of the job I had so anxiously sought. I was asked to report as soon as possible. We packed our personal possessions, put them in the car, and headed for Wilmington.
Within twenty-four hours of our arrival in Wilmington, two events took place that reminded both of us that we weren’t out of the woods yet. Our car was broken into in the hotel’s parking lot and all of our personal possessions of any real value were stolen. Then I began to develop some severe shooting pains in my lower back. The pain became so intense that the only relief I seemed to be able to get was by standing in the hotel room shower and letting very hot water run down my back. When I did report, I was ready, excited, enthusiastic, and determined to do well. This was my first big chance and I had every intention of making it a success.
Although I was excited, I was aware that life for Nancy must have been pretty dull at the time. She was expecting our first child and I know that her mind must have been occupied with prospect of becoming a mother. I was in constant admiration of her positive spirit. In all the years of our marriage, I have never known Nancy to let things get her down.
The cafeteria operation at the Wilmington YMCA was in a disastrous state of affairs when I got there. Even though I had never worked in a restaurant before, it was obvious to me that the inventory was totally out of control and the employees were uninspired and lacking in direction. The staff was not focused on providing the highest standards of food quality and customer satisfaction that I thought we should be delivering. The menu was unimaginative and there were no plans in effect to study costs, develop efficiencies, and target profitability.
As an example, the building manager had allocated two large areas for the cafeteria’s use in storing supplies. Both areas were stacked high with canned goods and paper supplies, and it took me three days to complete my first inventory, which was ridiculous given the size of the operation. Some of the supplies dated back over ten years. Cans were exploding in their cases because they had been kept in storage for such a long time. It was a classic case of an ill-advised “Last In, First Out” inventory control process. I could tell that I wouldn’t need to order much in the way of non-perishables during my first few months on the job.
My first job was to unload that bloated inventory, and the best way to do that was to create appetizing meals and sell them as cheaply as I could. In doing that I was able to offer our customers great value. Because of this, we began to attract new business and we were able to reduce the inventory quickly. Within a few months I was able to return these two storeroom areas to the building manager, who couldn’t believe that we didn’t need them any longer.
When I arrived at the Y as its new director, I was pleased to learn that an assistant manager was already in place. Mrs. Kelley was a dietitian by training. She was a very proper, pleasant woman, but I was troubled by the fact that she was always working at her desk in the little office we shared right off the cafeteria’s main floor.
She spent most of her day recording information in ledger books, three or four dozen of which lined the walls of our office. One day I asked her what this was all about and she explained that she had always recorded information from our purveyor invoices about the cost and specifications of the food we were purchasing over the years. She pointed proudly to the fact that she had posted this kind of information and that she could recall how much the YMCA had paid for goods and supplies going back as far as a quarter of a century. As far as I was concerned this was totally useless information. She acknowledged that the bookkeeping department kept all of our invoices after paying them, so I saw no reason to produce this kind of supplementary data.
I thought she should have been spending more time in the kitchen and on the serving line. I picked up the phone, called the building manager, and asked him to send a laundry truck. One of his men arrived a few minutes later and I asked him to put all of Mrs. Kelley’s record books into the laundry truck. I took the ledger she had in front of her and put that on top of the rest of the ledgers. Then I removed all of her desk drawers, which were filled with pencils, erasers, rubber bands, and paper clips, and threw all of these things into the laundry truck on top of all the ledgers. I directed the building manager to burn all the material in the furnace. This whole episode absolutely appalled Mrs. Kelley. She stared at me in disbelief, but the books were burned, and nothing was left in the office except for our two desks and chairs.
Mrs. Kelley wouldn’t speak to me for several weeks. With no bookkeeping to do, I noticed that she kept very busy in the kitchen, the bakeshop, and on the counter supervising our food preparation and customer servicing. Within a short period of time, the service on the cafeteria line and the quality of our food gradually began to improve.
Several weeks after the incident, she finally came to me. “Mr. McLamore, I hated you when you burned all of my books. I had been keeping them faithfully for over twenty-five years, but I can now see that you were right. They were not serving a useful purpose. I have the time now to do the things that I was trained for and I am enjoying my work much more. I am also pleased to see that our business is improving.”
From that moment on, Mrs. Kelley and I were the very best of friends. In fact, she was almost like a mother to me. No doubt I had been too impetuous and abrupt in handling the matter, but dramatizing it got us focused on the right issues. Redundancy eliminated.
Mrs. Kelley and I concentrated on building sales and profits. What we accomplished was impressive because, as it turned out, we made more profit during my first year than the YMCA had made in the entire previous thirty years combined.
My experience at the YMCA made me begin to think in terms of organizing people and developing operating systems. This seemed to be the necessary first step in building a profit-making enterprise. It was not only a thrill for me to have produced such impressive results, but it gave me a sense of other kinds of opportunities that might become available in the food-service industry. At a young age and already successful in my first job, I began to believe that I was capable of achieving solid results in the restaurant business. I was learning how much fun it was to make a profit, and the pleasure and satisfaction of doing so would stay with me for the rest of my life.
I began to think in terms of my own situation. My $267 per month salary was very low even by 1947 standards, and it was difficult to envision raising a family and owning a house and farm on such a small income.
When her time came, Nancy went to the hospital and delivered a beautiful girl who we named Pamela (although we always called her Pam). I also thought it would be nice to have a little dog, so I bought a boxer puppy that we named Bambi. With a new baby and a puppy, we had managed to double the size of the family overnight!
A few weeks later, Nancy was sitting in a chair in the living room with Pam and Bambi cuddled up beside her while I was reading the paper. Hearing a strange noise, I looked up and saw a crack in the plaster working its way across the ceiling above us. Grabbing Nancy, the baby, and the dog, I rushed them out of the room just as the entire ceiling crashed down in a cloud of dust. With our modest furnishings and new apartment pretty badly damaged, I thought it might be a good time to look for another place to live.
I came across an advertisement offering a five-acre farm for sale near Newark, Delaware, a community just a few miles from Wilmington. After lunch we drove out and looked at the farm, with three bedrooms, a nice fireplace, a large kitchen, living room, and dining room. It sat on five acres of land bordering a wooded area and a lake. We fell in love with it and bought it for nine thousand dollars. This became our first real home, and even though it was modest by any standards, it was all ours and we thought it was wonderful.
My job at the YMCA by that time was going very well. I made a point of meeting as many local businessmen as I could because I wanted to develop a profitable banquet business. I felt that by serving lunches and dinners to large gatherings I would make use of the three banquet rooms. The idea caught on quickly and profits from this growing banquet business came in steadily. The management of the YMCA was impressed
