The boss’s kid burned it up playing Tetris and set us back to buying Sudoku books. With was like printing money for his sidewalk magazine stand. We could all use some dumb luck to brag about.
The executives of a small company where I worked “discovered” personal computers about four years after they had been on the market. They got the brilliant idea to “make big money” hosting conferences where they could “introduce people to the wonder of personal computers”… you could get a better introduction for free at any store that sold computers…
They bought several Apple IIe computers (the best available at the time) and rented a large hotel conference room… and only got three paying customers. They enlisted several of our staff to fill out the conference (with pre-planned questions that they were supposed to ask) to make the conference look successful. They lost too much money to hold another, and sold off the computers despite we could have used them for company work. Mismanagement like this caused the company to belly-up a couple years later.
I arrived as the Facility Manager at a hospital in Northern California in 1985; there was a personal computer in a large tower case that was being used as a doorstop (not making it up). I asked what it was for and how much did it cost. It was supposed to schedule preventive maintenance on building equipment (mechanical & electrical) and cost $56,000 (in round numbers). Neither the salesman from H (a national company that sold it) nor the hospital staff realized that it needed software in addition to the hardware! It was about 4 years old as I recall; we had a manual system of 8×10 card stock that was working so no one cared. I contacted the sales team at H and said I wanted to return it. After much wrangling they agreed to provide a “store credit” toward the purchase of more of their equipment; they had provided an Energy Management System (EMS) for the 300,000 square foot hospital that still was booted off a cassette tape in a boom box type device. Updates to the EMS hardware and software were installed but the new software never worked as advertised; a senior VP from the H home office in the midwest visited and asked what he could do because our chain of 238 hospitals had put their products on a “do not buy” status. I told him to send a technician who could make it work! About a year later we started a $55 Million expansion project that included a new EMS system that was written by a team of six people (it worked, some bugs but they were fixed quickly).
P51Strega 6 months ago
The employees always knew when he was lurking around by his heavy breathing. Al Buterol was a loud “inhaler”.
goboboyd 6 months ago
The boss’s kid burned it up playing Tetris and set us back to buying Sudoku books. With was like printing money for his sidewalk magazine stand. We could all use some dumb luck to brag about.
Flatlander, purveyor of fine covfefe 6 months ago
Company I worked for built an automated radio station in DFW, it was cabinets of cartridge carrousels in the lobby
ferddo 6 months ago
The executives of a small company where I worked “discovered” personal computers about four years after they had been on the market. They got the brilliant idea to “make big money” hosting conferences where they could “introduce people to the wonder of personal computers”… you could get a better introduction for free at any store that sold computers…
They bought several Apple IIe computers (the best available at the time) and rented a large hotel conference room… and only got three paying customers. They enlisted several of our staff to fill out the conference (with pre-planned questions that they were supposed to ask) to make the conference look successful. They lost too much money to hold another, and sold off the computers despite we could have used them for company work. Mismanagement like this caused the company to belly-up a couple years later.
Vaporman 6 months ago
Related to that Native American guy, Al Gonquin?
rwballca 6 months ago
I arrived as the Facility Manager at a hospital in Northern California in 1985; there was a personal computer in a large tower case that was being used as a doorstop (not making it up). I asked what it was for and how much did it cost. It was supposed to schedule preventive maintenance on building equipment (mechanical & electrical) and cost $56,000 (in round numbers). Neither the salesman from H (a national company that sold it) nor the hospital staff realized that it needed software in addition to the hardware! It was about 4 years old as I recall; we had a manual system of 8×10 card stock that was working so no one cared. I contacted the sales team at H and said I wanted to return it. After much wrangling they agreed to provide a “store credit” toward the purchase of more of their equipment; they had provided an Energy Management System (EMS) for the 300,000 square foot hospital that still was booted off a cassette tape in a boom box type device. Updates to the EMS hardware and software were installed but the new software never worked as advertised; a senior VP from the H home office in the midwest visited and asked what he could do because our chain of 238 hospitals had put their products on a “do not buy” status. I told him to send a technician who could make it work! About a year later we started a $55 Million expansion project that included a new EMS system that was written by a team of six people (it worked, some bugs but they were fixed quickly).
BlueIris Premium Member 6 months ago
Hmmm… When did this genius work for MMM? That’s not in his bio.