December 19, 1969

The testing was not going well, the system was not done, they should be into heavy testing and there were several programs that were not even running.  Greg looked at the list. They should have been done three weeks ago.  He looked across the room, there sat Randy next to Chuck, his head in a listing, looking.  He had been there for over 60 hours the week before, more than any team member, trying to get the programs cleared.  He might berate them, but he put a hundred percent into it.

Greg walked over to see how the work was coming.  “How does it look?”

“Bad, real bad.  We still have a chance of making it, and we have to.  We had hoped that IBM would make it on the alternate sequence, they haven’t released yet, their release date now is 2/170.  Our alternative chance is out.”

“What about the programming?”

“Slow, this is shit code, make a change and it falls apart on you.”

Chuck protested, “Shit code, come on I wrote that.”

“Shit code is shit code, no matter who wrote it.  I tell you Greg, you have to keep these guy’s noses to the grindstone or we ain’t going to make it.”

“We have to.”

“Why?”

“Because we have to.”

“Because we have to succeed?”

“Yes.”

“There is no guarantee we will be in business in January.  We have to make it happen.  Here I am again, my work going to pot and I’m trying to bail you out because if I don’t, I go down with you.  That’s crap.  If we’re ever on a sinking ship, I want to take a different life boat.”

“Can’t you ever be nice to anyone?”

“Yea, when they don’t make more work for me, now, get out of here with that psychological bull crap and let me work.”  He pointed to Chuck, “If you have something for him to do, something he can do right, like sweep the floor, take him along.”

Greg’s face reddened. “I’ll not let you talk to my people like that.”

“So fire me. I’m a volunteer.”  He slid back the chair and stood.  “But if you do, this will not get done.  If he has to stay here, tell him too do something constructive, keep his mouth shut and watch what I’m doing so he learns something and bring me coffee.  We’re going to have to make a manager out of him to keep him from writing shit code.  When they can’t program, you either fire them or promote them to manager.”

Greg stomped away.   He could do nothing.

December 31, 1969 6:00 AM

Randy smiled as he looked at the console. The last program in the allocation run had gone to a normal EOJ.  They made it, barely, the last program ran successfully for the first time two days ago.  He walked to the coffee machine, got two cups, picked them up and walked back to Greg’s desk and sat one in front of him.  “It’s done.”

Greg looked up, “Thanks.”

“No problem, but the next time, listen to me.  You know why I get pissed?  I put in 80 hours in the last week.  I got half a day home with my family on Christmas.  It wasn’t necessary.  It could have been avoided.”  He tuned and walked away.

My site Ralph Brandt

First, Previous and Next chapters Of Y2K

Y2k Chapter One Introduction

Y2k Chapter Five The Boss Learns of The Longevity of The Cobol Code

Y2k Chapter Seven The Company Retires a Resource