COMMODORE BANKRUPTCY

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(The Evil Empire Is Dead! Long Live The Amiga!)

An employee's reflection on how CBM killed the Amiga.

A few years ago I wrote this essay about some of the main problems I was having working with Commodore. I was thinking about sending it in to Amigaworld or some other Amiga trade magazine. I sent copies to a couple of close friends (also CBM employees) and wanted to hear their response. Both of them said if this letter were ever published I would be most likely terminated immediately. So instead of sending it out, I sat on it. Well, when CBM sales plummeting and Commodore cutting back unnecessary expenses (like technical support people!) I find myself no longer an employee and now have the ability to let people know just how it came to be. Here is the essay I wrote on 4-4-92:

I Suppose, in a way, it was my own fault for loving the machine. I graduated from the VIC-20 through the C64/128 and ended up with an Amiga 1000. Soon I was a 25 year old Amiga Enthusiast managing a local Amiga Retail store. Then I got the offer. A Commodore District Sales Manager (or DSM in CBM parlance) offered me a position with the company! Just what I had hoped for, a way to enter Commodore Business Machines and actually work to advance the cause of the machine I loved! The position offered me was "Regional Product Demonstrator" (or RPD for short). There was a small catch though, the position was hourly and was part time. I was told that in just a few months it would graduate to a full time position. In September of 1988, I began working for Commodore.

At the beginning, it was exciting to be directly involved with dealers and end users. I listened to conference calls and was told of the wonderful new changes taking place at CBM and of how we were going to market and advance the cause of the Amiga. As the weeks passed into months I was doing trade shows and making presentations. I was filling out paperwork and I was evaluating software. I was also slowly discovering that in order for a "Part Time" product Demonstrator to perform the tasks required by his job description, he usually had to spend 45-50 hrs. a week! As I had been assured of a change in status to full time, I continued to do the best I could. I received letters from dealers and user groups complimenting my performance. I made friends in the CBM headquarters in Westchester. I also spent a LOT of time doing CBM business. I can remember some weeks in the early part of my career where I logged thousands of air miles between Illinois, Texas, Alabama, St. Louis and Florida. I did dealer employee training, system setups, trade show demos, seminar development & delivery, software beta testing and product evaluations. And again and again I was told just to "hang tight" the full time position was close at hand. I averaged 45 hrs. a week but was told to turn in my time card with a big THREE-ZERO written on it anyway. "Just hang tight and the work would pay off" became my mantra. The weeks stretched into years.

I watched 4 District Sales Managers come and go. I watched 5 Regional managers come and go. I watched the US division move from 2 regions to 3 and back to 2 again. I watched 2 CBM US Division Presidents come and go. And I've waited. Then came the Big Break.

In December of 1990, after a particularly successful seminar that toured 8 states, I was called over to talk with the Central Region Manager who had just witnessed my presentation. He told me he was so impressed by my performance that he was going to give me a full time position with a full CBM benefit package and a hefty retroactive pay raise starting today! This would be coming my way at the end of the quarter (less than 1 month away!). I was ecstatic! I called my wife from Detroit and gave her the news. I gloated to my parents about how the job they called "dead end" had finally come through and how I was finally moving up in the company they had called impenetrable. Two months later I was still waiting for the promised promotion.

Finally, almost 4 months after I was supposed to become a full time CBM employee, I was called to the local airport to meet with the Central Region Manager while he was waiting to catch a connecting flight. In a meeting that lasted about 4 minutes I was told that upper level management had denied his petition to add "headcount" and that his statement that I would have a full time job with a fat benefit package and substantial pay raise may have been a bit "premature." He then asked if I could please leave now as the new CBM president would be coming in on a flight in a few minutes and he had some confidential matters to discuss.

There have been some other interesting incidents that might even have been funny if it weren't so tragic. The credit card "catch 22" for example. In order to be an RPD you have to be able to travel by air, rent cars and/or hotel rooms and purchase meals. In order to rent a car you need a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need to have a full time job. Commodore tried to remedy that by sending all of the regions RPDs applications for American Express Cards. We all submitted them and were told promptly 2 weeks later that we had been denied due to our "part time" job position.

