ColI'm so old I remember when the internet didn't have commercials.
Barry Rowlingson@kibcol1049 I'm so old I remember when the internet was in black and white and they played an mp3 of the national anthem before it shut down every night.
Trouble@geospacedman @kibcol1049 I'm so old, I remember when the Internet was black and green...
Will 
@trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Wasn't there a time when the internet was a line printer? Before my time, but I recall whispers from the founding folks.
@AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049 I think you mean teletypes (i.e /dev/tty), but yes. I am not that old. I have never used punch card or tape either.
@trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 I think you’re right.
Even though we both weren’t of that earlier time, we can appreciate the pioneer spirit that carried us to now.
MissConstrue@trouble @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049
I have both programmed with punchcards, and maintained supercomputers with tape. I may be an Elder. 🤷🏻♀️🤘🏼🥳. Why I remember when we telnet into each others bbs, and we liked it!
Jules 🍺@MissConstrue @trouble @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049
I missed punchcards by about a year, d we got to use the snazzy new 80 column green screen monitors 😃
I missed punchcards by about a year, d we got to use the snazzy new 80 column green screen monitors 😃
@julesbl @trouble @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049
oooooh fancy! (to be honest, the only reason I had a punchcard class is because I was 14 or 15 taking uni classes at a tech college. They were already being deprecated, this course was more history than future planning.)
@AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
One of the "funniest" is when I worked on supercomputers at 3InitialCorp, which was a very buttoned down, blue suit red tie kinda place, but I worked in the servers, so I dressed like a geek; concert tshirts, jeans, doc martins, visible tattoos, weird hair. I was young...early 20s...so about 40 years ago, pre dotcom.
I got a typed letter, hand signed by an executive, which I still have somewhere, which "reminded" me that the dress code for women was knee length skirts, panty hose, heels, well coifed hair, and manicured nails.
And I invited the executive & HR down to the pit with it's wire grate walkways, and pointed up and said "You're telling me to wear skirt and heels and walk around on that? You wanna run that past your lawyer first, or should I call mine?" They changed the dress code to casual for my dept.
And people want to know why there weren't a lot of women in tech in the beginning. Huh. Weird, that.
@MissConstrue @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Bravo for standing up for yourself at the absurdity of the situation and making it better for all.
I had a similar, if far less dramatic, story. At the turn of the 90s, I had worked for a large bank. I was LAN administrator, but a big part was mucking about with desktop computer innards and crawling around on the dusty carpet for patch cable swapping, as well as pulling cable in the drop ceiling. This bank had a policy where you had to always wear a suit (with jacket!) and tie regardless. (Side note: this outfit was rather triggering for my gender journey, but that's another story.)
I found a workaround. The bank had a long running campaign that, if you donated a small amount to United Way, you'd get a sticker you could put on your clothes and thus wear casual clothing. So each month, I'd stock up with nearly a full month of these stickers. Went to a good cause, and solved the issue!
@AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
That's the thing about arbitrary rules with no logical basis. Clever people will always find a way around them.
If we took all the hours that all of us have spent circumventing rules made by people who live in boxes inside their own head, we could have solved cold fusion by now. Or quantum computing. Or figured out why observing an event changes the event. That shouldn't happen, why is that happening? We would probably know, but a theoretical physicist was interrupted and told to go put on some stockings and now we'll never know.
I blame management. And also Cern. As one does.
Cedar Fen Farm
Cedar Fen Farm@MissConstrue @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
Excellent. 😂
@oldoldcojote @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
I think it's really important to state here that I recognize how much privilege played into this scenario. If I had not been a reasonably attractive white-looking woman with an educational background that signified a certain class level, I would have just been fired.
A Black woman in the late 80s, with my same academics, experience, CV, wouldn't have even gotten an interview, much less been able to push back against the C suite.
@MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Thank you for sharing this very important inequity situation. I wish it did not exist, or could be systemically resolved once and for all.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK@AncTreat5358 @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
Even British men (other than in some customer facing roles) abandoned suits and ties from the late 1990s onwards - in smaller businesses its nowadays rare to see anyone wearing a suit and tie and nearly everywhere is smart casual nowadays, and dress codes only exist for some roles where work would supply you with a uniform (such as health/social care) and as much for identification as anything.
I've not worn a suit and tie in over 20 years now, other than for a relatives wedding..
@vfrmedia @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Sounds like the environment I had been in was a product of its time, wanting to project a stately image to customer and colleague alike.
@AncTreat5358 @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
ties are stil often worn by sales staff in car dealerships here, although even then its not always the case, and when I bought my first car there I was amused to see the young salesman was wearing a hoodie over his shirt and tie presumably to look "in tune with the customer" (I only started driving in my 40s, as the car dealer generally doesn't know your age on the first sales enquiry they unsurprisingly thought I would be a far younger man 😁 )
@MissConstrue @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
Curious what part of the country this was. I got far worse treatment from north carolina and alabama bosses than minnesota and wisconsin. I got fired by a north carolinian boss about 5 years ago for dying my white hair dark blue. Then he tried to deny me unemployment for insubordination. The state unemployment referee laughed at him and made them pay. I also am white appearing and was 62 at the time. It was a professional engineering job. Some of them just can't deal with modern women.
@oldoldcojote @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 Texas. One the last bastions of full suit workplaces. Three initial corps kept suits for a lot of workers into the 90s, when they realized that GenX would hop jobs like kangaroos because we’d watched our parents get fucked by the end of pensions and whatnot, and knew corps had the loyalty of vipers, and so we never felt like we owned them any.
There’ve been multiple points in my career where I’ve said “yeah, I’ll go back to being a bartender before I put up with any of this.”
There’ve been multiple points in my career where I’ve said “yeah, I’ll go back to being a bartender before I put up with any of this.”
Jürgen Schiewe@trouble @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049 i recall a project just about 20 years ago when we were required to wear suits from Monday to Thursday and Friday was „Business casual“.
Tim Lavoie@j_sci @trouble @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @AncTreat5358 @geospacedman @kibcol1049
My old manager tried implementing business casual on _alternate_ Fridays. Naturally, my memory as to which Friday the current one was was quite faulty, 50% of the time. Eventually he gave up.
My old manager tried implementing business casual on _alternate_ Fridays. Naturally, my memory as to which Friday the current one was was quite faulty, 50% of the time. Eventually he gave up.
@tim_lavoie @j_sci @trouble @MissConstrue @oldoldcojote @geospacedman @kibcol1049 I’m sure your manager was just grateful you had any cognitive reserves for details beyond the critical business decision of “Is this a business casual Friday?”.
woe2you@MissConstrue @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 I didn't even know they made heels with steel toecaps.
@woe2you @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049 OMG! Do you realize how big the market for those would be? Drag queens alone could float the business. Now, the heels have to be reinforced steel too though, so when someone grabs you, and you stomp down on their instep, it really makes an impression, as it were.
Defensively armored, tactical assault heels....yes, yes I think it could work!
Larry@MissConstrue @woe2you @AncTreat5358 @trouble @geospacedman @kibcol1049
I'd think minimizing the area of the lower end of the high heel would be sufficient.
I'd think minimizing the area of the lower end of the high heel would be sufficient.
@MissConstrue I assume that minimum heels height was also mentioned.
@j_sci I don't remember a minimum, but 3" was the highest "allowable" height, lest we stray into "loose woman" territory. Ha.