History of John Smith Griffin
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Early Washington - 1931

While I am grateful for the opportunity I had to work when it was so difficult to obtain a job, nevertheless I cannot help but remember these things when I hear Bill Marriott praised for all that he does for the Church. He is presently (1957) Stake President of the Washington Stake and has been for a number of years. He has also financed several expiditions into Mexico to find ruins tending to prove the Book of Mormon. He is now a multi-millionaire with chains of restaurants all over the eastern seaboard and some in the west. I will never forget how he used to, come around and urge me to "hit the ball" when I was washing rootbeer mugs on his car hops pay and treating me as though he had never known me before. His is very friendly to me now. The last time I was in Washington (1955) I attended the sacrament meeting at the Arlington Ward and Bill seeing me in the audience got up and came down off from the stand and shook hands with me.

As the fall approached and the evenings grew cooler, the drive-in business began to fall off. The car hops had plenty of time between cars to clean their own trays and complained to the manager about having to pay me 15 cents each night to do this for them. One evening Hatch approached me and said that he was sorry but that he would have to let me go as the girls were objecting to paying the 15 cents. Fortunately I had been around trying to get work at other places as I knew that I could never go to school with a job like I had. I had applied for a job with Sears Roebuck Company who had a store out on Bladensberg Road in Washington. The very day that Hatch told me that he had to lay me off at the Hot Shoppe (the name of Bill's drive-in) I received a call from Sears asking me to go to work the next day as a paint salesman in their paint department. I was certainly not unhappy to leave the drive-in, although it had tided me over and given me enough to pay my board bills as they came due.

Having sold paint and related products for my father I was quite at home in the paint department at Sears. I found it a little tiresome, especially on Saturdays when we would work from 9 in the morning until 9:30 in the evening with only a break of one half-hour for lunch. Yet with so many people coming in and out all day the time passed fast and I quite enjoyed selling. My salary was $15 per week guarantee or 4% of my gross sales, whichever was greater. Realizing that what I made depended largely on me, I really worked selling paint. The first month my sales exceeded everyone in the department, including the manager.

I made $160 that first month and thought I was really in the clover. The only trouble was that I had to work nights two or three times a week and late even on those nights when I did not have to work until 9:30. This prevented me from going to school and I soon realized that I would have to find some other work if I was going to accomplish what I had come to Washington to do.

LETTERS
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(L311001) John Griffin to Mother / Washington D.C.
(L311104) John Griffin to Father / Washington D.C.

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