Autobiographical Sketches

Suggestions at IBM – 1957

 

The first task I was given when I joined IBM in 1957 was a drawer-full of employee suggestions waiting to be investigated. It turned out to be a great orientation for me as they provided entrée to a variety of managers and directors at the Headquarters of the Electric Typewriter Division, such as Sales Engineering, Advertising, Communications and Product Marketing.

 

Later in my career I had the management responsibility for the second largest Suggestion Department in IBM, located in Lexington, Kentucky, which processed thousands of suggestions yearly and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for adopted ideas. I learned about the difficulties of remote management through my monthly visits to Lexington from New Jersey. There were about 60 employees organized under several first-line managers and one second-line manager, all requiring a great deal of “people management” so heavily emphasized by IBM in those days. Employees there were not like those in the New York City area. Many were part-time tobacco “non-farmers” – that is, paid by the federal government to NOT grow tobacco. This was not out of health concerns; it was the government’s way of propping up prices for the real tobacco farmers by controlling the supply.

 

Employee suggestion programs have a long history in the U.S. The oldest documented system is Eastman Kodak’s, which was started in 1898. IBM’s plan was announced in 1928 by the company’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. The suggestion program at United Airlines was so successful it was discontinued. An airline employee suggested cutting power to most engines of plans when taxiing, thus saving fuel costs. The plan’s wording wasn’t precise about maximum award so the company faced court challenges and the prospect of paying a very large award. Ultimately, they canceled the program.

 

Some IBM employees were very prolific submitters of suggestions, often with ideas that were suitable, but not really worthwhile. For example: suggesting ‘items’ be arranged horizontally instead of vertically (or vice versa), or proposing changes that would usually be handled by routine maintenance. Managers investigating such ideas would frequently say the suggestion would be adopted, recommend the minimum award ($25) and then not bother to make the change. They thought it was an effective way to stop reinvestigation requests and avoid nit-picking challenges. Other employees used suggestion forms for anonymous gripes, such as, “My manager [specifying name and department] is incompetent and should be fired.”

 

In the last decade of the 20th century, the ‘new’ IBM solved all problems in connection with this program by quietly dropping the Suggestion Plan – I understand it was replaced by an “online employee collaboration tool” called ThinkPlace.

 

September 2009

 

 

Crossing the Great Divide – 1958

 

One of the first jobs I had in the late 1950s, at IBM’s corporate employee benefit department, was to telephone other major companies to survey their personnel practices. The “top ten” list, later expanded to fifteen, included AT&T, General Electric, General Motors, and U.S. Steel. Also on the list were now moribund or defunct companies such as Union Carbide, RCA, Westinghouse and Eastman Kodak. In those days, IBM was only a “wannabe” in the field of corporate entities.

 

On one call, after giving my name, and pronouncing it (Bee-an-CHERRY), I was asked to spell it. The voice at the other end said, “That’s pronounced Bee-an-KERRY, isn’t it?” I acknowledged the Italian pronunciation of the family name, even though my parents did not use it. He then asked in a cool, patrician tone, “What are you trying to do, slip across?”

 

I don’t recall my stumbling reply, but I clearly remember the name of the interrogator: JOHN PAUL JONES. My answer should have been along the lines of FDR addressing the DAR members as “Fellow immigrants.”

 

January 29, 2004

 

 

Women at IBM – late 1950s

 

When I started working at IBM in 1957, most of the female employees were in secretarial positions. Up to the time of World War II, women were required to resign if they married, a common practice in many businesses in the United States. IBM suspended that rule during WWII and the Korean War, and later quietly dropped it.

 

I observed in my early years at work that many of the women tried to “fit into” the mostly male environment, and some made odd accommodations. For example, some adopted nicknames: Rosemarie became Ro; Nicole became Nicky; Veronica was Ron; Josephine was Jo; Elizabeth used Bette and Betty Jane was called BJ. They likely thought that the more feminine sounding name didn’t fit in with the perceived “macho” male structure surrounding them, so they used shorter, more forceful versions of their names.

 

Others went further by getting short haircuts and suppressing stylish feminine clothing. And a few showed they could match the rough, salty language that many men used. My Army experience taught me that people who resorted to cursing and profanity merely showed that they had a #%bleeping limited vocabulary.

