People have often asked me whether I was retired, and, if so, for how long. I have usually told them that I never exactly decided to retire. In 2014, however, TSI’s clients made it clear to me that it was time for me to quit.
That year was definitely a turning point in my own life. I did not rate the events and decisions of the early months of that year as a genuine crisis—unlike the four others that have been detailed in this project. During the previous several years I had seen the trends developing, I had explored every alternative that I could think of, and my financial position was good, at least in comparison with its state before the late nineties.
By late 2013 Denise Bessette, my partner, had moved from Stafford, CT, to Cape Cod. She was working from home with occasional trips to East Windsor. We could communicate by email, telephone, or through messaging on the AS/400. During this period I was 65 years old; Denise was ten years younger.
The cause: The precipitating event was a letter received in late 2013 from one of our contacts at Dick’s Sporting Goods1, a long-time user of both AdDept and AxN. I cannot find a copy of the letter, but it was basically an announcement that Dick’s had contracted with a media buying service to schedule and purchase its newspaper ads.
Other AdDept users had previously made similar decisions.2 At RadioShack (discussed in detail here) the decision coincided with dropping the use of the AdDept system entirely. The advertising department there used it to place, manage, and pay for advertising in hundreds of papers, but it never used many of the other modules. Nevertheless, one of the employees most closely involved confided to me a few months after the outsourcing that she thought that they might have made a mistake.
A few years later Belk (described here) outsourced its newspaper buying. Unlike RadioShack, Belk by that time was using AdDept for a very large number of tasks besides scheduling and purchasing newspaper ads. Denise Podavini, the financial manager for advertising, never considered dropping AdDept. Moreover, when I explained to her that TSI would be losing a large source of revenue from Belk’s newspapers that had subscribed to AxN3, she voluntarily authorized TSI to increase the maintenance charge to cover the difference. That reaction astounded me.
By 2013 most of TSI’s department store clients had been absorbed by Macy’s, which had then consolidated into one office in New York City. At that point that office was using neither AdDept not AxN. Dick’s outsourcing would have little effect on the income from AdDept. It might actually have given us a custom programming assignment or two. However, it would certainly mean the loss of all the revenue from Dick’s papers that had subscribed to AxN. There were over a hundred of them, and losing them would cost us thousands of dollars every month.
When we received the news from Dick’s my immediate evaluation was that this was the death knell for TSI. Denise was quite surprised at my reaction. We had worked together for thirty years, many of which were quite lean, and she had never seen me give up when the company faced a challenge. She spent a week or two manipulating possible projections on spreadsheets, but she finally came to the same conclusion that I had.
The plan: Denise and I met several times after working hours or out of the office in order to come up with a plan that treated our employees, Jason Dean and Ashley Elliott, our remaining clients, our vendors, and ourselves fairly. We began by making a list of things that we certainly needed to resolve:
A termination date for AxN and support for AdDept.
A plan for the employees.
Taxes and other governmental issues.
Our lease for 7B Pasco Dr.
Letters to AdDept clients.
Notifications to vendors.
Disposition of assets.
We scheduled an appointment with our accountant, Tom Rathbun. As it happened, he was planning to retire. So, our news pretty much coincided with his plans. He provided us with a list of items that we needed to do to assure that we fulfilled our obligations to the government. We decided to terminate AxN and software support for the AdDept product on July 31. That would provide four months to whittle down the accounts receivable and accounts payable for the final closing of the books on November 30, 2014.
The employees: Even before we met with Tom, Denise and I had decided to let the employees work until March 31 or to terminate as of January 31 and receive a four-week severance package. They both took the severance option. Denise had expected both of them to stay, but I was not too surprised when they resigned. I was amenable to either option. The severance option was actually a little better for TSI. We saved money on payroll, and it offered an immediate opportunity to sell more of the office equipment sooner.
We wrote letters of recommendation for both employees. Here is the one that Denise wrote for Jason Dean:
To Whom It May Concern,
TSI Tailored Systems, Inc., is a small company that has provided intricate and extensive software systems to businesses large and small since 1980. Jason Dean joined our staff on October 15, 2007 as a programmer analyst and quickly became an integral member of our programming and support team. In 2010 he was promoted to lead programmer analyst. Jason worked on the development of new systems and the modification of existing systems in free-form RPGLE, SQL, BASIC and CL on IBM midrange business systems. Development was focused on a comprehensive data base system for retail advertising clients. His responsibilities also included program testing and documentation, client support, and a myriad of in-house support tasks.
Jason’s performance on the job has been uniformly excellent. He is well-organized and has extremely high standards for the quality of work produced. You can depend on him to consistently deliver sophisticated applications that meet those standards, and within or well in advance of project deadlines. He quickly and easily comprehends new strategies and technologies. He is an outstanding quality control tester. His methods steadily test both the functionality and logic of the program with robust data sets. His diligence has called out a number of subtle issues during the development cycle. Jason also had the opportunity to train and impart those standards on a new programmer, the results of which were outstanding.
Jason’s ability to handle client support is impressive. He is very adept at posing the necessary questions to extract information required to resolve client issues. He consistently maintains a positive, professional and helpful attitude even when dealing with a difficult caller. He won consistent praise from our clients.
Jason’s termination had nothing to do with his job performance. Business conditions necessitated that we take steps to close the business.
I unhesitatingly and without qualification recommend Jason Dean for any similar position. I would be very happy to talk with any prospective employer about his work at TSI. I can be reached at Denise_Bessette@cox.net or 860 386-0700 (through July 31, 2014) or 508 760-2847 (home).
The letter that I wrote for Ashley was posted here.
The clients: I composed a short letter to the AdDept clients and mailed it on February 28, 2024, at which point I was the only person left in the office. Here is the text:
Denise Bessette and I have worked together for almost three decades. During this time we have taken great pride in our ability to provide first-class software and service to our clients at a reasonable price and first-class treatment of our employees and vendors. We have changed the business radically a few times to respond to various circumstances, but we have never sacrificed our basic principles.
Recent events now necessitate another change, one that we definitely regret. Two factors have made it impossible for us to continue doing business in the way that we have in the past. The first is the consolidation of the retail business. In one case thirteen of our installations collapsed into one and then, ultimately, none. The second is the trend toward outsourcing. The latter has led to the collapse of our Internet insertion-order business, on which we have come to rely. We were already running a very lean operation. There is nothing left to cut.
Therefore, we both feel that we have no choice but to shut down TSI as of July 31, 2014. We will do our best to provide the very best support of the AdDept system’s day-to-day operations through that date and even implement whatever programming changes are required on the same basis that we always have. We are definitely willing to act as consultants to help design a transitional process and to fill whatever other roles you feel are appropriate. If you wish to use AdDept beyond the above date, you are, of course, free to do so, and if you want one of us to provide some kind of support, it may be possible to make arrangements on an individual basis.
We both think that TSI has had a great run. We wish that it could continue forever because we really have enjoyed working with our clients to provide a system that provided them with what they needed to prosper.
Best wishes for the future.
As far as I know, no one asked for help designing a transition process. Some users may well have asked Denise for help. I have occasionally wondered how they coped with the situation.
Hundreds of papers received the orders for ads like these through AdDept and AxN.
After receiving the letter someone from Dick’s called us to assure us that they had not intended to drop the AdDept system. We explained that the problem was not AdDept; it was the imminent loss of revenue from the many newspapers that had subscribed to AxN. Evidently no one at Dick’s had ever considered this ramification.
I have no information about how long any of the companies that were still using AdDept in 2014 continued to use it after July 31.
I did not write to any of the newspapers, but I did stop billing them for the subscriptions to AxN after July 31. I was still receiving checks from a few of them through November. At that point I wrote off everything that was outstanding.
The lease: We had arranged with our landlord, Rene Dupuis (introduced here), to stay in his company’s building until July 31. Because a lot of equipment and furniture remained in the office in the middle of July, I asked Rene if we (i.e., I) could stay one more month. He said that because TSI had been an ideal tenant for such a long time, he was happy to accommodate us. Our section of the building was empty by August 31.
During the last month or two Rene brought one or two people up to TSI’s office to examine the property. I do not remember the name of the company that ended up renting it, but the lease was signed while I was still working there.The company even purchased TSI’s antiquated telephone system for $500.
Tax issues: TSI had been paying sales or use taxes to several jurisdictions. I found a copy of the Letter of Good Standing signed by a machine for Deborah Chandler, the Tax Collection Supervisor of the Compliance Support Unit. It stated that TSI owed the state of Connecticut nothing.
I also found a copy of a letter that I wrote to the state of Mississippi that stated that we had done no business there and that TSI was closing. No one replied to the letter.
I was not able to follow all of the dealings with the IRS, but in June of 2015 I definitely received two checks with income tax refunds for payments that TSI had previously made.
Tom provided me with all of the forms that I needed to file with state and federal agencies. None of them were difficult or time-consuming.
Furniture and equipment. I wore many hats in my time working at TSI. The most ill-fitting was probably the last one: used furniture salesman. I took photos of everything and placed ads on Craig’s List. To my great surprise I rapidly disposed of nearly everything. I probably should have charged more, but we had bought almost all of it second-hand many years earlier.
I found a list of the major items that I sold and their prices:
The desk in my office with one of the phone units.
Item
Price
Conference table
80
Black cabinet
50
Kitchen table, chairs
80
Three cabinets
133
Sales office desk
25
Twelve side chairs
125
Four trash cans
2
Cabinet
40
Black desk
25
Cubicles
100
Denise’s desk
25
Phone system
500
4-drawer cabinet
125
Denise’s desk.
The biggest coup, aside from the sale of the telephone system, was the fact that I was able to get rid of the five-foot high4 dividers that were used to form cubicles. I was thrilled when a man whose wife (or maybe mother) was opening a dance studio in Windsor Locks almost directly across the Connecticut River from TSI’s office in East Windsor offered me $150 for all of the hardware. On a Saturday he drove a pickup towing a very long and flat trailer to the office. He and another fellow came upstairs, disassembled the cubicles, carried the individual sections down the stairs, and strapped them to the trailer. He thought that he got a bargain. I was afraid that I would end up needing to pay someone to take the dividers away.
The total that I received was $1,310, which I split with Denise.
I also remember giving out two very large plants to one of the guys who purchased the trash cans and some other mundane things. He took the plants that Eileen Sheehan-Willett had nursed from near-fatal neglect to monstrosities and put them in his truck. He was thoughtful enough to wait until he was out of sight to throw out the plants and save the pots.
I found the following notes in an Excel spreadsheet called equipment.xls:
The 515 server was sold to Saks Inc. for $2500 on 7/31/14.
The 270 server, color printer, Dell PC, scanner, and backup hub were taken by Mike on 7/31/14. The 270 will be scrapped when the company is closed. It has no market value.
The black & white laser printer was taken by Denise on 7/31/14.
Fax machine and copier were donated to a local church on 7/31/14.
Two dot matrix printers with no market value were donated to the New England Bridge Conference on 8/31/14.
All other equipment was scrapped on or about 7/31/14.
