I never saw it do anything other than the opening screen pictured here. I should also mention that Bill never actually figured out how to make it do anything other than the opening screen. And there was the opportunity. Bill was a visionary who knew instinctively that we were looking at the future of managing a production line, even business in general, but it didn't come with any software for doing any of those things, nor a manual that explained how to get it to do any of them.
When I moved to Florida to be with my wife and daughter in 1980, I was 29 years old and had never really done much for my formal education. I had taken my GED (General Equivalency Diploma) test at 19 when I was in the Army so at least I could say that I had a high school education, even though I was never in school long enough to actually get one. I had taken a few college courses when we lived in Wyoming. After moving from there I planned on continuing my formal education when we settled down again. First things first, though. I needed to support my family. And now there were three of us. I was very proud of that and wanted to do this right.
Since we were living with my mother-in-law for a short time when we first moved down here, I took the time to investigate what was available in the area rather than just take the first job I saw. I thought about putting a resume together before I started. For me, it was out of the question for several reasons. First, I felt that all I would have on it was job experience, and a lot of moving around to go with it. The lack of education really couldn’t be hidden, and I didn’t feel like it was in my best interest to spell out that my last five years of residence spread over thousands of miles and three different states. Last but not at all least, when I turned 18, I had gotten arrested for a theft of slightly more than $500.00, which is grand larceny and considered a felony. I wasn’t offering that information unless somebody specifically asked. I also felt that filling out applications would be better than submitting resumes alongside people who had a college education and no criminal record. So I decided I would be looking for blue collar work.
I started to apply at many places where I left and never finished filling out the application because of the question, “Have you been convicted of a felony in the past 14 years?” Some places didn’t ask the question at all and at least one place, a production facility that I was very interested in because they had a corporate structure, asked if I had committed a crime only in the last 11 years. Shortly after my 29th birthday that was the magic number because the answer was no. I ended up applying at several places in addition to that production facility and got an acceptance call from a local lumber yard and the production facility on the same day. Since most of my job experience was as an auto mechanic, they were asking me if I was interested in the production line mechanic’s job. I considered all my objectives and took that job.
Working as a line mechanic on different production lines, I got to see what type of other work was being done (as well as other supervisory and management positions) at that facility and what jobs became available with an inside look at which ones would be the better choices. I started applying for production supervision jobs once I knew that I could qualify for them with the experience that I had gained managing the garage business for my dad for three and a half years. When I had been a line mechanic about a year I was interviewed and accepted for a second shift assistant supervisor position working with oven operators and chemical pyrolysis processes. I worked on second shift for a year and was promoted to a first shift position working with production line assemblers. During the year that I worked on this production line, two significant things happened that brought me a new opportunity which altered my course at this company, and ultimately, in my life. One came from outside, one from inside.
A) Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack) came out with a personal computer and B) my production line manager, Bill, bought one and put it on a desk in the corner of his office. His three line supervisors (of which I was now one) and his two process engineers all filed into his office at one time or another and dutifully ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the thing, which is pictured here pretty much as I first saw it that first day right out of the box. I never saw it do anything other than the opening screen pictured here. I should also mention that Bill never actually figured out how to make it do anything other than the opening screen. And there was the opportunity. Bill was a visionary who knew instinctively that we were looking at the future of managing a production line, even business in general, but it didn’t come with any software for doing any of those things, nor a manual that explained how to get it to do any of them.
I poked my head in his office one day about a week later to ask if there was any progress on the computing front. The mainframe people from our real computer department up on management row had been by, looked it over, and dismissed it as a toy. Not much help there. I had apparently caught him as frustrated as he was willing to get before throwing it in the trash, but just short of having done so. He explained to me that he had talked to the Radio Shack sales people and they told him there were programs like spreadsheets and word processors for it, but that if he wanted it to do more, he would have to program it himself. So they sold him the GW-Basic programming language for TRS-80 by Microsoft and a dot-matrix line printer for printing documents and here they all sat laid out on a table in his office. I asked him if he would mind if I came by after my shift ended and read the manuals.