 

By the time I retired in 1988, there was a lot more equality in the work place than I saw in the 1950s and 1960s. Some of it, I like to think, was due to enlightened self-interest. But there was also the powerful, overriding effect of federal, state and local civil rights legislation, beginning in 1964.

 

October 3, 2005

 

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You Name It

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In the late 1950s, the Sales Engineers at IBM's Electric Typewriter Division HQ in NYC were proud to show me a new technical innovation -- two electric typewriters were connected in tandem, and what was typed on one, was duplicated on the other. They called it a "MASTER-SLAVE" unit, a name perhaps given by engineers at our Lexington, Kentucky plant. I expressed my concern with the designation of "master slave" [I didn't use the following words, but thought it was antithetical to American ideals of egalitarianism]. 

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I was a brand-new hire and not yet working in the Personnel department, so I didn't expect or get much of a reaction. Yet, shortly after, the name was changed to "Input-Output" unit. I suspect someone higher up in the organization also saw how inappropriate it was. But engineering jargon still abounds -- Google currently lists a "Clutch Master and Slave Cylinder Assembly".

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October 2018 

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The Tiffany Revere Bowl That Never Was – 1959

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One of my assignments in the Corporate Personnel Department at IBM’s World Headquarters around 1959 was to determine whether the gift for retiring employees should be changed. It was a sterling silver, initialed calling card tray from Cartier, the prestigious jewelry store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The tray was about six inches in diameter and cost approximately $20. As presented to the retiree, it was accompanied by an engraved card that read:

 

            Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

 

Mr. Watson, Jr. was the son of the company’s founder and Chairman of the Board. 

 

In those early days at IBM, most retirees came from the Endicott plant (there were no “factories” in IBM), the company’s original manufacturing site located in upstate New York. I learned from the Personnel Manager there that the retirees very likely did not have calling cards and thus didn’t have any use for the gift.

 

My job was to evaluate possible replacement gifts and to make a recommendation. The only restriction was that the new item could not cost more than the calling card tray. Based on the value of the trays then purchased annually by IBM, the Cartier sales representative was not very interested in this business and had little to offer me in the way of service. Major sales at Cartier’s were usually through private appointments made by the monied families of New York City and the world.

 

Right up the street from our office at the corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street was located Tiffany and Company, not yet popularized by the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but still a fashionable store and known for their exquisitely designed window displays. Compared with Cartier, however, which dates back to 1847, they were newcomers in the field of fine jewelry. Actually, Tiffany had started as a dry goods and stationery store on lower Broadway ten years earlier, in 1837. Cartier opened their New York store in 1909 and Tiffany built its headquarters on Fifth Avenue in 1940.

 

The people in Tiffany’s corporate promotions department were very helpful, showing me several possible gifts. They assured me that the famous blue Tiffany box would bring recognition, and I thought this would extend even to Painted Post, New York, the town where Mr. Watson came from. I considered two items – a sterling silver bowl in the Paul Revere style and a pair of crystal hurricane lamps. My final choice was a Revere bowl, a classic American design that could be used as a serving piece. The bowl came in many sizes, but I selected one about five inches in diameter, equal to the cost of the calling card tray.

 

My recommendation for the engraved Revere bowl from Tiffany went through channels to upper management, and I was pleased when they agreed to adopt it. However, the supplier was not changed to Tiffany, but remained the “classier” Cartier.

 

About fifteen years later, the gift had substantially increased in cost, due to the wildly rising silver prices, and the selection was again changed. A story, perhaps apocryphal, was that at a retirement luncheon, when the small Revere bowl was presented, the retiree said, “What a thoughtful gift. All these years IBM has been paying me peanuts, and now I have something to put them in.”

 

The new gift, was and still is, a shiny pewter serving tray. At eleven inches in diameter, it’s much larger than the Revere bowl, and thus more impressive. It comes from – you guessed it – Cartier. I call it the fancy pizza tray.

 

Footnote: In November 2015, a 6.75" Revere Bowl from Tiffany's sells for $1,500.

 

1996

 

 

The Expensive Unicorn – 1960s

 

Marcal’s was a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, near van Cleef and Arpels and Tiffany’s, but not as fancy. I worked nearby and stopped in one day looking for a unicorn pin as a gift for my wife, Ann, who collected unicorns in every fashion.

 

I asked the salesman if they had any unicorn pins and he bought out a nice one studded with stones of some sort. I asked, “How much is it?”