The 270 and 515 were iSeries (i.e., AS/400) models. The 270 and the other equipment were transported to our house at the end of August (not July) in a truck that my wife Sue borrowed from her friend and bridge partner, Jan Bailey.5 The equipment resided in my office for a few months until TSI’s books were closed, and I was pretty sure that I would not need the server. It, the backup hub, a twinax display, and a snake’s nest of cables have rested peacefully in the basement and are still there in 2024. The color printer, which supported two-sided printing, the scanner, and the PC lasted for quite a few years before they were scrapped or recycled somewhere.
A few other things made their way to our house. The kitchen at 7B had a microwave and a small refrigerator. The former is still in use in 2024, but the circular plat no longer spun around. It was due for the junk heat. The latter was given to David Basch, the grandson of another of Sue’s bridge partners, in exchange for doing the heavy lifting in the move. A small shelf and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase were moved to my office at the house in Enfield. A good many smaller items also made the journey back to Enfield.
The largest item that I neither sold nor brought back to Enfield was the Uninterruptible Power Supplu (UPS). The UPS was a large battery with outlets for several power cables. Our AS/400 and a few other devices were attached to it. The UPS could provide enough electricity to last for a few hours.
Power failures were not unknown in Connecticut. Denise and I discussed purchasing a generator, but we could never justify the expense. We only experienced a couple of power failures in the nearly fourteen years that TSI’s headquarters was in East Windsor, and the UPS was sufficient to to get us through them.
The UPS was very heavy. I carried it out to my car and transported it to a nearby dumpster. It was all that I could do to lift it to shoulder height and drop it in.
The one-man show: From February through August I drove into East Windsor every morning. Every evening I drove back to Enfield. When I arrived at work I checked to make sure that all the equipment was working. I encountered absolutely no hardware problems. Once a month I sent out invoices for software support and for AxN subscriptions. I usually ate lunch in the office by myself.
The highlight of the day was when the mail came. If there were any checks, I processed them in our home-grown accounts receivable system and then deposited them in the bank. I was often amazed that newspapers that I was fairly certain were no longer using AxN continued to pay for the service. I attributed this to the fact that so many newspapers had outsourced their processing of accounts payable to an outside service. TSI’s bills seemed to slip through the cracks of the approval process.
I spent most of the rest of my days sitting at the PC. I already had a pretty good command of HTML, JavaScript, php and MySQL. I did a lot of work on the NEBridge.org website, and it was also during this period that I got the idea of maintaining a database of ACBL members who resided in District 25 (New England). Allan Clamage (introduced here), who served as the editor of the website, told me how to download roster files from the ACBL and set it up so that I had the authority to do so. The details of the database are described here.
Don’t ask for Ben 9 at B&N.
The other major project that I worked on was my historical novel about Pope Benedict IX. The story of its genesis and why it was posted on Wavada.org but was never at Barnes & Noble is described in some detail here.
In some ways I wished that I had been a history major and gotten a PhD. Then I probably would have found someone with whom I could discuss my ideas about eleventh-century papal politics. On the other hand, I should remember that I only became interested in the popes in the twenty-first century, and I finished grad school in the seventies. Moreover, my interest in the eleventh century was a byproduct of a rather random introduction to a somewhat obscure ninth-century pope named Formosus.
I did not take a vacation in 2014, but I did go to quite a few bridge tournaments. This was the period during which I implemented a system of posting photographs of winners of regional events on NEBridge.org webpages. I called those pages “Winners Boards” because the background that I used looked like boards. I kept that feature up through 2021.
At about the same time I also began sending emails promoting the regional tournaments in New England. At first I composed the emails myself and sent them through my Wavada.org account. When I got blacklisted as a spammer, Bob Bertoni came to my rescue. That harrowing situation was described here.
The regional tournaments in 2014 were the first to include meetings of a committee that was known as “The B’s Needs”. It was initially chaired by Ausra Geaski, the president of the district. I attended every meeting.
The initial purpose of the committee was to recommend ways to make the tournaments more enjoyable for Flight B players, those with too many points to play in the “Gold Rush” events that were limited to less than 750 masterpoints. These people found themselves up against people with many thousands of points and years of experience. It was not generally a pleasant experience.
Over the next few years the committee produced a large number of suggestions for making the tournaments more attractive to B players and to everyone else. Many of them were implemented, and there is very little doubt that they had, for the most part, a profoundly positive effect on the tournaments. I took great pride in what we did as a group and what I personally implemented. This activity provided a purpose to my life at a time when I really needed one. It made me feel that I was using my time and skills to make life more enjoyable for people who shared one of my principal interests. Most of my contributions were cast aside in the post-Pandemic environment, and it saddened me greatly.
I found some materials about this committee. I have posted Ausra’s minutes of the meetings in Newton, MA, in January (here), Cromwell, CT, in February (here), and Nashua, NH, in September (here). I have also posted here the notes that Allan wrote up about the group’s first few ideas.
The version with a possible career in mining was the best.
While I was occupied with closing down TSI Sue had knee-replacement surgery on both legs. Afterwards she spent several days getting rehabilitated at Suffield House. I went to see her every evening. On one evening my friend Tom Corcoran joined us, and we played a game of Careers. Sue had to remind me of this event while I was in the process of writing this entry.
September.through December: For the last three months I ran what was left of TSI from my office at the house. I still received payments from newspapers almost right up to when I closed the books for good at the end of November.
I still had some communications with Tom Rathbun in December of 2014, but after that TSI has been nothing but a source of incredible memories. The process of closing it down was somewhat complicated, but I don’t remember making any serious mistakes.
1. Details of the installations at Dick’s Sporting Goods have been posted here.
2. I am not sure why these companies made the decisions. It is possible that the media buying services claimed that the fact that they represented several large advertisers would give them more clout in negotiating with newspapers. They may also have been able to claim more expertise in choosing between papers in the few markets that had more than one.
3. In theory it would have been possible for TSI to construct an interface that could be used by media buying services. We had written many interfaces to both send and receive records in other modules. However, the information that AxN required from AdDept contained four different types of records: headers for ads, special instructions at the header level, individual ads, and special instructions for individual ads. Could we persuade the buying service to send records in that format? I considered it unlikely in the extreme even if we did not charge them for using the service. Even if they were persuaded, we would have had to devise foolproof ways of dealing with errors in their files. Moreover, the process of fixing errors would need to be very efficient. Time could be of the essence. It appeared to me to be a nightmarish situation.
4. I am pretty sure about the height because I remember being just barely able to kick my right foot up and rest my ankle on the top of one to stretch my quads before running.
5. Jan Bailey, Ginny Basch, and Sue were regular participants in an unsanctioned bridge game that was held on Thursday evenings in Somers.
An interesting, if spooky, place to exercise during the pandemic. Continue reading →
For decades the big attraction of living in Enfield has been the easy access to almost every variety of retail store and restaurant. The concentration of these establishments in Enfield began with the construction of the Enfield Square mall and eventually spread out a few blocks in every direction except east, where I-91 blocked further expansion. As far as I know, no one celebrated the the fiftieth anniversary of the mall in 2021. Frankly, there was not much left to celebrate.
History: The potential of the property occupied by the mall was first appreciated by the May Co., one of TSI’s biggest clients and the parent company of the Hartford-based chain of department stores, G. Fox. The area attracted the company’s attention because it was between two exits of I-91 and there was little retail competition in the area north of Hartford and south of Springfield, MA. Furthermore, although Enfield itself was not a particularly wealthy town, the towns bordering it to the east (Suffield), west (Somers), and north (Longmeadow, MA) were quite prosperous and lacking in retail.
The three original anchor stores are indicated in red: G=G. Fox; P=JC Penney; S=Steiger’s. All three extended well into the parking lot and had external entrances.
This view is from the west. I cannot explain where all these cars are going. There is no exit on the west.
The May Co. purchased the land and developed a mall with three anchor stores and a very large parking lot. G. Fox occupied the prize spot—the two-story space on the western side with its own entrances. Steiger’s, a much smaller department store based in Springfield, leased the large one-story area on the eastern end. The two-story space located in the south-central area was leased to JC Penney.
This arrangement persisted for more than two decades. In 1994 Steiger’s went out of business, and in 1997 its space was leased by Sears. In 1993, the May company folded the G. Fox division into its Boston-based division, Filene’s. In 2000 the JC Penney store closed. Filene’s eventually took over the lease and closed the second floor of both of its locations. In 2006 Macy’s purchased the May Co. and rebranded Filene’s. Both Macy’s stores closed in 2016 and were never again occupied. The Sears store also closed in 2016 and was never reoccupied.
The doors on the left lead to the mall’s corridor. The ones on the right lead to Target. Few Target shoppers go to the mall area.
A new Target store was constructed and opened in 20011, but for some reason it was not really integrated into the mall. It had only one entrance—on the north side. It was next to one of the mall’s three side corridors, but there was no way to enter Target from the center of the mall without walking almost all the way down that corridor. So, it did not serve to draw traffic to the rest of the mall. It also occupied a considerable amount of parking space. For years parking was abundant on three sides of the mall and difficult on the north side.
Preparation: In January of 2022 I had been searching for an indoor location in which to walk a few miles four or five days per week. I had no interest in joining a gym, but I did investigate using a treadmill at the Enfield Senior Center. Then I thought of the mall. My dad had walked there for a while when Enfield Square was still a hive of activity. I sometimes picked him up there when we ate lunch together at Friendly’s on Wednesdays. I never asked him what it was like; I did not consider what he was doing as serious exercise, and in those days I still was in possession of a working treadmill and ample cartilage in my knees.
It occurred to me one day that I could walk in Enfield Square. I made a reconnaissance trip to gauge how many laps I would need to walk to reach my goal of five miles. I was a little surprised at how empty the building was, and some of the changes disoriented me. I was pleased with my discovery that one complete lap—including the side corridors—would constitute a hike of about half a mile. I decided to start with five laps and add one additional lap each Monday until I reached ten.
There were a few false starts. On the first hike through the mall I remembered my Bose head phones, but I forgot to bring my MP3 player. The second time I remember both the player and the headphones, but I found that the headphones trapped in too much heat. By the end of the walk I was uncomfortably hot. After that I used earbuds instead of the headphones.
On both of those first two hikes I left my winter jacket and hat in the car. I parked as close as possible to the door to the western corridor, but I still faced a fairly substantial walk in the frigid winter air from my car to the door. The next time I decided to try parking on the other side of Target near the door to the north end of the western corridor. The only store in that corridor was GameStop. I correctly figured that I would easily be able to locate a good parking spot there. In fact, the only difficulty that I encountered was with the nearest light in the parking lot. It did not seem to work, or maybe the landlord2 had disconnected it.
On my way to the mall I drove past the huge two-story western anchor store that had last been occupied by Macy’s until 2016. I remembered that for a while Lia Honda, which is a block east of Enfield Square had parked dozens or even hundreds of brand new vehicles in the western parking lot. When I drove by the former Macy’s the entire parking lot was shockingly empty. I noticed a sign on the side of the building that indicated that the building was available for lease or purchase. I feel certain that the property managers would bend over backwards to get a tenant there, but who would want it?
Come on inside and take a lap with me. We will be walking counterclockwise, which means that we will keep to the right. Some of the shoppers walk on the left side of the corridor, but I have yet to see a walker do so.
