’d take two of us to carry it, and even though we were strong and relatively fit, they were heavy and it was difficult work.
We could only take one or two at a time, because that’s all that could fit in our van and also because we had to do the set-up once we got there. We could easily be there for an hour or two fiddling with wires, especially with the stereos.
At this point, the customers were always friendly because they were getting a new TV or stereo and new electronics always look great when they first come out of the box. We had very few complaints over the summer.
As a budding economist, it was so interesting to get a pulse of the economy based on how many people were in the store, what they were buying and how much they were willing to spend – which went up and down even over the summer I was there.
We’d stay far out of the salespeople’s way and hung around the back, discussing if and when they’d get a sale and why. A couple that came in together, for example, were very likely to buy something. A guy walking around kicking tires? Probably not. There were odds and likelihoods, but you could never really tell.
Are you a young Canadian with money on your mind? To set yourself up for success and steer clear of costly mistakes, listen to our award-winning Stress Test podcast.