Edelstein’s Better Furniture, the end of an era.

It was February 2007, I had just came back from New York City after living there 6 months.  I was back in Brownsville and needed to find a job so I searched on the interwebz and several newspapers (just like the good ol days).  I saw a job posting on craigslist for an IT support position and sent my application and resume.  My cell phone rang the next day for an interview for the job I had just applied and if I could stop by for an interview “Sure, let me know time and place”, I said,  “Edelstein’s Better Furniture, tomorrow at 9am”, the IT director gave me the details.

In the morning of the interview, I showed up 5 minutes prior and parked on the side of the building, the two spots in the front had signs reserved for “Ben Edelstein” and “Ruben Edelstein.” I always had heard of Edelstein’s and being a company since the beginning of time, just that I never put too much thought into it.  I went inside and a very nice older lady who was the receptionist greeted me, Alicia was her name. She told me to take a seat while I waited on the IT director to stop by  There was a particular smell to the inside of the building, one whiff and you could basically smell antique all over the place. There was vintage photographs all over the reception area, a few in particular caught my eye, mostly the ones from the early 1900’s, I thought to myself “man this is really an old place”.

I finally met the IT director and after talking to him of things I knew how to do, he asked me if I was interested in the job, an offer right  there on the spot “Yeah, I’m interested, count on me” I said.  After finally signing paperwork for the HR I got a tour of the place and it didn’t take a long time for me to figure out that I had a lot of work to do, walking into the server room I ran into a spider web of blue ethernet cables everywhere, some hanging from the ceiling and some others running on the carpet causing a trip hazard, “what the fuck is this? ” I said to myself as I was astonished why someone would do nothing about it, no wonder the person I was replacing got the can.

The IT director showed me another piece of equipment which looked like a giant cinematic reel, and asked me “Do you know what this is?” I stayed quiet for a second trying to guess what the hell I was looking at “It looks like an old mainframe with data storage”, I answered.  “Well that’s what it is, it’s a mainframe running cobalt” he replied.  Mainframe computers were used primarily in the late 1970’s and I never actually thought I would actually see one being used, after all this were things I learned in history books, but then again the IT director had been there close to 30 years and if things didn’t break, there was not a reason not to fix them.

After two months on being on the job I took over everything pretty much, even made the job of my boss easier by not having him be there all the time. I implemented redundancy and one fix solutions as opposed to bandaid fixes that were very common previously from the person I replaced.  I remember in the very beginning since Edelsteins had 10-12 stores all throughout the valley, when someone needed any remote technical assistance, that would require a drive to wherever that may be, Raymondville and Rio Grande City were the cities I hated driving to, since they were the furthest away and took up almost a whole day, to get there and back. Things changed once I started setting up remote assistance and that allowed me to work on computers without needing to drive anywhere.

Ben Edelstein and Ruben Edelstein were the sons of the original founder, Morris Edelstein who came originally from Lithuania and setup shop in the banks of the Rio Grande Valley.   Ben Edelstein was the one who I kind of saw more on a daily basis since he lived in Harlingen and used to carpool with my boss.  I remember talking often with Ben Edelstein and his World War 2 stories since he served in the US Navy and was deployed in the Pacific.  Ruben Edelstein seemed more private, so I didn’t end up talking to him that often during my tenure but he was always at work during the morning, even in his late 80’s.  One time the Edelstein’s invited every staff member to eat at the Four points Sheraton (now demolished) and Ben Edelstein gave a speech on how much he appreciated everyone and that each person that did their job was crucial to the success of the furniture company.  With Edelstein being over 100 years, I kind of pictured myself retiring there, after all it was a great family owned company, my coworkers were great, the pay was good and I had a lot of room to grow and run everything if my boss decided to quit.

FAMSA, a corporate furniture company out of  Mexico came to Edelstein’s came and took over Edelsteins in 2008.  I remember one day out of the blue, everyone was called to a meeting and all these guys from Mexico with suits were sitting down and Morris Edelstein (son of Ben Edelstein) talked about how FAMSA acquired Edelstein’s and that even though it was a complete acquisition  takeover, he said that there wasn’t going much change other than the name and corporate procedures, but we all knew in our hearts that the beginning of the end was coming, after all if a company is doing so good, you don’t just sell out after 100 years unless your losing money. While FAMSA promised that 90% of the personnel would be kept,  they got to work really quick and just days after the corporate switch, people started getting laid off left and right, many of those people were people who had been with the company over 20+ years.   My boss and I stayed on board for a couple of extra months, we weren’t sure but believed that we were safe since after all we were the IT support for all the stores in the Rio Grande Valley, we were wrong.

One day, the HR person that stayed on board calls my extension “Frank, can you come and talk” and I’m like thinking … “there’s something wrong with the way she said that” so I went over to her office to see what’s up.  I sat down and she had a sad look on her face and hands me a envelope and says “open it and read it”.  As I started to read the first few lines I realized that this was a letter a layoff letter and stopped reading it, I took a deep breathe and told the lady “So this is it huh?” and she replies with a sad tone “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you the bad news but yes it appears you and your boss were laid off as of today, he already came over earlier and got his letter.”  And that was that, a journey ended so quick by a typical corporate company, I went over to my desk and gathered my stuff and said good bye to the remaining people that were around.

I have nothing but good memories working for Edelstein’s and consider it a once in a lifetime opportunity working for a historic company that at one point was a pioneer in the furniture business. Blessings work in disguise and since then I have not worked any longer at any actual office but rather work at home and do technical support for several companies now from the comforts of my room.