I’ll point out the sights. I’ve never actually set foot in any of the establishments at Enfield Square except for Target and the cinemas, but I’ve done a little research on some of the obscure ones, and I have made mental notes while hiking the corridors.
The western corridors: On the immediate right (west) of the northwest entrance is the GameStop store. It has been open every time that I have walked by it. Seldom has there been a potential customer within, but I can always hear or see some kind of activity.
A full-length mirror with five diagonal grey stripes has been positioned between the entrance to the store and the door through which I always enter and exit. When one is walking in the corridor towards the door it appears for a second that someone is walking up a hallway from the left. Actually the grey stripes make it appear that they are ascending a staircase.
The rest of the northwest corridor is totally uninhabited. There still is a large sign for Liberty, the tax consultants.. Liberty, which is, of course, a seasonal business has another office nearby. I am pretty sure that they have abandoned this office and just left the sign. If they intended to resume operations in the mall, I think that there would be more activity there by February 6. I, for one, have already received most of my 1099s.
Liberty’s office was on the southwest corner of the corridor in which we entered. At this point we bear to the right toward what was formerly the grand semicircular entrance to the G. Fox/Filene’s/Macy’s store that served as the western anchor store. Some walkers walk right along the wall, but I usually follow the diagonal checkerboard pathway.
I was quite shocked to discover that the entrances to two of the three of the former anchor stores had been walled up and decorated with unimaginative art work. At left is a photo of the one on the west end of the mall. I think that the artists meant to depict things that one could purchase in the mall. Not so in 2022. If the hamburger makes you hungry, you must go outside to Wendy’s or Friendly’s or across the street to McDonald’s or Burger King to get one.
As we pass through this area we can see overhead a huge wreath that was, I assume, left over from Christmas.
We haven’t encountered any humans in this area yet, but people are usually visible on the left in the main corridor. From this distance it is hard to say whether they are walkers or shoppers. All of the shoppers and most of the walkers wear at least a light jacket. I wear a sweatshirt over a tee shirt. I feel a little chilly during the first lap. After that I am happy that I left the coat behind in my Honda.
On the south side of the walled-over entrance is a large location that was for decades the location of a Waldenbooks store. I visited it often to purchase paperback books or calendars. This store was one of many that closed in January of 2007.
The space is now occupied—sort of—by the Lia car dealerships. I have walked past here at least thirty times, and I have never seen anyone. I don’t know if it was ever actually used by Lia. I doubt that anyone has been here during the pandemic. A sign in the window touts some Hyundai models from 2019.
Inside some tables and chairs are visible, as well as small displays of merchandise featuring the brands of the four Lia dealerships in Enfield The lights have never been on when I walked by, and I have never seen anyone inside of this office.
They don’t rent bowling shoes, and you need to bring your own ball.
I am fairly sure that at one time there were stores on both sides of the mall’s southwest corridor. In 2022 a couple of bowling lanes could be inserted here, and neither the retailers nor their customers would be disturbed much. There are no businesses at all on the north side of the corridor. In fact, there are not even doors or display windows. The impression given is that beyond Lia to the door at the end of the corridor is an outside wall. I am quite certain, however, that something is behind it.
We make the loop at the end of the hallway, but we are careful not to step on the carpet. Some kind of pressure sensor beneath it opens the door at the southwest ext. The first door on the right (east) after the turn was for many years a RadioShack that I frequented when I needed a particular type of cable, converter, or other piece of electronic gear. At Christmas time the store featured remote-controlled miniature cars. That spot is now empty.
In 2022 the only merchant on the entire corridor is one that I had never heard of: Rainbow. The store has been open only a few times when I walked by, but I have yet to see a customer or a salesperson.
The company’s official website states that they sell “water-based cleaning systems” for purifying the air and various surfaces. Somehow I have survived for seventy-three and a half years inhaling and exhaling dry dirty air,
There are some curious items concerning Home Helpers in the display windows on the right, but there are no active stores until we make the turn onto the main corridor.
South Side of the Main Corridor: Just around the corner is a very interesting store. The shelves are still clearly visible through the window, but they contain no merchandise. By stepping a few feet into the middle of the courtyard we can see the store’s sign. It says GNC. The G is lit up, but the NC is still dark. This must be a message of some kind, but what is it?
Perhaps it could be read as an admission that the users of GNC’s vitamins and supplements were unable to deal with the Covid-19 virus. Maybe, but perhaps the real message is that, like the G, a spark of hope remains, and soon people will be able to fortify their immune systems with over-the-counter nostrums, thereby avoiding the treacherous vaccines foisted on them by George Soros and Bill Gates.
The next store that is actually operational is the only one with its own entrance from the parking lot. It is also the brightest and largest of all of the stores except, of course, Target. All sides of the mall’s gigantic parking lot have signs with arrows indicating the direction to Party City.
The above picture was taken on a Saturday afternoon, the only time that I had ever seen anyone manning the cash register on the mall end of the store. Most customers enter and exit through the doors to the parking lot. I have, however, noticed a few people entering from the mall.
There is an empty store between Party City and the next retailer, Pelley’s Sports. Their Facebook page says that they “specialize in NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL clothing, merchandise, memorabilia, pictures, and other sports paraphernalia.” I have passed this store many times, but I have never seen anyone inside except on Saturday afternoon. They have a lot of stuff piled up near the entrance. I could easily have missed some shoppers.
Pelley’s has purchased some of the display space of the adjacent vacant store to the west. In it are displayed large photos of some local teams and famous players. The photos are on sale for upwards of $150. One framed photo of Tom Brady is offered for $2,699! They also sell jerseys that look very authentic.
The next occupied space is occupied—at least occasionally—by the North Central Connecticut Chamber of Commerce. I don’t know why the C of C maintains an office here. However, I once saw three people sitting at a table here discussing some papers. So, evidently it is occasionally used for meetings, at least.
The next space that is sometimes open is Claudette’s Consignments. I had seen people in this store only a few times. However, despite what the photo on the right shows, on Saturday there was quite a bit more activity there. I could not find any information on the Internet about this store. I am not sure whether it is associated with the shop in the Hamptons of the same name.
Claudette’s occupies a corner space. The next area is a large two-story structure that formerly was occupied by JC Penney and then part of Filene’s and Macy’s. It has been walled off and decorated with paintings. If the picture of a slice of pizza makes you hungry, you are out of luck, but you can probably buy a cappuccino at the Starbucks inside of Target.
I think that this area must have been used as Santaland during the Christmas season. The photo only shows two huge wreaths, but the first time that I walked by in January, oversized candy canes and fake snow were spread throughout the fenced-in area. It was actually a very depressing sight.
I walk along the edge of the small fence. Some walkers choose to walk straight across from Collette’s to the store on the other side of this alcove—Bath & Body Works. By the way, on Sundays numerous people bring their dogs with them on their strolls through the malls. I am pleased to report that I did not witness any canine misbehavior.
For me the most interesting thing about BB&W was that two employees were usually visible. They almost always outnumbered the customers. I think that this place sells smelly stuff that I would never consider purchasing.
Next door is one of the newest shops. It is called SSUPhoto Designs. I have only seen one person within, a short young man who seemed chained to his computer. On chilly days he wore a stocking cap. The store has a fairly impressive website, which you can visit here. I am still not quite sure what product or service is being offered, but apparently they have the equipment and the expertise to produce designs on the computer and transfer them to many different objects. They also sell “tumblers”, dozens of which are on display.
I also found a website for a website for SSUPhoto (without the Designs). You can visit it here. It explained that the SSU stands for Snapshots Unlimited. I suspect that the store is an effort by the proprietors to expand their reach in a period of lower demand for professional photographers.
After another unoccupied space the New Life Church appears on our right. Its services are at 10AM on Sundays. I have never been in the mall at that time, and so the few people whom I have seen in this location were setting something up for the service.
Across the corridor is another space that is apparently leased by the church. Its windows display biblical quotes, and the word “Annex” is in a sign over the door. A third space on the eastern corridor also apparently belongs to the church.
The church has a rather professional-looking website, which you can explore here. I need to dispute one portion of the website that states, “Most of all, we believe you’ll find people just like you …” I seriously doubt that anyone who attends regularly is even vaguely like me. In truth I found the approach described there as just this side of terrifying.
Pastor David and Lisa.
In total, a NEW LIFE service is about 90 minutes in length. Services begin with the NEW LIFE worship band leading the church in music – song lyrics are projected onto the screens so you can sing along and/or engage with worship however you feel most comfortable. After the music portion of service is complete, our pastor will come up to share both a challenging and encouraging, hope-filled message from the Bible.
I assume that the phrase “the pastor will come up” does not imply that he ascends from the basement. If he had a trap door with a small elevator, he surely would never mention it on the website.
Next to the church is Crystal’s Fun Spot, a large space filled with objects meant to attract the attention of youngsters. On my weekday walks I seldom saw anyone in here except for the woman sitting at the desk with a large roll of paper towels at the ready. I took notice of the towels because on one occasion I neglected to bring some of my own. If I had the sniffles or a sneezing fit, I planned to enter the Fun Spot and offer crisp dollar bill to the lady at the desk in exchange for one of the towels.
On Crystal’s website (here) I learned that she charges $7 per hour for infants and $15 per hour for kids who are two and older. On weekdays I had only seen a couple of kids in here with their parents, but on Saturday afternoon there was actually a line.
Next to Crystal’s were three window displays that feature mannequins dressed in clothes with patches that are oddly arranged. There is also a pile of suitcases. I had never actually seen anyone inside, but one day the light was on, and there was some equipment visible. One window is signed by Justin Haynes, and it prominently features the name of the place: Just10 H.
Looking at the website (here) solved the puzzle for me. It said that Justin Haynes was a fashion designer who was planning a big show for February 16. There was even a countdown clock. That was only two days ago, but the website’s home page has been totally revamped. It says that Jus10 H’s label is called ONYX (the luxury label). Don’t ask me what occurred in the interim. I never have been able to keep up with fashion.
Before the pandemic the Enfield 12 Cinemas were the spot to be in this sleepy town. The mall’s website even calls them an anchor store. In the last few months I have been there twice for Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performances. There was one other person attending the first showing, Boris Godunov. Ten of us showed up for the second, Rigaletto. That is not shockingly low for opera, but I saw practically no one at all anywhere in the theater either time.
Previously there was always a line for tickets. Several times when I passed by while walking I saw no one who was even selling tickets. They don’t even promote their shows. The sign that is visible from the corridor says that the schedule is posted on the Internet and at the one-user kiosk!
Next is a booth used by the company that provides security for the mall. The last two afternoons that I walked by this spot there were two men behind the counter. A guy with a shopping cart brought at least one of them supper in a styrofoam container. He took a seat on the civilian side of the counter and ate his own supper from a similar container.
I have seen this guy every time that I came to the mall to walk. On every occasion he wore black leather shoes, black pants, and a white undershirt with shoulder straps à la Clark Gable. He did not resemble Clark much in other ways. For one thing he was grotesquely obese. He also seemed to need to use his shopping cart as a walker.
The first afternoon that I walked in the mall he had parked himself and his cart at the abandoned kiosk that once was used by nearby Asnuntuck Community College. He had some kind of strange machine sitting on top of the counter. It was plugged into an outlet on the floor. I never have figured out what he was doing then or why he seemed to spend so much time in the mall.
