A Job, not a Career - circa 1970

A Job, not a Career - circa 1970 

                   

Move to New Jersey -
            My wife and year-old daughter had moved to New Jersey two weeks before I separated from the Army on March 1, 1970.  We rented a three bedroom Cape in Madison. I was slated to start work at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co. (PMM&Co), the Co being, not Company, but Co-Partners.  I was just learning about the business world.  I was enthusiastic though a bit nervous because I ... well ... because my job title was consultant. 

             Consultant? 

             What did I know about anything? 

            Very little. 

  The Commute

            I caught the 7:16 train on my first day. Commuting fascinated me. Mostly men, all in suits, lined up waiting in clusters on the station platform at forty foot intervals. Aboard the train, jockeying for a seat, folding newspapers down to steno pad size, eyes straight ahead (no eye contact with those walking by lest someone think you're inviting them to take the open seat next to you), obsessing about being first off, then racing to be first to the next train (“the Tubes” which, so everyone fears, is pulling out any second), then racing again to the subway platform. Inside the subway car, lunging for seats, sitting, speechless, dazed looks.

                     
The Office, 345 Park Avenue - Cool

Eventually - miracle - I stepped up to the receptionist’s desk at nine on the dot, and asked for Frank Meyers, the personnel guy.  Standing with me, a pace or two back, was another newcomer, a rather stern fellow with neatly parted clipped hair. He was dressed in a finely pressed, navy pinstriped suit.  He wanted Meyers as well.  I immediately drew comparisons – the navy pinstripes versus mine, what we called Glen Plaid, suggested experience and accomplishment whereas mine I now judged a trifle on the flashy side for business – first day and all. Pin-striped opened his briefcase and jotted a note in a rather impressive large, and well worn leather covered appointment book. My appointment book was the size of a playing card. The cover was, not leather, but thin cardboard with the words “1970 - Pocket Pal” and rightfully, it was in my pants pocket.

 

By Comparison

I surmised that the pin-striped guy had been a consultant for some years – evidence the appointment book.  I stole a glance into his briefcase and saw stacks of papers, no doubt the organized details of important facts related to his up and coming consulting assignments, for which he was hired. I had a briefcase, but it was not full. The one paper inside was today’s newspaper. I glanced at his face and tried to warm my heart. He was probably a nice guy really, a father, with children, who plays catch with them in the yard, wears flannel shirts and old jeans, and lets his hair go dry on weekends (wet heads were out, among youth, in 1970).

            “How ya doing?” I said, trying to summon warmth.  

            “Good morning,” he replied.  

             Not very businesslike - me. Hereafter “Good morning” would be my greeting of choice.

  The Big Eight Conference

   PMM was what was called a Big Eight Accounting firm.  I knew it was not a football conference, but had no real idea who or what the Big Eight was. Still I put two and two together and surmised, correctly, that a Big Eight Accounting firm meant big deal.  As all large accounting firms, they had a consulting division or group as they called it.  I understood that the two vocations, accounting and consulting, went hand in hand, something like this: accountants looked over the books and when they found problems, they recommended consultants – very convenient that they had their own consultant group. 

Honestly, I felt apprehensive even calling myself a consultant.  This was at a time when consultant meant expert, unlike a few years later when every freelancer – even the unemployed – was a consultant.  My business experience was limited to summer jobs.  I had two years Army experience where I pretended to be a computer programmer but, I had never actually written a computer program. My Army job title, called MOS (Military Occupation Specialty), was Systems Analyst, and it required no technical knowledge to speak of. 

  Not an Expert

   Before the Army I was a graduate assistant football coach. I suspected that Frank Meyers knew I was no expert and, most likely, so did the stern – nice guy - fellow in pin-stripes.  I could have looked like a young computer whiz-kid, except in those days kids of that ilk dressed more casual, being so smart that they could flaunt the dress code. Since I was far from that, I didn’t dare dress the part.


 How's the House

  Just then Meyers showed up and greeted us both.  He knew my name at least. The pin-striper was Bill.  Meyers made a bit more of a fuss about Bill.  “Did you find a house yet?” he asked Bill and Bill replied with a smile, that his wife was looking in Connecticut.  Meyers smiled back, he didn’t ask about my house hunt (we're renting, thanks, two bedroom cape, $250 / mo.).  He didn’t know my wife either, nor if I was married, nor that my wife was very smart and extremely attractive, in my opinion. I was wishing that I could have brought her along for my first day – would have been nice and I bet he would have made a bigger fuss about me/her. Obviously, Meyers knew little, and cared less, about me - unlike Bill. 
    

Harold and Me  

  I was assigned to a cubicle with a guy named Harold. Harold went to Harvard, which I knew because Harold spent most of every day talking about squash or lunch, or both, and both were always at the Harvard Club. 

