Work days............

I started work just after my 15th birthday, that came in July and I started work in August. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My art teacher wanted me to go to art school. I had no clue what I could do with art for a job. To me art hung on the wall, and how could you live on the prospect of selling a picture. No one enlightened me. No one suggested book illustration, or album covers. At barely 15 I knew nothing or the world or what was out there. I did not think career in those days, everyone got married and had a family, that was the goal of most girls. Well, at least where I came from. My best friend Margaret had started work the Christmas before and worked in a factory. I didn't want to do that, at least I knew that much, but I did want to earn money. So, rather than go on and do my GCE (General certificate of education) I opted to leave school. My aunt was the Personnel officer at A.C Delco and she came to school to do my interview. She gave me some options as to what I may be suited for. I chose to be a key punch operator. I had no clue what it was but it sounded easy enough. So it began, my life time journey into the world of computers. Starting work in those days we began at the very bottom as Office Junior. That meant getting the tea for the supervisor and washing everyone's dishes in a little sink in the corner. I was ever so happy next school leaving time when the next new girl came in. I was done with that. Her name is Sheila and we are still friends today. We punched cards by hand on a little machine. Those cards were used to tell the main computer what to do. We keyed in programs as well as all the other jobs that needed to be done. We got to be quite fast too, the cards were then verified before going to be sorted. I loved to verify and that was the next step up. There were two older ladies (older to me) that had to work on two big Hollerith machines, they were programmed by plug ins like the old telephone boards. That was fun and I soon got to try my hand at that. We would get so we were faster than the machines and have to wait for them to catch up. It wasn't long before the new automatic IBM machines came along. We were all reluctant to use them at first. The supervisor tried to make us key in the information in a different way, because she was told it was faster, like typing. None of us liked that. We were fast as we were and this slowed us down. We eventually found our own way of doing it and as we were not trained as typists we have probably all got our own unique way of typing now. These machines had a drum that a card fitted on, we programed the machine that way. By flipping a switch one could verify as well as key punch. With a short amount of time we got proficient and fast. I think I did key punching all my working life until I started work at the bank. The machines there were a little different and faster still. The next step were the CRT's and keying "on line". Data Entry. I sort of liked the old IBM machines because I taught myself to fix them. It always took forever to get a tec in to fix them and so I watched him..........well that didn't go over very well, unions and all that, but I didn't care. Why waste time waiting when I can mend it myself?. I just want to get the job done. I have always been that way. Curious and wanting to do things myself. I loved computers and I should really have gone into programming but I just didn't think about it. By the time I finished my working life I had worked around and with computers through the whole evolution of the things. Back in the early days, when they talked about home computers "some day".........well who would imagine what we would even do with one. Now we can not do without one.