One day I saw him entering from the narrow corridor leading to the restrooms, the mall’s offices, and an entrance. He was wearing a thick flannel shirt-jacked, which he doffed as soon as he was settled inside. He waved to me as I passed on that occasion and on several others. Since he does not wear a mask, I give him a wide berth.
The southeast corner of the mall is operated by Cindy’s Food for the Soul. I don’t know who Cindy is; I have never seen a female in this establishment.
I did not see anything that looked like a menu posted somewhere. I expected to find a menu somewhere on the Internet, but I was disappointed. Evidently this was formerly a stand-alone deli somewhere in Enfield. Cindy evidently specializes in soul food and Jamaican food. I don’t think that anything hot is available, but I could be wrong.
At the end of the corridor we turn left in front of the old Steiger’s/Sears store. For some reason it, unlike the other two anchors, has not been walled up. Since the lights are almost never on, it might as well be. However, on one magical afternoon the interior of the abandoned store was lit up, and I got to peek inside. I could see all the way to the exterior doors on the east side. There was absolutely no furniture or debris. I saw eight or ten columns that presumably held up the roof. The floor was clean and polished. The owners of the property must have been showing the space to a potential lessee or purchaser.
At the end of the alcove where we must turn left there is a bench on which I have often seen seated a young man in a reflective vest playing with his phone. I assume that he collects shopping carts from the Target parking lot, and rests there on his break.
Eastern Corridor: We then make a right turn up the eastern corridor, which is really dead since Panera moved east to a building constructed for them in the Home Depot parking lot across Freshwater St. We make a U-turn at the door, after which we pass the door to Ruby Tuesday, which closed in 2016. It seems strange.that two very nice windows—one with stained glass panes—have been sitting there for six years.
Next is an area belonging to the church. I have never seen it open, but occasionally a light is on. I saw a foosball table in there a couple of times.
On the corner is the Kebab House. Sue and I had been planning to go there until the owners decided to close the place until the middle of February. I am pretty sure that their signs and printed menus must hold the world record for misspellings. They even misspelled kebab once!
I still fear that the restaurant may never reopen. I have walked past it many times, and I have never seen more than one of its tables occupied. Since there are always at least three employees, it is hard to see how it could survive.
Over the years his site has housed many short-lived restaurant ventures, including a McDonald’s3 and at least two different pizza joints. Its spot across from the theater with its outrageously priced food items might seem ideal, but no one has been able to make it work. Obviously prospects are worse in 2022.
North Side of the Main Corridor: I consider the turn at the Kebab House to be the halfway point in the walk. If you are thirsty, there is a machine nearby that dispenses Coca Cola products and other beverages. Be prepared to shell out $2 or more for a 20-ounce bottle.
After the turn back onto the main east-west corridor we pass an amazing number of dark stores. There are four of them before we reach Relaxation, a place that features a “Chinese Massage” for $20. In the window is a television screen showing a silent (!) description and demonstration of the technique. The good news is that the video, which is on a looped, is captioned. Unfortunately the captions are in Chinese.
The inside of the store is very dimly lit. I thought that I saw someone getting a massage once, but I could not be sure.
The nest space to the west is the church’s annex. It has always been dark when I walked past.
Then there are three more empty locations before we come to our next turn to the right around Furnari Jewelers, which is always brightly lit and always has at least two employees within. Once or twice I saw other people between the counters. I could not gauge their interest. I noticed that a sign that assured passersby: “No Credit Required.” To me it said a lot about the current state of the mall.
We are now headed north up the central corridor toward an exit and the entrance to Target. On the right is another vacant storefront that once housed “Hair in the Square.” The other storefront was abandoned on January 31, 2022. A second video games store called Stateline Video Games had been there for a short time. It had a lot of interesting stuff in its display windows, including quite a few WWE action figures that were clearly marked as “Not for Sale”. A week after the posting of many signs explaining the closure there was still quite a bit of equipment in the store. The company still operates a store in the Holyoke Mall.
By the time that we had reached the exit, we passed two other places of note. They were both in the middle of the corridor. The first, which is called Playtown, was designed for kids and their exhausted parents. The latter can take advantage of the softest of the many benches in the mall. A goodly number of very sturdy and colorful objects are provided for the youngsters to climb on and slide down. The green caterpillar at the entrance indicates that everyone must be at least 42″ tall. I have seen about ten children in here. One was close to that height, but all the rest were much shorter.
The other active location was the kiosk devoted to CM Repairs and Accessories. According to a map that I discovered on the Internet, this kiosk was once located outside of Cindy’s Fun Spot. The new location would seem to be optimal, but I have only seen one or two potential customers here. The last few time that I walked by this location the booth was not manned. There were lots of phone accessories on display and signs for calling India for $19 per month and something called Lyca Mobile, a wireless network based in England.
I looked at the CM Facebook page for help in understanding what CM stood for and what the significance of the circle around the C was, but I found nothing. It sounded like a one-man show with a Massachusetts phone number.
The only open business in the central corridor is Tranquility Day Spa and Salon. I frankly have only the vaguest idea of what services and products are offered within this establishment. I don’t think that you can just wander in. The desk at the entrance is almost always manned by a guy in a lab coat. A sign warns that if you want a manicure you must wear a mask.
The most popular product appears to be nail polish. They have dozens of choices on display near the entrance. I have witnessed quite a few women checking out the selections there.
The Lyon and Bear is to the right of Claire’s.
The corner space is unoccupied, but after we are return to the main corridor we pass by four consecutive occupied (at least occasionally) stores. The first one is the most mysterious. Two 8½ by 11 signs taped to the window identify it as “The Lyon and Bear”. I don’t understand the name. A very large lion toy hangs from the ceiling, but no bear was visible. Its Facebook page mostly promoted beard oil and trimmers when I looked at it.
The C of C welcomed the store in October 2021 with an article that did little to explain its purpose. You can read it here.
Claire’s, on the other hand, has been in the mall for decades. I seem to recall that it was formerly in the southeast corridor. I have never dared to enter. I have seen several moms with quite young girls who were apparently there to take advantage of the free ear-piercing. Apparently this is an accepted right of passage.
Next on the right is the brightly lit T-Mobile store. Although it is featuring “iPhone 13 on Us”, I have almost never seen a customer in this store. I remember that Jason Dean4, one of TSI’s programmers, told me that he and his wife had switched to T-Mobile to save a little money. Unfortunately, his new phone did not work at all inside his apartment. The signal was too week. He switched back to his previous carrier, but it involved a major hassle.
The cleanup hitter in this murderer’s row of retail is LensCrafters. It has been located in the mall for a very long time. Sue bought at least one pair of glasses there. It always seems to be busy when I passed by, which I found a little surprising. Target has its own fairly large optical department, and so LensCrafters is one of the few retailers in the mall that directly competes with the only real anchor store.
The last stretch of the walk is the most depressing. The last seven spaces on our right are unoccupied! A few, like Dollar ‘N’ Things and inField Research, still have signs, and the windows of others are decorated with advertising. One of the windows strangely promotes Dollar ‘N’ Things. Google thinks that inField Research is still in business in February 2022, but the office is empty.
Here is another map of the entire mall. I have enclosed in green the names of the entities open in February 2022. New ones I have identified with abbreviations in green and explained in the caption.
If you click on the image, a much larger and more readable version will be displayed. N is the location of the North Central CT Chamber of Commerce, CC is Collette’s Consignments, New Life is the New Life Church with the Annex across the hall., J10H is Justin Haynes, C is Cindy’s Food for the Soul, K is the Kebab House, and LB is the Lyon and Bear. The big arrow shows how CM’s Kiosk has moved.
Machines: The corridors also contain quite a few vending machines. The largest one, by far, dispenses acne products from Proactiv. I have never seen anyone within ten feet of this one. For one thing malls are no longer where teens hang out. I would think that if one suffered from really bad acne, one would not want to advertise one’s condition in the middle of the mall, but what do I know?
Numerous machines cater to the needs of hungry and thirsty denizens of Enfield square. Three machines sell ice cream products called Mini Melts. One is near Playtown. The other pair are back-to-back near the east end of the long corridor. I have never seen anyone buying or eating ice cream in the mall this winter. I did not get a photo because I did not really notice the machines while I was doing my photo lap.
There are six machines that dispense Coca Cola and Vitamin Water beverages. The placement is a little weird. Two are back-to-back near the southwest entrance. Two pairs are side-by-side on the western end of the main corridor and near the exit at the end of the north-central corridor. I have never seen anyone buy anything from either one, and I have noticed no one with a 20-ounce bottle of anything.
Two fairly large collections of gumball machines are on display in the long corridor. One is near Party City and Pelley’s Sports. The other is in front of Jus10H.I don’t know if any of the dispensers actually work. I have never seen anyone try to purchase anything from them. At least two of the glass globes were empty in both collections.
There are at least four ATM machines if you count the one just inside Tranquility. I have never seen anyone use one, and it is hard to imagine why they would. All of the machine—except perhaps the gumball machine—take credit cards. Cash is so pre-pandemic.
A machine near Party City takes three strips of photos. I had my doubts about whether such an old-fashioned machine actually functioned, but I once witnessed three people enter the machine and pull the curtain shut. I must assume that they had their photos. Since everyone in 2022 has a phone with a pretty good camera in it, I don’t think that this type of machine has much future.
Another area near LensCrafters features the twenty-first century’s answer to the mechanical horses that kids could rid for a quarter. This one contains a one-seat train that might be Thomas, a large red dog named Clifford with a seat on his back, and two fairly large ceramic cars. Each car has a figure sitting in it, but there is room for a child to act as driver—on the right side! One passenger (in a taxi) is Paddington Bear. The other car is labeled “Fetch the Vet”. Evidently the company who created this diorama is British.
I have seen kids climbing on these vehicle, but I have never seen any adults pony up the money to make them do anything. The train costs three quarters. I did not examine the other rides.
There are three sets of machines that to me seem out of place. A pair of machines are back-to-back in the main corridor. They sell stickers and tattoos. I did not examine them too closely.
The second weird collection is near the Mini Melts that is between Tranquility and Target. To the right of the Mini Melts machine are two adjacent machines labeled Prize Cube and Winners Cube. I don’t know any more about them. On the other side of Mini Melts is a set of machines that look like gumball machines, but they actually contain little plastic containers with prizes inside.
Closer to the exit by Target is the traditional machine that lets kids try—mostly in vain—to snatch attractive looking toys by manipulating a large claw-like implement.
Conclusion: I am glad that I had the opportunity to become familiar with the pandemic version of the mall. I don’t see how it can possibly last long. I therefore feel sympathy for the entrepreneurs who have bet on it. The owners of the mall want to split the site into thirteen parcels.
I expect that I will need to find a new place to hike in the winter of 2022-23.
Updates Throughout 2022
Celebrity spottings: I am pretty sure that I saw two of the mAll-Stars in person. On consecutive Fridays I have seen Pastor David getting things ready for the Sunday services at the New Life Church. On February 27 I saw Justin Haynes changing the window display for Jus10H, sweeping out his space, and chatting with the security guard. Later the lights were on in his space as he made a presentation to two ladies dressed in black.