            I went to Lehigh. Good school, but no Lehigh Club in NY, that I knew of. 

            When Harold wasn't talking lunch or squash at The Club he was discussing a report that he was writing about the “cash and carry” business. I could see that this was Harold’s specialty – cash and carry. Wasn’t all business with products “cash and carry?” What was the alternative? Charge and carry - or ship maybe. See what I mean, when I say I didn’t know much about business? Well, it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to guess that “cash and carry” meant pay cash and physically carry it out. No backlog of charges. No shipping. Still the phrase paralyzed me the way receivables and payables disarmed me, to say nothing of those computer terms like link editor or core dump. OK, don’t ask. I couldn’t understand why a “cash and carry” business needed an expert consultant – but who was I to question what PMM was doing.

               
Two Phones at Once

As I saw it, Harold’s greatest talent by far, was talking on two phones at once. Honestly. He held  one in each ear, and sometimes, it seemed, about two different subjects. I suspected early on that the “cash and carry” business was somehow intertwined with the Harvard Club and the squash court, like business conducted on the golf course. Which was something I’d heard about. 

            Since I wasn't especially busy, I listened a lot to Harold’s phone conversations. One thing I picked up was that he never said “hello.”  When he answered a call, he said, “Harold Young,” and when he placed a call there was still no "hello." His first words when calling someone were invariably, “Is he there?”  I guess he never called a woman. Anyway, that was it. I never managed to fully embrace business phone decorum but I guess it didn’t matter much because I didn’t make or receive that many calls.

               

Hello
            I adopted a call answering style modeled after one of the secretaries who seemed to be bucking the trend by answering her phone with a simple, friendly “hello.”  Honestly it sounded so much more friendly – wasn’t that the aim? - that I was taken by it and thus followed her lead. I was mildly fearful that I would receive a reprimand for this but as I received so few (close to none) legitimate calls I escaped rebuke. 

               

             Of course “bucking the trend” was not how to succeed in business. 

 

            There were two factors related to my current view of the business world. First: I had just finished reading “Up the Organization” and was presently half through “The Peter Principle.” These were not on the firm’s suggested reading list.  Each contained numerous examples of office absurdities and I delighted in spotting the many real-life examples at PMM.

             The second factor was that I met a new friend, a young man from the Bronx that shared my perceptions and whom I wanted to impress with my camaraderie and sense of humor. 

                 
 Chargeable

I quickly learned that the aim of all PMM consultants was to be what was called chargeable. Chargeable meant that PMM was not paying your salary, but rather the client was.

            Despite my non-expert status I managed to be chargeable for most of my time at PMM. I functioned entirely as a worker bee. Other people, the real expert consultants, would meet with the executives of companies (clients) that wanted help and then these experts would call on me to do things. Nothing too complicated. The real consultants never told the company execs that I was not an expert. This worked best if the clients never saw me. 

Flowcharting

  My first project was drawing diagrams, flowcharts they called them, that illustrated in pictures (boxes, circles, triangles and arrows), the various office procedures related to manufacturing. For example, I had to go around and ask people – not the execs but the worker bees like myself - in the office or the plant exactly what they did when someone called in an order. They weren’t especially courteous. They would say something like, “I get out an order form and fill it out,” followed by an implied, Duh! Often I felt I was asking stupid question but I had to be sure I documented every step. So I would take out my Official IBM flowcharting template and tracing a small rectangle on the top of the page and inside it write, “Complete the Order Form.”

“What happens next?” I would ask.

          The response was, “It goes to shipping.” Another Duh! I'd draw a line with an arrow on the end, then another rectangle. Inside I'd write “Shipping.” The tone of the office workers often hinting at disdain made me feel  uncomfortable but I plugged along. I knew how to draw boxes and arrows, and how to inquire, “What happens next?” but honestly I didn’t know much else about manufacturing other than it meant, to make things, which I think I learned in the fifth grade. “Bill of Materials,” a term I kept hearing, especially baffled me.

            Eventually I gained some comfort and what I felt was respect. People called the work I was doing, systems analysis.

Working in Midtown

So I survived, taking comfort in the fact that I was only thirty, that I was learning things and every day I dressed up in a suit, boarded the Erie Lackawanna train in Madison and rode to Hoboken where I caught the Path, to 33^rd Street then the F Train to Queens, getting off at Park Avenue. That whole process impressed me immensely. My business address was 345 Park Avenue which I loved telling people, adding that it was in “midtown.” How cool was I?

Speaking of cool, I prided myself on being fashionable too. I got most of my clothes at Bloomingdales and if I went out after work in NYC for a beer or two, maybe to Brew’s on 34^th Street or to the upper east side, I thought I was way more cool. The sound of the words “upper east side” was even better than “midtown” and made me feel as if I had come a long way from childhood. 

Did I ever actually go out for cocktails after work? 

            Maybe twice – or once.