A Farewell to Mr. Mingle

If I’ve had any success in business as the owner of the Herald and laundromats, it is partly due to what Don Mingle taught me. Mr. Mingle, as I knew him, was the owner and proprietor (I love that word) of the Roaring Spring Department Store, back when it was located down near the paper mill. My grandfather, John Bassler, worked for Mr. Mingle as the manager of the grocery store section of the Department Store. Yes, back then, the Department Store had a large grocery section. In fact, back then, the Department Store sold just about everything, as I remember — shoes, clothing, hardware, paint, mattresses and many other items I’m sure I’m forgetting. It reminded me of an old-fashion general store that offered true one-stop shopping. If the Department Store didn’t have it back then, you probably had to make the trek to Altoona for what you wanted, which raised the question: Did you really need it and was it worth the trip?

I was hired by Mr. Mingle to run the cash register for the upper sales floor of the Department Store. I don’t claim to be a retail clerk superstar. I’m sure that my summer employment came entirely due to nepotism, from my grandfather managing the grocery store. My domain, at the top floor, was devoted to (as I remember) toys, paint, mattresses and some housewares such as window blinds. As a teenager, I was no expert in paint, mattresses, or custom-cutting window blinds, so I was to summon Mr. Mingle if there was a customer for those items. For toys, however, I was free to complete the transaction without assistance.

Mr. Mingle, of course, taught me the basics of running the cash register. But those were not the important lessons Mr. Mingle taught me. First, he established certain basic principles of retail sales. “You have to be here for the customer,” he told me. That meant first that I was to be available to complete a sale, not napping in a back room, making a customer wait to check out. It also meant that I was to be helpful and courteous if a customer had a question. Selling toys did not require specific skills, but I did get questions about whether certain toys were appropriate for an age or gender. Since I was only a few years removed from playing with toys, I did my best to answer questions cheerfully.

Now, this particular exhortation from Mr. Mingle might seem obvious. But, first, it shows that he was practical and thorough. Although my grandfather was trusted to run the grocery store, that did not mean that I was automatically able to handle a retail transaction. Mr. Mingle had a vested interest in making sure that I clearly understood the basics of my responsibilities. I might be turning into an old grouch, but I detect a definite decline in the skills and demeanor of retail clerks over the last few years. Mr. Mingle clearly understood the potential for slacking and he was going to have none of it in his establishment. He was firm but fair.

Second, Mr. Mingle alerted me very clearly to the dangers of thieves and scammers. He walked me through a couple of the well-known register scams, such as the one where the customer hands the clerk a large bill for a small transaction — say, a $50 bill for a $1.99 purchase — and then, in the middle of the clerk making change, the customer makes a special request, such as, “Hey, can I get three tens?” Or something similar. They result is that the clerk often gets confused, which the scammer takes advantage of, and ends up getting back more in change than he is entitled to. Run competently, the scam can net the scammer an easy $10 or $20. Of course, the clerk doesn’t discover what happened until the register is balanced at the end of the day and the drawer is $20 short. By then the scammer is long gone.

I am not good at math (which makes Mr. Mingle all the more generous for hiring me) and it took several patient runs through the scams before he was confident that I understood and could defeat the scammer. One simple technique, I remember him teaching me, was that the clerk always puts the proffered bill separate on the register, not in the drawer. Putting it in the drawer mingles the bills in with all the other nearly identical bills and allows the dishonest scammer to say, “Wait. I gave you a 20” when in fact, a 10 had been proffered. If the customer is always right, and the proffered bill has disappeared into the register drawer, then a twenty it must be, and the scammer has made an easy $10 and the Department Store is down by $10 due to my incompetence.

Last, I remember that at the end of the day, about 20 minutes before closing, I would inevitably hear Mr. Mingle’s slow but steady tread up the staircase to the floor I was responsible for. He came up to close the register and relieve me so I could go home. He was always pleasant and asked me, “Well, how did it go today?” If my drawer was short, or someone had complained, or we had not had something that someone was looking for, I was never made to feel bad. I don’t think he ever raised his voice to me. He was not that kind of boss. Even when things went terribly wrong, Mr. Mingle maintained a level calm and even a sense of humor.

One final anecdote will illustrate this. As I said, I did not handle paint sales. Mixing paint was well beyond my skills. Ruining a can of paint by mixing the color wrong was a loss that the Department Store had to eat. So I summoned Mr. Mingle when a customer needed to have paint mixed. One of the procedures for mixing paint for a customer was that once the correct tints had been added to the base paint, the can was resealed and placed into a paint mixer, where the can was clamped and then vibrated for several minutes to thoroughly mix the paint.

The vibrating mixer was an ancient contraption that I suspected had been at the Department Store a long time. I would not be surprised to learn that the paint shaker had been bought by the founder of the Department Store, Mr. Mingle’s father, Ammon Mingle. It had the look of something that was new in the 1920s. It was comprised of two round metal discs that were clamped on the top and bottom of the paint can by manually spinning a lever. Thus firmly clamped (but not so tight as to buckle the can — I saw that happen), a switch was flipped and a motor rapidly vibrated the can. I now note that unlike today’s paint mixers, the can was not put inside an enclosure as it was mixed. You might see where this tale is going.

As the mixing took some time, Mr. Mingle would often go back downstairs while the paint was vibrating. One of my duties, then, was to monitor the mixer and notify Mr. Mingle when it was finished. This was not hard, because the mixer was noisy, and as it completed its task, it would wind down like a jet engine. I grew used to the normal cycle of hearing the mixer start up, bang away steadily for several minutes and then slowly diminish in noise until it would fully stop. One time, however, a minute or so into the cycle, the regular hum and clatter of the machine changed. There was an abrupt clang, then a what I can only describe as a “glopping” sound and the machine emitted a new sound, more clattery and rapid than I was used to. I went back to investigate and it is difficult to describe the awful sight before my eyes.

The paint area was near the mattress area, so mattresses were lined up, leaning along the walls. Splattered all over several mattresses, the floor, the open walls space, and as I remember, even the ceiling, were enormous splashes of whatever paint that Mr. Mingle had just mixed for a customer. The paint can had either buckled or worked loose from the clamp, and the vibrating machine had punctured the paint can, torn it open, and flung it aside, splattering paint everywhere. I cannot emphasize how there was paint EVERYWHERE.

Mr. Mingle was, of course, summoned, and I was fearful that even if I were not blamed, I would still be in the presence of a very upset paint proprietor. But Mr. Mingle had no doubt been through quite a number of disasters of all sorts as he worked in, and then took over, a general store from his father. He surveyed the awful scene with clear disappointment, hands on his hips, but then turned to me, and in an Olympic-level feat of finding a silver lining, said, “Well, at least the mattresses are wrapped in plastic.”

Mr. Mingle died on April 28, and I was saddened. Thank you, Mr. Mingle, for teaching me that every customer deserves courtesy but also should be watched. That getting it right matters — at the end of the day, your drawer should balance. And, that even when faced with an unmitigated disaster, it serves you well to proceed with equanimity and emphasize the positive.

I’m sorry I didn’t get to say goodbye and thank you for sharing your wisdom.