March 3, 2022: Tranquility Day Spa and Salon, which enjoyed one of the very best locations in the mall, has closed. It has apparently merged with another salon in the strip mall south of Hazard Avenue that contains ShopRite.. Maybe it was purchased by the other company, which is called Modern Nails & Spa. The ATM remained in the old Tranquility location, but it was unplugged.
The Kebab House, which promised to reopen by mid-February, is also apparently closing. Two men were in the restaurant. I could not tell precisely what they were doing, but the older of the two left the building carrying a sign that was used to advertise the restaurant.
I noticed for the first time a third set of gumball machines near the Playtown. There are two racks of six machines. The other two locations have eighteen machines. I counted.
Fashion news: the guy with the grocery cart apparently has at least three colors of undershirts with shoulder straps and no sleeves—white, gray, and black.
March 4, 2022: There was quite a bit of activity in the mall. The Red Cross ran a blood drive in one of the vacant stores near the middle of the main corridor. In addition in the very middle of the mall (near Furnari) a couple had set up some tables where they sold jewelry. I think that they store their inventory in the space that is across the short corridor from Furnari. I have seen stuff in there.
The only remnant of Tranquility was a table outside of the barred entrance. On it were business cards for the new location in the Brookside Plaza shopping center. I picked one up. The back of the card keeps track of visits to Modern with this offer: “After 10 visits get one FREE Eyebrow or FREE Basic Manicure.” I am not sure where people would place the third eyebrow.
The big news was that people were working in the kitchen of the Kebab House. The sign that said that it would return in mid-February had been changed to promise a reopening on March 5. So, my previous assessment that it seemed to be closing was erroneous.
I have encountered two pairs of women who were walking clockwise laps. How could they not notice that everyone else was walking clockwise? I almost smashed into both of them several times. Maybe they were from Great Britain, Japan, or Australia.
For the first time I saw someone eating a bowl of Mini Melts with a spoon—like cereal. So, at least one of the machines must work. A bowl costs $4 or $4.50 if you use a credit card.
March 9, 2022: The Kebab House is definitely open. I noticed a few patrons.
The fenced off area in the center court where the entrance to Penney’s used to be5 has been removed. This must have been where Santaland was placed during December. Evidently the Easter Bunny will not be getting the same treatment.
Some of the window coverings at the space that housed Panera have been removed. For the first time I could see inside. Although it has been abandoned for months, the booths are still there.
On the other hand the mysterious corner space in center court has been curtained off on the east side. Two large stepladders were visible from the south side as well as the tables that contained all the unsold merchandise.
A couple of kids had skateboards, but the mall was empty enough that it was not obnoxious.
March 13, 2022: There was quite a bit of activity today. Almost every store had customers, and there was a line at the kiosk at the cinemas. I saw two sets of customers dining at the Kebab House, and the food looked delicious.
A stage was set up in front of the old entrance to Penney’s, but I could walk behind it. It must have been for the Girl Scouts’ event on the previous day. On one of my laps I observed two young ladies who appeared to be rehearsing putting one hand on a hip. Off to the side one of the doors was open. The opening was mostly obscured, but I caught a glimpse of a fully decorated Christmas tree. Evidently, the Christmas stuff is stored in a little room behind Collette’s Consignments.
For the first time ever I saw two people buy something from gumball machines. So, I guess that they actually work.
April 1: The guy in the CM phone repair booth is back. There is also a kiosk next to his booth that has at least 100 sunglasses on it and a sign that says that you can buy three for $10. No one is near the kiosk.. Maybe you pay the CM guy if you want to buy some. In my nine laps I saw no one who showed any interest in either sun glasses or phones.
A guy with a bag was standing outside of Rainbow on my first lap. On the next four or five (a lap takes me about ten minutes) he was busily demonstrating a vacuum cleaner of some kind to a lady with a mask. I assume that he was trying to persuade her to market the vacuum that he represented.
April 3: I did nine more laps, and I still saw no one show the slightest interest in CM or the sunglasses. Someone had apparently tried a few pairs on and left them on a shelf.
For the first time ever someone stopped me to ask me a question—three times! The first time it was a black guy whom I had seen walking laps quite a few times. He asked me how old I was and how many miles I walked. He then informed me that he was also seventy-three. A little later he stopped me again and asked me if I had gotten my second booster shot.
At the other end of the court on that same lap another guy asked me something while I was listening to Maria Callas singing an aria from from Il Pirata. I took out one earplug, and I heard him say “… how long …?” I answered, “An hour and a half.” He asked, “A half hour?” I repeated myself and went on. A few minutes later I realized that he was actually asking me how long an entire circuit of the mall was.
May 30: On Memorial day the mall was almost completely empty. The movie theater was doing a reasonable business. The Kebab House had at least two occupied tables every time I came around, and my circuit takes me an hour and a half in total.
I wore my Michigan Debate shirt while I was walking. Someone stopped me and asked me if I taught at Michigan. I explained that I had attended U-M twice. He then asked me that a friend of his was interested in vintage clothing—tee shirts and sweatshirts. He wondered if I had any. Although I actually do have a few items that are so disgusting not even I would wear them, I told him that I did not. This occurred on my last lap. If it had been earlier, I might have been more receptive to his request.
I moved my car over to the northeast side and stepped back in with my camera to take a photo of the huge two-person virtual-reality game that is parked just outside of the cinema. It looks really impressive, but I have yet to see someone try it out.
July 25: Another one bites the dust. Lens Crafters has moved to Enfield Commons. The store is between Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s, next to Olive Garden. This sounds to me like the death knell for the mall.
October 17: Bad news first: A sign has been posted that Collette’s, the store that specialized in “new and lightly used” clothing. was in the process of closing. I also saw a sign announcing that one of the two restaurants, Cindy’s,was “relocating”. It did not note the new location.
The most positive news was that Stateline, the store that sold video games and other things, has returned to the same location near Target that it had abandoned in February. I thought that it was peculiar that so much stuff had been left in the store when it closed the first time. In other areas of the mall there were also some new window displays that highlight Stateline’s products.
SSUPhoto was in the process of moving its operation across the main aisle of the mall. The new location appears to be somewhat larger. The store was not open when I walked by it, but I judged from what I could see through the windows that they seemed to have expanded the number of items that they are selling.
There were four new large massage chairs near the cinema. I did not inspect them closely, and I did not see anyone try them out.
For the fist time I saw someone purchase some gum or candy from one of the many gumball machines.
I should not that I did not see the fellow with the shopping cart/walker and the sleeveless shirts. However, on one of my outdoor walks I did see him in the parking lot of Holy Trinity Episcopal church on Hazard Avenue. I could not tell what he was doing.
This was the first time that I walked in the mall without a mask.
December 1: The mall was decorated for Christmas, but there were only a few shoppers, and the corner near the old Penney’s that was reserved for the absent Santa was a little pathetic. I have not seen the hefty gentleman with the Target shopping cart for several months.
The office across from GameStop is now occupied by Skyward Family Therapy, but it is not open yet. I noticed that one of the tiles close to its door is partly the wrong color. I had never paid much attention to the tiles, but after making that discovery I realized that in several other places broken tiles have been replaced with tiles of a different color. Near Target were two signs warning about tiles needing repair.
A new store named “Tree”-mendous has opened between Pelley’s Sports and the corridor that leads to the restroom. Three women were inside behind a long table surrounded by fully decorated artificial trees. According to the signage the are also having a drawing for a tree. More trees were visible in one of the empty stores.
Claudette’s has reopened. The store is offering all jeans in the store for only $5 per pair.
The Jurassic Park virtual reality game that arrived in May has been removed. For the first time I saw someone sitting in the massage chairs. For approximately thirty minutes a man sat in one and a woman in the other. When I passed them they were each busily working their smartphones.
Jus10H was open, and Justin was inside! He was putting the finishing touches on new window displays. The inside, which was fully lighted, was also rearranged, and there were displays of fabric. He must be about to make a presentation to someone.
For the first time I saw a woman sitting in the security office.
The business at the Kebab House seems to be picking up. Sue Rudd told me that she ate there, and the food was good.
I can still walk nine laps with no discomfort whatsoever.
December 14: On my first lap I noticed a woman who was leaning against the window of the old Liberty Tax store that is now used for blood drives. On the next lap—ten or fifteen minutes later—she had moved across to the corridor that led to the south exit that is west of Party City. She was now sitting down. During the next three laps she was still sitting, but she appeared to be sleeping with a cellphone in her hand. On the sixth lap she was standing up and leaning against the wall. He seemed to be attempting to make sure that she was all right. On the seventh lap she was seated on a bench near Game Stop with a different man who placed his hand on her shoulder—evidently to comfort her—as I walked by. Policemen entered as I passed the southwest door, but they turned toward the central court. On the eighth lap I saw the two policemen talking with the woman. She was still sitting on the bench and seemed about to cry. On my ninth and last lap none of the people mentioned in this paragraph was still around.
“Tree”-mendous was already closed.
December 18: Santa was in the mall! I am pretty sure that this Santa was told not to touch any children. They sat on little chairs next to Santa’s big one while someone photographed them.
December 19: Very strange. Santa was on duty again, but he had clearly gained thirty or forty pounds overnight. Also, he was wearing a different set of glasses. Someone must have told him to be more friendly with the kids. They still sat on the little chairs (as opposed to his lap), but he put his arms around them.
January 14, 2024: The 2023 Santa had a lonely job. There was never anything approaching a line. Sometimes he would go sit on the bench and wave at kids. He had two female helpers who had little to do. Santaland was finally disassembled in the middle of January.
Cinemark closed in early December of 2023. If you lived in Enfield om 2024 and you wanted to see a movie, you needed to drive twenty miles. Bath and Body Works moved to Enfield Commons on the north side of Hazard Avenue. On Friday, January 24, signs appeared outside of GameStop announcing that all of the employees had resigned. Another sign said, “Closed until further notice.” However, on Sunday the store was open. There were signs that solicited employees and another one announcing the hours as “Sun-Sat 12-6.” Claudette’s has been gone for several months.
New businesses in 2023 included:
Calm Panda Smartshop.
D Gym had irregular hours. It featured an assortment of exercise machines and mats upon which young people performed calisthenics while loud music and a trainer encouraged them. It occupied the spot formerly held by Tranquility.
Second Floor Games also had irregular hours. It appeared to be mostly a snack shop with a few tables. I thought at first that, because it was near the Cinemark, that they might be trying to undercut the outrageous prices at the concession stand there. However, it outlived the theaters by at least a month.
Haven Games and hobbies moved into the large site previously occupied by Jus10H. The store featured a dozen or so tables at which nerdy people dressed in black played games of some sort. A sign on the window claimed that they were open until midnight on most nights. Since the mall closed at 10, that seemed questionable.
Integrity Martial Arts seemed to cater to young kids. Their parents could often be seen in the chairs provided for them or loitering nearby. One day I saw a father dragging his son to the studio. The kid was literally kicking and screaming. That was on my last lap, and so I never found out who prevailed. Smart money was on the kid.
Calm Panda evidently sold marijuana and accoutrements. It was hardly ever open.
After Hours offered to set up, host, and photograph parties or other events. It was open only by appointment.