 

He replied, “Three hundred dollars.”

 

I smiled and said, “Oh. That’s kind of high.”

 

He arched his eyebrows and said, “Well it’s a fine specimen.”

 

I thought, specimen? For that kind of money I should get the real animal.

 

I found a very nice unicorn pin from DePinna’s, further down on Fifth Avenue, for about $19.99.

 

January 2, 2000

 

 

Falling Out of the Shelter – 1961

 

A recent New York Times article (October 2, 2011) on President Kennedy’s nuclear bomb shelter in Palm Beach, Florida, built 50 years ago, reminds me of my experiences at IBM around that time.

 

In the interests of national defense, IBM offered an interest-free, fallout shelter loan program for employees. The loan maximum was $1,000 and it was to be used to construct and/or purchase supplies for a bomb shelter put in the family home. I was the administrator of this program for the Electric Typewriter Division in 1961-1962.

 

Fallout from the program intersected with another division responsibility I had – to monitor the sales of employee homes under the Home Guarantee Program, where IBM, through local banks, took over the sale of homes of transferred employees at a guaranteed appraised value. Homes on the market for more than six months received special attention.

 

One home in Florida was particularly difficult to sell. It was unsold for about one year and one of the drawbacks was the bomb shelter in the backyard. Brokers complained that it was an eyesore, possibly home to rodents and/or mischievous neighborhood juveniles. My decision, in an effort to make the property more saleable, was to bury the shelter, despite IBM having fostered its construction in the first place. A local contractor was hired to fill the shelter with dirt, bulldoze the entrance and plant grass. The property was eventually sold, at a modest loss.

 

Gradually, the shelter loan program faded away, even though the cold war would take another three decades to wind down. In some future eon, an archeological dig may unearth that ancient structure, possibly still filed with plastic jugs of water. The experts will speculate about its origins, but they’ll never get to the full story of a compounded employer-employee relationship.

 

October 2011

 

 

Computer Systems – 1960s

 

My first management job at IBM, in the mid-1960s, included responsibility for a new computer system for our Division Personnel Department – what Human Resources was called in those days. Working with me on this project was Art Doherty, a fellow retiree still living in New Jersey, who ably handled the technical details and staffing. As usual, an acronym was used to describe the program: PDS – Personnel Data System. It operated mostly parallel to, and at times in competition with, the payroll system, which some thought was more important, since it involved paychecks, deductions, and withholding taxes. Decades later, PDS was replaced by CERIS – Corporate Employee Resources Information System. I believe the debate still rages as to whether the payroll or human resource system should be primary in recording an employee’s entry into the company.

 

Recently, some forty years later, I attended a meeting at our church where they announced a new personal computer-based program: PDS – this time it meant Parish Data System. It tracks parishioners in all modes – hatch, match, and dispatch.

 

Everything that goes in circles comes around again, if you live long enough.

 

November 16, 2005

 

 

IBM’s Apple Orchard – 1960s

 

In the mid-1960s, before IBM moved from New York City to Armonk, New York, in Westchester County, the acreage IBM owned there was actually a working farm – an apple orchard.

 

The guys in the accounting department, then located at 590 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, were proud of their analysis of IBM’s profit margin on the apple production. They told me the percentage of “Return on Investment” for the apples was much better than for any other IBM product. Dollar volume, of course, was another matter.

 

When the company relocated to Armonk in the mid-1960s, the street address became the distinctive “Old Orchard Road.” Unfortunately, the apples trees were treated so they no longer produced fruit. Later, circa 1997, when a new headquarters was constructed on the site, the address was refashioned as “New Orchard Road.”

 

November 5, 2010

 

 

IBM Cafeteria Catering – 1960s

 

In the mid-1960s, IBM moved its World Headquarters from 590 Madison Avenue, at 57th Street in New York City, to the bucolic apple orchards of Armonk, New York. The responsibility for operating the building in Manhattan was transferred to the headquarters of the Office Products Division, and as personnel manager at headquarters, the cafeteria manager reported to me. The food service facility was located on the third floor and served about 1,000 meals daily.

