Maybe I wasn’t clear and I did not tell the whole story: The manager with the “Can do everything with nothing” sign on his desk, Harold Jones, was a Burroughs Midrange computer expert systems programmer. I was hired to do the IBM side of converting the bank’s big Burroughs system to IBM MVS. Harold asked to go back to being a non-manager systems programmer because, he said: “Somebody’s going to get ground up in this conversion and I don’t want it to be me.” Then they hired a new manager of systems programming to replace Harold. The new guy, whose name I forget, is the man who supposedly carried the concealed pistol to work in the bank (this was before 911, right? And he may have had reason to be concerned for his safety outside the office). Now: The new guy lived over 40 miles away and had a big commute. The bank was in Baltimore Maryland. I used to ask the new guy: “Have you found you dream row house in Highlandtown?” Highlandtown was a “bad neighborhood” where bank managers did not reside; “row houses” are not MacMansions. Back to Harold Jones. He was a real “redneck” (these were the end times for the Data Processing “Wild West”). One Easter Sunday morning he was working in the datacenter and a black employee stopped by to show off the place to his girlfriend. Harold spontaneoudly exalaimed: “A chocolate Easter egg!” The guy took it in good humor. Times have changed, yes? the second shift data center manager was an old army man who had quit after 19 years (you get a pension at 20). He came to regret this. He got so frustrated that he told his manager: “If you tell me to dig a hole, I dig a hole. If you tell me to fill it up again, I fil it up again. Anything you want, SIR!” He got what I called a “remotion” to 3rd shift mnager. Meanwhile, back in the check sorting department (we had a big row of check sorters then because credit cards were not yet hegemonous), a number of the low level workers got fired for smoking marijuana on the job. Department of humor: One morning I came to work and a lady was literally standing on a table in the cafeteria and shrieking because there was a mouse loose in the carfeteria…
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