The Moon Crystal claimed to be a “metaphysical and spiritual shop.” It appeared to have two owners, both female. One occasionally gave tarot card readings. The other claimed to be psychic.
Da Money Pit sold shoes, tee shirts, and the like, but something about it seemed off. On my last walk the lights were on, but the front entrance was closed and locked. As I walked past someone exited by the back door and then carefully locked it. Later a woman entered by the same door. Who knows
A hangout near Target called Wukong Tea opened in December of 2023. It has proved popular with teenagers. They sold concoctions of tea, fruit, milk, and other things. The lowest-priced beverage cost an astounding $5.25. The drinks were made in a back room. Customers, almost always in groups of two or more, seemed content to wait and chat while seated at the modern tables.
Both the Kebab House, with its new Mosaic Cafe across the hall in the area formerly occupied by Panera Bread, and LA Subs seemed to be doing pretty well in 2024.
Jus10H moved to a larger location on the other side of the mall. The interior seemed considerably different on the few occasions in which someone was there.
The rumors that the entire mall would be closed down because of problems in the roof had not come true yet in early 2024.
September 26, 2024: On a walk about a month earlier I witnessed—for the very first time—someone trying to purchase a Coke from one of the three vending machines. He was having difficulty as I walked past. I did not linger to find out whether he was able to make a purchase. I noticed on this occasion that the displayed Coke cans in the machine on the east side of the mall have faded so much that they are almost pink.
I walked for much more than an hour and encountered no other walkers. The most interesting occurrence was at the Jehovah’s Witnesses corner outside of Target. I walked past it seven times. Usually it was managed by two women. On this occasion a woman sat on one of the two chairs and talked to a guy who was wearing a suit, attire that I can never remember seeing in the mall, not even at the Chamber of Commerce. I could not understand why the fellow never took a seat.
The hours for the mall had been changed so that it closed at 6pm on Sunday and at 7pm on all other days. I left at 6:55, and Haven Games still had two tables of players that showed no signs of imminent departure. The part of the parking lot that I always use was uncharacteristically crowded. Prior to the move of Haven Games it seldom had more than two or three cars.
Calm Panda has gone the way of the dodo.
A Virtual Reality place named _____, across the Target corridor from Furnari Jewelers never opened. It seemed bizarre that in the spring it was advertised and furnished with a three-person couch, a two-person couch, and three chairs. The sign and all of the furniture have not been removed.
The caretaker was painting the wall for the old Penney’s store in the middle of the mall. The new color was a flat grey. I had to assume that this was just a primer for whatever the owners intended it to be.
1. I was astounded to learn that the Target store had been in Enfield for twenty years and that for fifteen of them it coexisted in Enfield Square with Filene’s/Macy’s and Sears.
2. In February of 2022 the property is owned by three Long Island-based companies — Namdar Realty Group, Ch. Hakimi Global Inc., and Mason Asset Management. KeyPoint Partners is currently handling the management and leasing of the properties. As of March 2021 the Target store was sold to Steven Dubler.
3. While that takeout location in the mall was operational, there was also a McD’s just south of the mall, and one just north of the mall. Another McD’s is on Hazard Ave. in the Scitico section of town several miles east of Enfield Square. All three of those restaurants were still operating in 2023.
5. In New England directions are often given in terms of landmarks, whether they are still there or not. New Englanders seem to have a much stronger sense of history than geography.
The resignation from TSI by my sister Jamie Lisella in the summer of 1999 (as explained here) left the company with neither an administrative employee nor a marketing director during a critical period. We were in the process of moving to a new location that Jamie had found, we had a huge backlog of programming jobs, and Denise Bessette (introduced here) and I were establishing a new working relationship (explained here) and trying to figure out how to adapt to the new world of the Internet.
More like “reasonably good pay”.
Prior to this time I never had hired an administrative person. In each of the cases in this entry I wrote a help-wanted ad and ran it in the Hartford Courant and the Journal Inquirer. I kept a record of the responses in a spreadsheet. I interviewed a few of the respondents and then picked one or started over.
In 1990 the one whom I liked best was named Michele Stewart. At the end of August I called her on the telephone and offered her the job. She told me that she was probably going to accept another job because my description of our post sounded complicated. She was most concerned about the sales tax aspect. Perhaps I did not explain that computer programs provided all the numbers. The administrative person’s role was just to see that the forms were filled out, and the payments were made on time.
So, I ended up hiring Nadine Holmes, my second choice. Se was single and in her twenties. She took longer than expected to catch on to how TSI did things, but she had a good attitude. I wrote this on October 18:
Nadine came into my office at 4PM with a very solemn look on her face. She announced that she had to tell me that she could no longer work for my company. I sighed, leaned back in my chair, and folded my hands. Then she said, “The time goes by too fast here.” She has shown remarkable progress in the last few days. She is still a little sloppy, and her spelling needs work, but she definitely is a keeper.
By February of 2000 we had moved into our new office at 7B Pasco Drive in Enfield. The first month or so was hectic because of address changes and other transition issues, but then things slowed down. A few problems began to appear.
I had lunch with Nadine Thursday. I don’t know if I got through to her, but at least I think she has a little better idea of what the company is about. She told me that it is hard for her to get used to the idea that she is the low man on the totem pole and always will be as long as she works here. I told her that we planned to hire someone to help with marketing and that when we start marketing again, we will have plenty for her to do.
The next week I sent this e-mail to Denise:
I told Nadine that I want her to become an expert at Word and Excel. My real objective is for her to become reasonably competent at them. It may be useful for her to go through some of the exercises in the book that Harry1 had. I was hoping that we would have received the book to use as the basis for a mailing, but it didn’t come yet. If you can think of anything for her to do, by all means ask her to do it. I told her that I think of you as my alter-ego.
My recollection is that this was reasonably successful. She could maintain a spreadsheet if I told her precisely what to do. However, other problems arose. I wrote this on December 27.
I discovered before anyone came in that Nadine forgot to pay the sales tax in December. I was so angry about this that I was almost out of control. I got less than four hours of sleep on Monday evening. I needed to rest for a few minutes on Tuesday morning before everyone came in, but this made me so upset that I couldn’t do it. You will be happy to know that even though I had my boots on, I did not take it out on the furniture (but it was tempting). I didn’t yell at anyone either, but I was very grumpy.
The “boots” reference was about an occasion at our Enfield office on which I kicked a dent in one of our steel filing cabinets. By the middle of January I decided that Nadine was not the solution to TSI’s administrative needs. I explained my attitude to Denise.
I think that I found a good metaphor for Monday’s conversation. In addition to the part about a new direction, I plan to emphasize to Nadine that I want to hire someone who is “on the same wavelength” that I am on (or we are). If she wants more specifics, I will have a list of things that I asked her to do, but that she didn’t do or didn’t do until I hounded her about them. You can contribute to the list if you want.
I hired a woman named Paula to replace Nadine. I don’t remember her last name. She seemed to be more than intelligent enough to handle the job. The other big factor in her favor was that she lived in East Windsor almost within walking distance of the office.
On the other hand, she had at least one young child. Paula lasted less than a week. She called in sick while I was on a business trip. Denise was furious about this. I fired her, but I did not feel good about it.
She explained that she is having a lot of problems with her husband. She said that she was hoping that the job would either provide a solution to the problems or the wherewithal to let her stand on her own two feet if it came to that. This is about what I expected. I don’t know if I am happy that she told me or not. I have not been dwelling on this subject, but I still find myself waking up worrying about her.
I really liked working with Lucia Hagan (pronounced (LOO shuh HAY gun), who started in the spring of 2001. She was, in my opinion both a very nice person and a superlative employee. Her tenure coincided with a period that required the most administrative changes. TSI was in the process of setting up a system to manage the hundreds of newspapers that were beginning to subscribe to AxN. Accounts receivable and billing records had to be set up, and, for the first time ever, we needed to keep track of contracts.
Here are some of my memories of Lucia’s time at TSI.
Lucia had a tattoo on one of her calves. I had never interacted for any length of time with anyone with a tattoo. Hers seemed out of place to me, but I guess that I should not have been surprised. She lived and grew up in Stafford, a town built around auto racing.
Lucia was into NASCAR. She was especially a fan of Jeff Gordon, who drove #24 for Team Penske. She was upset when Penske “gave all of Gordon’s best cars to the kid”, meaning Jimmy Johnson.
Lucia was amused that I napped in the computer room early in the morning and on weekends. She bought me a pillow and a University of Michigan pillow case that I am still using in 2023.
Her husband Rick worked at Leonard’s Auto Parts in West Stafford2. She once remarked, “It’s not a real job.”
Every year Lucia and Rick went overboard on decorations of their house in Stafford for Halloween. On two occasions I drove out to see their house just before Halloween.
Lucia had no children.
She was working at the time that we terminated Sandy Sant’Angelo’s (introduced here) employment at TSI. She asked to move to the space by the window that Sandy had occupied. I had been oblivious to the fact that she did not like sitting so close to the bathrooms. Presumably Nadine did not like it either. Needless to say, I concurred.
I never had any problems with Lucia’s work or her attitude, but I was dimly aware that something was amiss in her relationship with Denise. I arrived in my office at TSI early one morning after having returned from a multi-day trip. I was surprised that Lucia came to my office at about 7:30 and explained that she was not coming in to work. It took me a minute to realize that she meant that she was resigning immediately. I asked her what the problem was, but she did not want to talk about it. She was adamant that she could not work at TSI any longer.
I never did find out what had actually happened.
At the end of that year TSI sent Lucia a check for her share of the profit-sharing distribution, but she never cashed it. Over the years I have thought about Lucia many times when I drove on Route 190 through Stafford.
The choice to replace Lucia was easy. Eileen Sheehan-Willet (LinkedIn page here) stood out from the other applicants. She had previous experience in a small business, and she had an extremely positive demeanor. She did not catch on to new tasks as quickly as Lucia had, but each time she kept her nose to the grindstone until she had mastered every detail.
Here are some of my recollections of my second-favorite administrative helper.
Eileen had a green thumb. She nursed the neglected plants in our office back to health.
I met Eileen’s husband’s a few times, but I don’t remember his name. My most vivid memory is of the extremely overcast day on which I forgot to extinguish my Saturn’s headlights before eating lunch and enjoying my postprandial nap in the park near the Connecticut River. Eileen called him. He picked me up in his truck. When we arrived he charged the battery with a stand-alone unit. It took only a minute or two.
I don’t think that Eileen had any children.
While working at TSI Eileen was diagnosed with cancer in one of her legs. She was the only employee who ever filed a claim on the disability policy that the company maintained for two decades. I worried about her subsequent use of the stairway that was the only entry to or exit from TSI’s office, but she had no trouble with it when she returned to work. It was a very nice feeling that she could recover from such a serious issue.
After a few years Eileen and her husband decided to move to New Hampshire. I seem to recall that it had something to do with his job. She gave us several weeks notice, and so there was time for her to train her replacement.
The person whom I hired to replace Eileen was named Debbie Hlobik. She had a son who gave her some problems and a daughter. Eileen warned me that, although Debbie was certainly capable of doing the job, she worried about her attitude. This assessment turned out to be prescient. Debbie was married and had a son whose behavior gave her a lot of problems. I am not sure what she wanted to do with her life, but she eventually made it quite clear that it did not involve TSI. I finally had to fire her. When I did, she said that I had nothing to be sorry about. She immediately applied for unemployment benefits.