 

Our division management was not too happy with this arrangement, seeing it as a liability. Corporate executives and the IBM board of directors still used offices there as home base in Manhattan. If something went wrong with that operation, its visibility made it a “no-win” exposure. For example, shortly after we moved into the building, the IBM president called our division president complaining about cooking odors that wafted onto the elevator when the doors opened on the third floor. The quote we heard was that “it smelled like a boarding house – fix it!” Shortly afterward, glass partitions and enhanced exhaust fans were installed in the lobby. But when fish was frying, the odors still rolled through to the elevators.

 

When I was temporarily managing the cafeteria – after the cafeteria manager moved to a positon in marketing – I received a call from the office of the Chairman of the Board, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. He was planning to sail his yacht “Palawan” from the Hudson River and wanted the cooks to prepare several pounds of hamburger patties. This had been done in the past and the head chef and one of his assistants started on the task. The Chairman’s office said they would pay for the cost of the chopped sirloin. I decided it would be appropriate for them to also pay for the labor cost. I calculated the time spent in preparing the patties, wrapping each in aluminum foil and placing them in Styrofoam containers, which were sent to our mail room for delivery to a pier on Manhattan’s west side.

 

Several days later the manager of the corporate accounting department called me to ask why I was including a labor charge. I explained that I thought the Chairman would not want such personal expenses to be borne by the IBM Company. Then, he wanted to know how I calculated the labor cost. I told him I used the total hours reported by each cook multiplied by an hourly rate, based on the mid-point of the salary range for a cook’s job. That seemed to be enough precise detail to satisfy even a CPA. The cost offset wasn’t much, but I needed all the help I could get for the cafeteria’s bottom line, which was always in the red. I think it was a bargain, since I did not charge for pro-rated benefit costs.

 

October 2003

 

 

If the Suit Fits – 1960s

 

When in Japan in 1955, I had two suits custom-made – a gray flannel and a blue serge. Oddly, these tailors in Tokyo were Chinese.

 

About five years later, I bought a new suit at R.H. Macy’s in Manhattan, and alterations were included. As the Italian-born tailor was measuring me and checking the trousers, he asked, “Do you dress right?” I was only familiar with the Army drill command: “Dress right, DRESS,” to align soldiers in formation, so I didn’t understand his question. Using vague, non-direct language, the tailor explained what he was asking – he would alter the crotch area of the trousers based on the form-fitting men’s clothing styles then popular in the early 1960s.

 

After all the ministrations and modifications by the tailor – sleeve length, shoulder leveling, cuffs, waist AND crotch adjustment – even Richard III would look Regal.

 

January 25, 2014

 

 

Blackout 1965

 

It was a dark and non-stormy night.

 

Around 5:25 PM on November 9, 1965, I was about ready to leave my office at IBM at 590 Madison Avenue, near East 57th Street, NYC, when the power went out. It was soon apparent that it was widespread, as all nearby buildings were without lights and the street traffic lights were not working. I later learned that a grid problem in Canada caused a blackout in much of the northeastern United States.

 

The cafeteria in our building was still serving evening meals in those days, so I headed there. Since the cafeteria manager, who reported to me, had left earlier, I decided to make his office my center of operations. Word eventually came down that we should continue to serve meals and beverages at no charge. A single light bulb was mounted in a central area, near the staircase, hooked up to a generator set up by our building service employees.

 

From the third-floor cafeteria windows, I could see the bus, car, and pedestrian traffic surging up Madison Avenue, with volunteer “traffic cops” doing a good job at the major intersection at 57th Street. Luckily for the walkers, the weather was relatively mild that night.

 

Telephones were still working, since Bell generated the low voltage electricity used for transmissions over wires. By calling home, I found that that Long Island was also without power, so I told my wife, Ann, that it might be quite a while before I got home. When the food in the cafeteria ran out, most people just sat at the tables looking out into the dark streets below.

 

Around midnight, the third shift (midnight to 8 AM) building service employees were arriving by automobile. Management decided to have those employees use their cars to ferry employees to their homes in the various boroughs and suburbs. At 2 AM, I awaited my car ride, which was just returning from a run to the nearby NYC boroughs. It was to go to several towns on Long Island, with mine, Merrick, toward the end of the run. I arrived home at around 3:30 AM, and power returned much later that morning.

