I’ve worked two times at ACOM. This describes first job (1978-1981).
After graduating from MIT, I returned to Montreal. I knew I did not want an academic career, but had no idea what to do next.
One day in the fall of 1978, I was walking around in downtown Montreal and met a former classmate from McGill University. We used to hang out in the computer centre. He and a partner had a small consulting company. He gave me a demo of the software they had running at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Asked if I was interested in some part-time work. I accepted. The part-time work turned in to full-time early in 1979.
ACOM’s SW was accounting (AP/GL) and payroll suite that ran on a Data General minicomputer. The operating system was called MICOS. The application was written in BASIC. The main customer of ACOM was Hilton International. ACOM software was used in the Queen Elizabeth, the Quebec Hilton, the Caribe Hilton (in Puerto Rico), and the World Trade Center. HI ran the restaurants in the WTC, including the “Windows on the World” on the 107th floor. ACOM SW was also used at HI’s head office in the Waldorf-Astoria.
Story: Initially, my salary was a US $ hourly rate converted to Canadian. At that time, the Canada dollar was actually worth more than the US dollar… And it was rising compared to US. Thus I “got a raise” every few months. I was pretty pushy about making sure I got those raises (What an a**hole I was then [and now]).
Story: The major project I worked on was SW for the WTC restaurants. SW was developed in Montreal and then I would fly to New York to install the new features, train the users, and resolve problems as it went live. The media used to transport the SW was a 40 megabyte disk pack. I would hand-carry the disk pack and when asked what it. was, I would joke it was a “cake carrier”.
Story: One trip, I installed a new feature for their Accounts Receivable software — dunning messages. The dunning message would be added at the bottom of the monthly statement mailed to customers of the Windows on the World restaurant and bar.
Unfortunately, the dunning message text was not customized by the client. Instead of politely reminding the customer that they had not paid their bill, the messages were what we had in out test software in Montreal… Threats that Guido and his baseball bat might be sent to collect the late payment. Whoops.
Luckily, the AR manager noticed the problem before the statements were mailed. It could have been pretty embarrassing especially since a lot of those late accounts were Wall Street big shots. They spent thousands of dollars a month entertaining customers at the WTC! Payments might be late, but the bills were always paid.
Story: Most nights, I would work late fixing problems (sometime until 2AM) and then take subway back to 50th Avenue. Looking back, it was a pretty dangerous thing to do. But I was young, tall, and self-confident. I never had problems in the subway or on the streets of New York. I had a few favourite spots where I would pick up a late-night snack — a bagel shop and a nuts and fruits shop.
Story: I did not get a lot of time to play the tourist in New York. But I decided I would see a Broadway show every trip. I was blown away seeing live theatre. The experience was so much better than seeing a movie. What did I see? Don’t remember, except I did see “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”. I got the T-Shirt and wore it for many years.
At WTC, the computer was on 106th floor. Quite a view looking out over the city. When 9-11 happened, I wondered if any of the people I knew then died when the building came down.
I also had several trips to the Caribe Hilton in Puerto Rico. The hotel was on the beach and I would have a room in the hotel. Could swim in ocean and I would drink in the ocean-facing open-air bar after work.
Story: One day, the payroll calculation crashed at around 2AM. I had had too much to drink and was sleeping it off. The IT manager for the hotel woke me up and dragged me downstairs to the computer room to fix the crash. I could barely read the screen — had to cover one eye to see straight — and I had the IT manager do the typing.
They actually had to run a payroll every week. (Twice a month was common in other hotels in the US/Canada). Moreover, if the staff wasn’t paid on time, they had a history of immediately going on strike. It was pretty important that the payroll crash was fixed.
Story: On payday, the hotel would set up a cheque-cashing desk in the employee area of the hotel. An armoured car delivered cash and armed security guards controlled access to the area. Apparently, a large percentage of the staff did not have bank accounts and/or they just wanted to get the cash in-hand immediately.
Story: One unique feature of the Puerto Rico payroll was the the employee’s birthday was a statutory holiday. Double-time pay if they worked on their birthday. We had to produce special reports for the managers so they could schedule staff to not come in on those days.
Story: Another unique feature of the Puerto Rico payroll was that we had to handle negative-value cheques. Staff could go to the restaurants and just sign for the bill with their employee ID. The money would be debited on their next pay cheque. It was pretty common that a new employee would invite their whole family to celebrate the new job or a special occasion. It might be several weeks to pay-down the debit.
There were rumours that some of the managers would have afternoon quickies in unoccupied rooms. There were two IT staff at the hotel. Main culprit mentioned was the front-desk manager, but I always wondered if the IT manager was also in on the action — he was actually named Casanova!
When I started with ACOM, all work was done on-site at the QE. Later, ACOM shared office space with the HW sales/support company. That office was in an industrial park in Ville St Laurent. I did not have a car, and there was no public transit. John would pick me up from home in a taxi. (He did not have a car either).
Later, ACOM had office space in QE in a converted store room off of Central Station.
Working in downtown Montreal meant that we could lunch at local restaurants. Most had a lunch meal offering at $3.25. There was no tax on restaurant food at that price.
Towards end, ACOM re-implemented their hospitality software targeting the IBM S/36 minicomputer. I was not on that project — lots of new hires. The implementation language was RPG. An archaic “Report Generator” language, introduced in 1959!
My career future in ACOM was limited, plus I was getting bored. I felt I had learned everything I could and was looking for new challenges. I considered the possibility of starting my own consulting company and stealing ACOM’s customers to start. But I did not think I could run a company — the sales/marketing activity was definitely not something I wanted to do. Found a job programming microcomputers (at Linotype).
Looking back, that was the first instance of my “typical job” pattern — 1 year learning, 1-year expert, 1-year looking for something new to learn/do.