Perhaps the strangest few weeks in the history of the company was after I had hired Chrissy Ralph or maybe it was Chrissy Poloski to replace Debby. Chrissy seemed fine in the interview and for the first few weeks. At some point she either got married or divorced (I don’t remember which) and changed her name. After that her behavior became erratic. One day she left at lunch time and never returned. She had written and signed a letter detailing her resignation and left it on her desk next to her PC. I also found several unpaid bills in her desk drawer, including sales tax bills for a few states. TSI had to pay fines on a few of them.
Then, unbelievably, she filed for unemployment benefits and claimed that I had fired her. Denise and I contested the filing, and the state arranged for a hearing of the case. Chrissy did not appear, and her claim was terminated forthwith.
The hiring of our last administrative person, Ashley Elliott, in 2010 put an end to our losing streak. Although I spent several years working with her, I have a hard time coming up with any anecdotes at all. She certainly did a good gob. She seemed to be rather friendly with Jason Dean, TSI’s programmer during her tenure at TSI. They were both more than a generation younger than I was.
She was still employed with TSI when the company shut down in 2014 (described here). Here is the letter of recommendation that I wrote for her.
To Whom It May Concern:
I am the president of TSI Tailored Systems, Inc., a small company that has designed, implemented, installed, and supported computer software for thirty-five years. Ashley Elliott has served as our administrative person since April 26, 2010. Before that she worked for a temporary employment agency and was assigned to our account for three months. We were so pleased with her work and her attitude that we offered her permanent employment. This was the only time in the long history of the company that we have done that.
Ashley’s job at TSI involved many diverse tasks. Essentially she was responsible for almost everything except for development and support of the software. She managed both the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable systems and used our home-grown computer systems to generate invoices, statements, and numerous reports. She was very good at interacting with both customers and vendors. She managed the cash flow in Excel, filed sales and use taxes online in many states, and did most of the work required for closing the books every month. She also was responsible for routine purchasing and other aspects of managing the office.
Ashley did very good work for TSI. It takes a special type of person to be able to execute such a large number of small tasks, some menial and some challenging, and Ashley adapted very well. My partner and I have been very impressed with her attitude and her ability to get along with everyone in the office. We came to depend upon Ashley, and she did not disappoint us. She made the trains run.
Ashley’s termination had nothing to do with her work, which was of consistently high quality. Business conditions necessitated that we close the company rather abruptly.
I wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend Ashley for any similar position. I would be very happy to talk with any prospective employer about her work at TSI. I can be reached at Mike@Wavada.org or 860 386-0700 (through July 31, 2014) or 860 763-3694 (home).
Of all of the blog entries that I have written this one was the most frustrating to write. I worked with these people for a total of thirteen years, but I had trouble remembering any details. Furthermore, aside from my experience with Nadine, I found little in the way of notes. I recently discovered some spreadsheets dated in 2006 (Eileen?) and 2009 (Ashley?) concerning recruitment of administrative assistants. I am at a loss to explain the fact that none of the names on the list seem even vaguely familiar. There was one person named Paula. She may have been the same as the short-term employee described above, but the last name and the year did not seem right.
I also searched on the Internet for information about the women who handled the administrative functions to determine what they had done since leaving TSI. I found almost nothing about any of them.
I have had a few email exchanges with Lucia and Eileen, but otherwise no communication. It puzzles me how I could have worked fairly closely with these people for such a long time, but until I tried to put this page together, I hardly gave them a thought.
1. This was a reference to Harry Burt, a programmer at TSI who was introduced here.
2. Leonard’s was in business long after Lucia left TSI. I drove by it many times on the way to and from bridge tournaments. At some point it became Carquest Auto Parts. On my last drive past it in August of 2023 I noticed that the store appeared to be out of business. Its website was no longer working, and the Facebook page indicated that the owner had retired.
3. Debbie died in 2019 at the age of 60. Her obituary is posted here.
TSI’s first, last, and best programmer was Denise Bessette. For three decades she was one of the most important people in my life. More details about her relationships with TSI, me, and the rest of the crew can be found here.
During the years that Denise worked only part-time most of the programming burden fell on my extremely narrow shoulders. By 1987 it had become too much. We needed to hire a full-time programmer. I placed ads in the Hartford Courant and the Journal-Inquirer. It was not a good time to be hiring. The state’s unemployment rate was heading toward a record low of 2.8 percent, and the demand for programmers far exceeded the supply. I understood that a small firm like TSI would be at a disadvantage when competing with giants like the insurance companies. Besides, our office was in a converted barn, and we were not able to offer any benefits to speak of.
Sandy in the kitchen in TSI’s East Windsor Office.
A few people responded to our ad. The only one that I had any interest in hiring was Sandy Sant’Angelo, whose name was Sandy Scarfe when she started at TSI. She had taken a few programming classes. She worked for the Springfield (MA) Public Library system. A major part of her job there was helping to set up the new computerized system for keeping track of the books. This was not very close to anything that we did, but at this point my choices were to hire her or start the recruiting process over. I chose the former.
Sandy turned out not to be a great coder, but she had other traits that I valued highly. She learned how to use the computer systems rather quickly, and if a project was well-defined, and I provided her with a somewhat similar program to use as a model, she was eventually able to save me a little time. What I liked the most about her were her dependability and her attitude.
Harry Burt, Lucia Hagan, Chris Bessette, Sandy, and Denise at the summer outing in Old Saybrook.
Unfortunately, the great bulk of our work in the nineties was quite complicated, and it became more and more difficult for me to find appropriate projects for her. One thing that I had noticed was that she was good at talking to the users at our clients’ installations. She had a cheerful demeanor, and she was pretty good at getting to the bottom of problems.
At the time TSI’s office had two telephone lines1, a generic number that we published in our promotional materials and a support line that we provided to our clients. I decided that Sandy’s primary responsibility should be answering calls on the support line. If they were simple questions, she could deal with them immediately. Otherwise, she recorded them. At first we kept track of the problems on paper, but soon we devised a simple system for recording them in a database available to all the programmers.
Denise, Sue, me, Sandy, Lucia, and Harry. Chris or a restaurant employee must have taken this photo.
This system worked pretty well. The key question that we asked was whether the problem was holding up the client’s work. If it was, the problem was automatically escalated. In nearly all cases these problems were addressed the same day.
I did not often work closely with Sandy. Actually, no one did. Her telephone voice sounded fine on the other end, but for some reason it really carried inside the office. I had to move her desk away from the programmers’ area.
Although I had hired Sandy, when Denise took over application development, she became the boss of all of the programmers. After a few years, Denise, who knew Sandy’s limitations, decided to eliminate her position. The meeting in which she was the terminated was very hard for me to witness. Sandy broke down and cried. I understood that Denise had made a business decision, but I doubt that I could have done it. By then I thought of Sandy as part of the TSI family. Nevertheless, I never considered overruling Denise’s decision.
Sandy, me, and Harry at the door to the TSI office in East Windsor after a blizzard.
I don’t have a lot of vivid memories of Sandy. She got married after she came to work with us, and she seemed happy. Her attendance record over the years was nearly spotless. She also attended all of TSI’s summer outings and Christmas parties.
I only recall her expressing a strong opinion about one thing. She loved the Harry Potter books. Her endorsement, however, was not sufficient to prompt me to dip my literary beak there.
Sandy was the person who alerted the rest of the office about the attacks on 9/11/2001. Everyone else in the office was shocked at this, but I had spent more time in airports than the rest of them put together. The airport security by that time was unbelievably lax. I had concocted in my mind at least three ways of sneaking a gun aboard a plane. It was also no surprise to me that plenty of people in the world who despised the United States for its arrogant and interventionist foreign policy and its unquestioning endorsement of anything done or said by Israel.
I find it personally embarrassing that I know so little about Sandy, a person with whom I worked for more than a decade. I just let her live her life as she wanted to and expected her to come in every morning. I can never remember her asking for anything.
After assigning Sandy to answering support calls, I reckoned that we needed another programmer. The Internet was still in its infancy, and so the process again involved expensive want ads in the local papers. Before finding someone who fit the bill I hired two different people, neither of whose names I remember.
The first was a woman in her twenties or maybe early thirties who already had programmed in BASIC at another company. I hired her. I was pretty excited about the prospect of working with her. It seemed likely that she might be able to get up to speed in record time. On the first day she appeared in the office at 8:30, TSI’s starting time. I immediately put everything aside to help her understand how we programmed and to go over some of the peculiarities of the hardware and operating systems.
If I had a sick pet, I would also ask permission to go home, but I don’t think that I would quit my job.
At some point she must have received a phone call. It only lasted a couple of minutes; I thought nothing of it. However, just before lunch she told me, “I’m sorry, but this won’t work. My dog is sick, and I need to be with him.” I don’t remember what I replied, maybe nothing.
I immediately initiated another job search. This time I hired a guy in his twenties who claimed to have done some programming for a previous employer. I spent a couple of weeks training him, and he seemed to be making little or no progress. I began to doubt that he had ever written a program, or at least one that did approximately what was required.
I have only a vague recollection of what he looked like or anything about his personality. I do remember that he was into the martial arts and worked out. He was in very good shape.
I probably would have worked with him for another week or two before deciding, but we had a twinax connectivity problem. As is explained here, the individual terminals and PC’s were connected to the server via twinax cabling. Each station was dependent upon the cabling, pigtails, and settings of the other devices on the line. Some of our cables were very long. We ordered these custom-made from a company in New Britain. They were expensive. Moreover, the company needed a little time to make them, and it was located forty or so miles from TSI’s office.
It was an “all hands on deck” situation until we got the situation resolved. Everyone was checking connections. I asked the new programmer to connect one of the cables to one of the devices. I showed him how their were two holes on the “pigtail” and two pins on the end of the cable. The pins, of course, fitted into the holes. Once the connection was made, a cap on the end of the cable could be turned so that it was impossible for the cable to come loose. I honestly thought that it was impossible for anything to go wrong. I had done this many times, and nothing had ever gone amiss.
Those two pins are not supposed to lie flat next to each other.
We spent an hour or so trying to get the line to work, but we had no success. I eventually examined the connection that this new fellow had made. The pigtail was tightly attached to the cable. I unfastened it and looked inside the head of the cable. Both pins were bent at a 90° angle, one to the right and one to the left. They resembled a pair of arms stubbornly crossed on someone’s chest. I would have bet that no one was strong enough to do this. To this day I had no idea how he accomplished this feat.
I was so angry that I had to retreat into Denise’s office for a few minutes so that no one could see me. I decided on the spot to fire him, but I waited until the end of the day to do it.
I thought at first that we would need to order another custom cable. However, we found a spare cable, and with a few adjustments to our wiring scheme, we were able to get the connectivity resumed within a half hour.
Casual Corner’s headquarters as viewed from South Rd. The pond was usually full of geese.
Twice when I advertised for a programmer, I received applications that I could not believe. One was from the lady who was IT director at Casual Corner3, a large retail chain. Their home office was in Enfield. My customary jogging route took me right past their complex. The IT department even had an AS/400! Casual Corner did not advertise much, but with and “in” we might even get an AdDept installation out of it. I tried to contact her, but she never scheduled an interview.