I have often thought over the years that if the Radio Shack salesman had ever explained how much Bill could have done with their spreadsheet program and word processor, I may never have had the opportunity that was staring me in the face that day. When I came back at about 4:30 P.M., Bill showed me what he had gleaned from the manuals so far, got up and picked up his briefcase, and said as he walked out, “Lock the door when you leave.”
I have been a programmer, software developer, and systems analyst for well over 30 years as I write this. I can tell you unequivocally that everything Bill was trying to do in the short term with that computer he could have done with their spreadsheet program, even as limited as the first spreadsheets were. I can also say, equally as unequivocally, that everything he has ever used the computer for at that company since then he could have done on a spreadsheet program and a word processor. But this was a couple of years before IBM came out with their PC or Apple came out with their MacIntosh, and none of us had ever seen a computer or a spreadsheet or a word processor before and had no idea what could be done, just that Bill was determined to do it. I didn’t leave that night until after midnight. When I showed Bill the next day that we can get the computer to ask us for inputs, then accept our answers, he was ecstatic. When I stopped in at 4:30 again that day, he sheepishly got up from the computer and told me this was still Greek to him, but if I still wanted to play, just remember to lock the door again when I left.
The following week, Bill came to my cubicle one day with the warehouse guy and a stack of boxes on a cart. He said simply not to set it up until after work. From that moment on, I had my own TRS-80 and printer. I had to learn on my own time, but somebody, either Bill or the company, was supporting my efforts.
After a while, it seemed as though other departments were getting these computers, also. One day John, the Industrial Engineering manager, came to talk to Vivian, Yvonne, and me, the production line supervisors that worked for Bill about a new program he had that was written by an outside programmer for the TRS-80 specifically for production reporting. He gave us a copy of the diskette and asked that we use it from now on to send in our production reports on Monday mornings. The General Manager was behind this and was not going to be accepting any other report format than this one.
At one point, I remember asking a question and then starting to say, “I think…’.
John said, “Don’t worry, Mike, there’s people in this company that get paid to think.”
I thought I saw Vivian and Yvonne exchange a glance. I don’t know if it was concern for me or just that they did not like what they heard. They had been line supervisors for a long time. Line supervisors always have to think on their feet to keep things moving smoothly especially when there are problems on the line. I had learned a lot since I started working with them due to their experience and abilities. I don’t want to make too big a deal out of this, but it might be that all they heard was a comment that there are also people who don’t get paid to think, like maybe them (or all of us).
We accepted the challenge to use the new program every week and it did turn out to be a challenge. The program asked for certain inputs and as long as you entered each of the inputs it continued on and spit out a production report, which you then handed in to Industrial Engineering. If any of the numbers were incorrect and you attempted to change them, the program doubled many of your totals and the print-out would be formatted incorrectly. The wisest thing to do at that point would be to start over again from the beginning. We talked it over among ourselves and decided not to waste any more time trying to work with it. We used a typewriter to create a form that asked all of the same questions, in the same order, that the computer program would be asking us, and made dozens of copies for ourselves. We would each collect our data every week and fill out one of those forms for our production line, then sit down at the computer and enter all of our information straight through, printing out the report at the end perfectly. Mission accomplished, get on with your day.
About six months after the new program was implemented, John came by to talk to Vivian, Yvonne, and me again. We sat in the conference room and he explained that every other department using the new reporting program was up in arms about it and had started complaining to the General Manager and weren’t using it any more. Yet here was our department, submitting these reports every week and not a peep out of any of us. Yvonne went to get him a copy of our input form while Vivian explained that we had had all the same problems as everyone else in the building and what we had done to alleviate them, giving me credit for actually creating the form. He looked over the form Yvonne brought back and said, staring at it, “Mike, this is brilliant. Can I borrow this?”
I said, “John, you can have that. There’s people in this company that think whether they get paid to or not.”
I am pretty sure that went right over his head, but it didn’t make any difference, I had said it for the three of us.