Commodore also requires that you complete an expense report for any activity you spend money on in the field. So in a typical assignment, you fly to the location, rent a car, book a hotel and buy breakfast, lunch and dinner for 2 days. After doing so, your personal credit card can have hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of CBM incurred expenses on it. It ties up your credit line while the CBM expense report is being processed. When it arrives in Westchester PA, accounting begins picking apart the report with a fine tooth comb and denying any expenses not properly documented or any perceived violations of company policy. Of course, part time employees do not get to see exactly what the policies are as we do not receive policy manuals (those are reserved for full time employees) so we rely on word of mouth as to what is and what is not an acceptable expense. Of course by that time its too late as YOU have already incurred that expense and if CBM denies it you are out of pocket that amount. And if they find any sort of flaw in the way the report is filled out, it is returned to you for correction so that in most cases your credit card bill arrives and you have not received the CBM expense check to pay it. CBM has wreaked havoc with my credit rating in this way. The actuality of it is that, in effect, a multi-billion dollar company uses their PART TIME employees personal credit cards to obtain interest free loans for supporting their field activities.

For FOUR YEARS I have been a part time employee for CBM. I have no job security. I have no seniority. I have no medical or retirement benefits. In the four years I have worked for the company I have received 1 raise of $.50 an hour. I am now watching my 30th birthday approach. I am also looking at my resume. I will be a 30 year old married white male with 4 years in a part time position. I recently was turned down for a bank loan I applied for. I was trying to buy a piece of land my wife and I planned to build our dream house on. When the mortgage company called Commodore to ask about my prospect for future employment Commodores response was " No Comment". I then discovered that due to the extremely high turnover rate of CBM employees, they have a company policy just for that question. I cannot obtain credit cards without having my Mother co-sign for me. My current house is in my wife's name because she has a full time job. As it was when I left high school and joined a rock-n-roll band, my parents keep asking me when I will be getting a "REAL JOB".

By now some of you may be wondering how Commodore came up with the idea of Regional Product Demonstrator. It began when Commodore tried to solve a problem that developed in the field with their sales reps. When these reps were doing trade shows and presentations they had to move lots of heavy equipment around. They were also expected to show off the latest and greatest Amiga software and hardware to end users. Since these sales reps wanted to spend time talking to perspective clients, they petitioned CBM to allow them to hire a "Product Demonstrator" to assist in the lugging of equipment and in the drudgery of trade show demos.Commodore agreed.

This worked well until CBM started to fire their sales reps frequently due to low sales. It was discovered then that by letting go their sales reps on a consistent basis, the only place to find new sales reps was to pilfer them from other computer manufacturers. The idea was to hire reps away from successful PC Compatible companies and use their experience to sell more Amigas. This policy worked so well that soon the regions were filled with Amiga-Illiterate District Sales Reps and Regional Managers. Unfortunately the Amiga's architecture is not functionally similar to the PC. The job of the RPD then took on a whole new description. The RPDs became technical advisers, system consultants and software designers. They lectured at user groups and flew out to new dealers to orient and train their sales staff. They designed seminars and helped to make the new sales force aware of Amiga technology and 3rd party software and hardware. The did system integration and hardware/software debugging. The Sales reps began to rely on them for almost all the technical side of the machine. The need for them to become more literate faded away. It is frightening to think that if all the RPDs in the US disappeared tomorrow the entire United States would have just TWO technical support people to handle the entire US sales region! As it stands now, the majority of CBM Middle Management uses PC Compatibles for their day to day office work and has very little, if any, contact with the Amiga, its applications or the people that use or develop them. The RPDs position is now critical. Due to the low market penetration of the Amiga in the general-purpose computer market and the peculiarities of the Amiga's proprietary operating system, finding knowledgeable people with extensive Amiga experienced is extraordinarily difficult.

Unfortunately, many of the ones with Amiga skill and experience are also the ones who are willing to take the low pay, the lack of benefits and the constant lies from CBM. They are willing to only because they love the Amiga.They want to see it succeed. And conversely, Commodore has seen people like me put in 40-50 hour weeks and only turn in 30. They've seen the RPD put up with the lies and the discomfort of the position and their response is not one of gratitude, but one of contempt. They feel no obligation to move the support personnel into a better paying position as most of the RPDs who are old-timers (4 years like myself) have been giving them great bargains for their money. And if one quits, then they know the Amiga is good enough to draw another enthusiast into the grinder to take that vacancy.

I am not the only "Regional Product Demonstrator" Commodore has bamboozled into working for Burger King wages while waiting for the "full time" blessing to be bestowed by the high priests of CBM. There is always some bright eyed Amiga lover ready to be dazzled by the idea of working for the company that makes that incredible machine. For those of us still working for Commodore, pity is in order. To those of you who are considering working for Commodore I have some advice: Just say NO to CBM.

As of last month, CBM shut down their Wester Region sales office and fired all the sales personnel as their stock hit an all time low of below $4.00 a share.