The other guy was retired. He had been an IT director at a large company. He came in and talked with me. He said that he would work cheap. He just wanted to write code. I don’t know whether he would have been a good programmer or not, but my primary interest was elsewhere. At the time we were just beginning to try to work with IT departments, and the process always left me frustrated. I thought that having this guy on TSI’s team might help me learn how managers of IT departments made decisions.
It was a close call, but I decided not to make him an offer.
I think that Steve might be setting up TSI’s F10.
Instead I hired a much younger guy, Steve Shaw. He had been an RPG programmer at Riverside Park4 in Agawam, MA. He picked up BASIC pretty quickly, and I was able to give him reasonably challenging projects. I really liked working with him. When he started his coding was a little sloppy, but the quality improved quickly. When I told him this, he seemed slightly insulted.
While he was working at TSI Steve acquired a multi-unit property in Massachusetts. I could not understand why he wanted to be a part-time landlord. To each his own.
Steve was something of a daredevil. He purchased a jet ski while he worked for us. At some point he disclosed that he had been in a motor cycle accident in which he lost a number of teeth. I wrote a little song to cheer him up. My sister Jamie and I performed it for him in the office. It was a smash hit.
I found a copy of the lyrics:
Home, brain, nerve, heart (teeth not in photo).
On corn cobs I’d be gnawin’. I could graze upon your law-n. It is my firm belief. My dentitions would be so neat. I’d devour piles of roast beef, If I only had some teeth.
Oh, I could eat a pie. I’d chew up all the steaks that you could buy. I’d masticate on pork chops bye the bye. If you object, I’ll bite your thigh.
From ear to ear I’d be grinnin’. Young girls’ hearts I’d be winnin’. I’d steal them like a thief. I would floss away my tartar, and stop actin’ like a martyr, If I only had some teeth.
Music by Harold Arlen; Words by Mike Wavada
TSI’s Christmas party with the Edward Owen Company at the Nutmeg House: Jamie Lisella, Steve, Doug Pease, Ken Owen, Denise, Sandy, someone, me, someone else.
Steve only worked with us for about four years. I appreciated that he might see it as a dead-end job. However, the work was, I think, potentially very exciting. We were solving problems that no one had addressed before for large corporations that everyone has heard of. I tried to talk him into staying, but there was no way for me to argue that he could ever climb the corporate ladder at TSI. We did not have a ladder.
The next programming hire was Harry Burt2, who was almost exactly my age, forty-something. He had a degree in math, and he had programmed in BASIC. He had been a vice president at a bank in Simsbury (I think) that had had closed under fairly suspicious circumstances that did not involve Harry. I hired him and terminated the job search at the end of my interview with him.
Harry mostly did programming projects for us. However, I also assigned him to monitor the work of Fred Pease in the huge Y2K project, which is described here. Fred was a college student who had never had a job before. The plan was for him to work part-time at TSI for the summer. He wanted to set his own schedule. By his own omission he tended to stay up late playing video games. Sometimes he stayed up all night.
That much was OK, but Fred constantly changed his schedule without telling Harry or anyone else. Harry had to ask him every morning how long he was going to work. He usually said “Until 11:30” or “Until 12:30”. The last straw was when he said “Until something-thirty”.
Fred’s work was also slipshod. I decided that I needed to take the project more seriously. If I was going to need to check every program anyway, I decided to do it all myself. Frankly, I did not want to assign such a tedious and unrewarding task to any of my good programmers. I did not want risk losing them. I took it on as a sort of penance; I should have seen it coming back in the eighties.
Sandy and Harry are on the left. Myself (hat), Denise and Chris are on the right. This photo is from our cruise on the Connecticut River.
Harry (who was NOT hairy—I thought of the Fuzzy Wuzzy rhyme whenever I saw or heard his name) was a great fit for TSI for at least a decade. After a couple of years I began to worry that Harry might realize that there was no path for advancement at TSI and decide to look for work elsewhere. After all, he was definitely overqualified for his job.
I decided to give Harry a small percentage commission on our software sales every month. I think that this was probably a good idea. He could see that he was profiting from our delivery of new software.
While he worked for us he also taught college-level math classes in the evenings. At some point in the twenty-first century Harry quit in order to become a full-time teacher . He told Denise, who was his boss, that he was having trouble dealing with the pressure at TSI. The environment did not seem pressure-packed to me, but from my office — even with the door open — I could not hear any conversations.
I liked Harry a lot. For a time we were the only two males in the office, and it was very nice having someone with whom I could discuss a football game. Also, since we were almost exactly the same age, we had many of the same cultural landmarks.
Harry is between Doug Pease and Denise. A little bit of Sandy is visible on the right. I think that this was the day of our Christmas dinner after the trip to Hawaii.
Harry’s best friend was Vinny, his barber. Harry often told amusing stories about Vinnie or recited humorous quotes. I devoted a fair amount of effort to buying appropriate (and usually light-hearted) Christmas cards for the employees. One year I actually found one that featured a barber named Vinny.
Harry had a 24/7 tan. I assume that he went to a tanning studio. He did not seem like the kind of person who would do that, but you never know. One of my proudest achievements was to compare tans with him on my return from Hawaii. For the first and only time, my arm was darker than his.
Denise recruited and hired all of the new programmers who worked in our office in the twenty-first century. By this time we were using Monster.com for hiring. It was cheaper and better than newspaper ads, but it was still a time-consuming practice that tied up TSI’s most productive employee.
August 16 is National Airborne Day.
Brian Rollet was the first person that Denise hired. I remembered that he started while I was in Hawaii for the sales/vacation in December of 1975 (described here). I brought everyone back souvenirs for the employees. For Brian, whom I had never met yet, I purchased a hula-dancing bobble-head doll.
Brian was an Army vet. In fact, he was Airborne. Had I been doing the hiring, this would have given me pause in two different areas. 1) Why would anyone with a marketable skill like programming ability volunteer for three years in the Army? 2) Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane?
He also had a pretty long commute. He lived in Ware or Belchertown — one of those towns near the Mass Pike. There is no way to get to East Windsor from that area without driving through Springfield.
Denise was most upset about one of Brian’s most unprofessional traits — dozing off in the afternoon. She asked me what I would recommend. I told her that the obvious solution was caffeine. Who ever heard of a programmer anywhere who did not consume immense amounts of caffeine at work?
Brian, Harry, Denise, and Sandy at Mystic Seaport.
My second choice was to advise Brian to work something out with Harry, who was in the adjoining cubicle. If I were in Brian’s situation, I would have asked Harry to throw an eraser at me whenever he saw me nodding off. That would have worked, wouldn’t it?
When Denise called him on the carpet about it, Brian’s solution was to eat only salads at lunch. That might have helped a little, but Denise finally had to let him go. I don’t think that she was too satisfied with what he produced while he was awake anyway.
She confided to me that she would never again hire anyone who had been in the military.
Denise’s second hire, Michael Davis, worked out much better. He got up to speed very rapidly, and Denise really enjoyed working with him, and she definitely got to depend on him. Unfortunately, he did not stay at TSI very long. He moved to Pittsburgh, where he had family or a girlfriend or something.
Lucia Hagen, Harry, and Michael.
The good news was that he liked the work at TSI well enough to work for us remotely for a period after he moved away. So, the transition was not too difficult. Of course, he could not answer the support line from Pittsburgh.
Michael’s boat.
My most vivid memory of Michael was on our summer outing at (I think) Rocky Neck State Park. He took me out on his small sailboat. People from Kansas do not often get opportunities like this. Of course, he did all the sailing. My only job was to duck my head down by my knees when he decided to swing the sail around.
I remember that after Michael had been at TSI for a year or so he decided to buy a new car. Well, not a NEW car, but a NEWER car. He chose a Volkswagen; I don’t remember the model. The few times that I shopped for a car I never considered buying a used one. I would be too afraid that I was just buying someone else’s problems. Nevertheless, Michael seemed satisfied with his purchase.
Sean Finnegan.
I don’t remember much about Sean Finnegan7. In fact, I had to ask Denise about him. He worked for TSI for two months in 2010. He was apparently a pretty good programmer, but he had difficulty talking with clients on support calls.
Jason Dean8 lived in the Springfield area. Before coming to TSI he had worked in Friendly’s IT department. He joined us in October 2007 and was still employed when we closed down the company in 2014.
Denise got along with Jason nearly as well as she did with Michael. She was very satisfied with his attitude and performance.
I did not really get to know Jason too well until Denise started working remotely in 2013. One thing that I quickly learned was that he was a terrific bowler. He had bowled at least three 300 games, which blew my mind. He had quite a few bowling balls. He told me that getting the ball to spin correctly depended on both the surface of the ball and the surface of the lane. So, different balls were needed depending on the condition of the lanes..
I was very surprised to learn that Jason’s bowling balls had only two holes. He did not have a hole for his thumb.
Jason knew my bridge friends Bob and Shirley Derrah from bowling in Springfield.
Jason and his wife were, in my opinion, fanatical about coupons, Groupons, and all other ways of obtaining discounts. They were always shopping for bargains. They switched their cell service from Verizon to T-Mobile to save on phone charges. However, the T-Mobile phones got no signal in their apartment. They got their money back, but it was a big hassle.
Jason had a son when he started working at TSI. His second son was born quite prematurely, and it was touch-and-go for a while, but he pulled through and was quite healthy the last that I knew. The family also had three rescue cats who were too eccentric for my tastes.
In his middle school in Springfield Jason had twice been a spelling champion. He was the only other person whom I have ever met who competed in the national spelling bee.
Jason and his family loved Disney World. They spent every vacation there, and they always stayed in the same Disney hotel. They monitored the situation very closely and always made reservations on the first day that the discounted fares were offered.
Jason had an older brother who lived at home with his parents. He spent most of his time in the basement playing Worlds of Warcraft. Although he had never worked, Jason insisted that he was a brilliant guy. He urged Denise to consider hiring him. I don’t remember the details, but he never came to the office. I am not sure that he could drive.
Jason actually contacted the Dr. Phil show to try to get them do do an intervention to help his brother get out of his shell. His parents vetoed the idea.
Jason and his parents were very conservative. He could not believe that Obama had defeated Romney in 2012. He told me that he suspected that there had been voting fraud, but he readily admitted that he had no evidence.
1. By the time that we moved the office to East Windsor, CT, in 1999 TSI had eight phone lines.
2. In 2021 Harry Burt is teaching math at Naugatuck Community College. His LinkedIn page is here.
3. Casual Corner closed all of its stores in 2005. Since then the headquarter building in Enfieldhas been used by Brooks Brothers, which also is now in bankruptcy.
4. Riverside Park was acquired by Premier Parks in 1996, a couple of years after Steve started at TSI. The name was changed to Six Flags New England.
5. Steve Shaw sent me emails a couple of times. In the one in February of 2000 he reported that he was working at the Phoenix, and they had sent him to classes on Websphere and Java. However, we never got together. Because he has such a common name, It was difficult to locate him, but I finally found his LinkedIn page. You can see it here.
6. I think that Brian Rollet lives in the Ware, MA, area in 2021.