 

My sister, Marie, and some of her family members were also caught in the blackout. Her husband, Rudy, and their son, Jack, then a high school student, were on a LIRR commuter train somewhere underground, approaching the East River. They had to exit the train, walk along the tracks, climb up an emergency staircase and make their way back to Penn Station. There, using phone contacts with my mother on Long Island, they were able to meet up with Marie at Penn Station. She was with a lady she met there who was very nervous about the situation and wanted to stay close to Marie. All four then took a cab to the doctor’s office where Marie worked on Park Avenue and 59th Street. As the hours ticked away, they decided to settle in for the night. Each found the most comfortable seat available, and one even used the doctor’s examining table. With the return of the power in the morning, each was able to resume their journeys home, except Marie. The doctor said some patients were due to arrive, so he asked her to remain.

 

It seems the spike in the birth rate nine months later was never firmly proven as having been caused by the blackout in November. Whether anomaly or urban legend, it makes a good story.

 

And police records for that night didn’t show a significant increase in criminal activity; not like the blackout of 1977, where there was widespread looting and arson in New York City.  

 

February 2012

 

 

The Parable and the Cook – 1968

 

Early in my career as a Personnel Manager for IBM, I was temporarily in charge of the employee cafeteria at our headquarters building on Madison Avenue in New York City. At around 4:00 PM one day, there was a major tie-up in the subway. A public address announcement was made to employees that due to the problem, they were permitted to leave early. Since the cafeteria workers had early shifts, they had left hours before.

 

The next morning, the head chef, Felipe, came to see me. He said that since other employees in the building were allowed to leave one hour early the day before, he thought the cafeteria workers should now receive similar time off.

 

Knowing that he was a pastor of a church in his neighborhood in Queens, I gave him a negative reply with some Biblical backing.

 

“Felipe,” I said, “you know the parable of the workers in the vineyard, where some workers received a full day’s pay, even though they only worked a few hours?”

 

He was somewhat surprised at my answer, but smiled and said, “Yes, but it was different then.”

 

Expecting a theological rebuttal, I asked what the difference was.

 

His answer capped all my studies in labor-management relations.

 

“IBM wasn’t around in those days.”

 

November 1, 1990

 

 

The Cafeteria Manager at IBM – 1969

 

In the late 1960s, I hired Leo K. as manager of the IBM cafeteria at our headquarters building in Manhattan. He was a very interesting man – he had survived the Holocaust in Europe, then joined the Israeli army right after that country was established in 1948. His most recent job had been as a cafeteria manager at Pan Am at JFK airport in Queens. 

 

This was my first management job as IBM, and I knew very little about food service. So I let him handle the technical aspects of food preparation and I focused on helping him learn the people-sensitive style of management needed in that non-unionized, somewhat paternalistic company.

 

The IBM Speak Up! program allowed employees to send comments, complaints or compliments to management, either anonymously or signed. All these communications were investigated and reports were prepared for higher management review. One of the first comments we received about the cafeteria stated: “I rarely eat in the IBM cafeteria. The other day I tried it and found the food terrible, the portions small and the lines too long.”

 

My management philosophy on such comments could be summed by two Latin proverbs: “De gustibus non est disputandum” – “In matters of taste, there can be no debate.” The second proverb: “Nulle bastardum carborundum” – roughly translates as, “Don’t let the turkeys wear you down.”

 

I asked Leo to prepare a suggested response and his draft began: "Thank you for writing about your experience at the IBM cafeteria. I am sorry you were not satisfied."

 

So far, so good, I thought. But his proposed reply continued: "On your next annual visit to the cafeteria, please see the cafeteria manager and he will make sure you get everything you’re entitled to."

 

I chickened out on sending this pungent reply back to upper management. Instead, I watered it down to a mealy-mouthed bit of pabulum that would be more digestible to the executive palates.

 

Years later, after moving to the grassy plains of New Jersey, with a brand-new cafeteria and a new cafeteria manager, the writer of that complaint identified himself to me – he then reported to me as manager of Equal Opportunity – and he still left the building for lunch.

 

June 2004

 

 

Room Service – 1969

 

In the early 1960s, IBM co-signed, with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a document entitled, “Plan for Progress,” which committed the company to ensuring equal opportunity in all its operations. My division at the time, Electric Typewriter, employed a relatively small number of minorities – enough so that my boss, the division manager of personnel (what human resources was called then) kept the entire list on a small deck of hand-written index cards. He came from the South and ran into problems when he referred to African Americans as “NIG-rahs,” the way some Southerners said “Negroes.” After being told his pronunciation could be misunderstood, he changed it to a deliberately accentuated “KNEEE-grows