Ruth Stein inspired this project. She’s my mother-in-law (more or less). She and Bill, her husband of 62 years, are sales reps for a bunch of book publishers. They work four days a week, driving from their apartment-cum-showroom in Manhattan to a split-level in Westchester every weekend. Occasionally, especially after a set of 14-hour days at a trade show, they admit to being pooped. More tiring, though, is fielding the perennial question, “So when are you going to retire?” Over dinner one night Ruth turned to me and said, “Why don’t you write about that?”
In an era when people didn’t get divorced and ladies didn’t work, Ruth’s mother left her husband when their daughter was four and worked full-time as a buyer for classy New York department stores like Henri Bendel and I. Magnin. Ruth’s working life began at 18, directing customers around Saks Fifth Avenue as one of the Saks Sextet. “We sat on the main floor in seersucker dresses and I earned $17 a week,” she recalls with evident pleasure. She and Bill met when she was 5 and he 8, and married upon his return from WWII, where he piloted a B17 bomber and survived being shot down and captured by the Germans.
Ruth’s entrepreneurial bent materialized early on. As a newlywed she invented and sold a card-table cover with a pocket for score pad and pencil. (The Steins remain formidable bridge players.) They had two kids, Bob and Patty, who when were six and three when their mother came down with polio. Once able to get around with crutches and a brace, Ruth got stir-crazy, “so Bill and I had an idea that we could improve the gifts that executives gave out at Christmas time.” She put a collection together and it soon got so big — “we had things like 200 ice buckets delivered to the back door” — that she rented a showroom on the second floor of the Hyde Park Hotel.
Ruth ran the store for ten years, until the rent doubled. She closed up shop. She got depressed. Bill had bypass surgery (a pioneer in 1976). Money grew tight. “There were times when we would actually take the bills and throw them up in the air and see whose landed face up, and we’d pay those,” she recalls. Bought out of an earlier business importing semi-precious stones, Bill had decided to become a sales rep because it required no capital. Panicked if he ran even five minutes late, Ruth declared, “If you’re going to continue doing this, I’m going to do it with you.”
That’s how they first teamed up, beginning with “kerchiefs, corncob pipes, some of the worst stuff you ever saw in your life,” as Ruth puts it. Building on contacts from her gift business, they started repping better stuff, narrowing it down to books in the late ‘80s and selling them to non-bookstore outlets like museums and gift shops — a niche they invented. Landing the Miss Piggy Calendar was their first big break. Then along came Where’s Waldo? Since then they’ve worked for so many publishers, including all the big players, that they’ve lost count and become legends in the industry.
Ruth is a genius salesperson, matching books she knows well with customers whose tastes and needs she really cares about. A steel-trap memory doesn’t hurt, and neither does having Bill managing the accounts in the room next door. The trait of Ruth’s that I most admire is enthusiasm. She’s never met a conversation she doesn’t want to be in on, and she loves her customers and her merchandise. “I get such a kick out of them,” she says, waving at the stacks of books that crowd every surface around her. A little later, “What makes a good day on the job is if I’m working with somebody who is enthusiastic.” Many customers have become friends, part of an ever-expanding social network.
The Steins are fortunate not only to have each other but to collaborate well. “We never, ever sat down and said, ‘You do this and I’ll do that,’” Bill comments. “It just evolved. Ruth became the sales part of the business and I became the backroom part.” It may have cut into their social life (no ladies’ lunches for Ruth), but it’s certainly brought them closer. “In the end, working with Bill has made all the difference,” says his wife. “If I’ve had a lousy day he knows why, and if he’s annoyed, I know it’s because somebody didn’t pay a bill. It’s fun doing it together.”
Not that they agree on everything. Because Bill’s physical mobility is seriously limited by war injuries and knee operations and Ruth’s by post-polio syndrome, they ask customers to come to their showroom. Bill feels they lost the Time/Warner account not long ago because of their age — specifically because the publisher wanted reps who’d make sales calls. “But that had nothing to do with our age,” Ruth counters. “We’ve earned the right to have people come to us. And people like seeing a multitude of publishers in one place instead of being interrupted in their stores 15 times. They can see the actual books, which makes sense, because the books we sell are not returnable.”
Ruth does acknowledge concern about ageism. “I keep thinking that if our publishers knew how old we were, they’d say, ‘My god, what are we doing hiring these people?’ It doesn’t seem to bother them, but it makes me nervous.” Customers, on the other hand, either don’t notice their age or get a kick out of it, and the Steins’ limited mobility isn’t an issue. (This post explains why the Steins see their disabilities as justification for working rather than retiring.)
The Steins aren’t closing up shop any time soon. As physical challenges have come to the fore, financial ones have receded, but the income still comes in handy. “I don’t have to think twice about whether I want to take my family out to dinner, or travel. That does not hurt one bit,” Ruth declares. Work, she says “keeps me out of mischief, keeps me thoughtful, keeps me active. I think we’ve always appreciated the things that we have been able to do.” So please, don’t ask when they’re going to retire. After all, as our standing jokes goes, they’ve got children to support!
About the Author: Ashton Applewhite is a Knight Fellow, a New York Times Fellow, and the author of "Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well," a book about women who initiate divorce. Read more about work and old age on her blog: SoWhenAreYouGoingToRetire.