This post has sex and booze in it, read it later in the post.

Since I graduated with both Accounting and Marketing degree’s, I tried to find a job in one of those fields. I finished college before they had the internet, so you couldn’t look up jobs on LinkedIn or on online. We did actual networking back then.

I had friends who got me interviews where they worked, and I accepted a job in the finance trainee program at Burdines Department Stores. Here is the building I worked at in downtown Miami. Count 4 floors up and that would be me.

The program was 4 six month shifts in different departments (where they needed a slave to hump some work it seemed).

I have no idea why or what I was doing in finance. I really majored in Animal House activities and going to the Beach instead of class. I knew debit was on the left, but even I wouldn’t have trusted me at the time with balancing a checkbook.

Anyway…..

My 2nd rotation in the Statistical department was working on the Departmental Operating Statement (DOS). It was a financial statement that reported on the profit and loss of every department in every store, so 256 departments x 26 stores x 18 expense categories. It was as dreary as that sentence sounds

While not a published financial statement, it was how the department managers in each store got rated. That is far too much responsibility for someone who drank and got high often enough to fail any drug test, at work.

The DOS was a manual masturbation exercise that had to balance to the expenses for the year and show the profitability (or loss) of each department and store. This will be key in the story that follows.

While working on this, we were automating it to an IBM System 34 (now the System P), again pre-PC days. It even had 8 inch floppy diskettes for storage.

Burdines was owned by Federated Department Stores, who also owned Bloomingdales, Filene’s, Foley’s, A & S, and a number of other stores. This part is important. Never once was the DOS turned in on time by Burdines to Federated. The other divisions were on time and it was a sore spot for the finance guys.

Statistical made sure the DOS balanced to the penny manually. It also meant it would never be on time. During this period, I found that I had an affinity for computers. I was one of the few that understood how they worked and mainly focused on that. When you can run something others are afraid of, and it is vital to getting the job done, it’s like playing cards with a stacked deck. I got that concept right away. The computer would crank out a report in about 30 minutes in those days which would have taken weeks to do manually.

We worked days and nights to get it finished. While the computer was calculating, we were writing programs (in RPG II). We also fucked off and messed with the other employees desk’s who were a pain (Art Goldstein, still in Expense Control). We were putting cigarette ashes under his desk pad, all kinds of shit in his desk and unrolling his calculator (no PC’s) and printing a lot of gibberish on it, then rolling the tape back up for him to find days later. He’d have to redo the tabulation as you had to attach a tape to your work. It cost him hours at work. No one said a thing the next day when he lost it. We just shrugged. Everyone knew it was us that worked late. We also ordered in pizza and beers and left drunk many nights. There was worse stuff we did with the pizza’s, but that’s another story.

I thought accountants were stiffs, but these guys could put a way scotch until they were pickled. It was like working with John Hamm, only at night.

Since these were the Madmen days when you could drink at work, we got beers and take out food from the Cuban restaurants since it was in downtown Miami. You could also fuck around at work without the #metoo bullshit that has ruined a lot of good office sex.

Needless to say, we got it finished, but not on time to Federated during my trainee rotation. I wasn’t a full employee yet, so I didn’t care. I had fun messing around and seeing how things worked. They balanced it as it was done at the same time manually, so it had to tie out. That little detail cost weeks of work to be that exact. I learned everything I could about the computer and started to see it as my ticket to life.

NOW, MY FIRST JOB

I was moved on to the Credit department for my 3rd rotation, where I thought I was going to die from boredom until they got my ass out of there early. I was questioning my career decision at this point. The most I learned there was about mopering (you’re going to have to ask a NY cop what this is).

Since I’d made the System 34 sing and dance, they promoted me back to Statistical (I called it sta-testicle) in charge of the DOS this time and told me I had to have it in on time (or pretty much be fired). I didn’t have an option to decline it having already done one round of this financial statement. Hell, it was a promotion and doing something I saw as a career was way better than wanting to shoot myself while I did pretty much jack shit in Credit.

This is where the fun begins.

I was now responsible for people and the ratings of thousands of people. All the other employees who worked on it from before had only done the manual version. I was the only one who could work the System 34. While it was a mystery to them on the computer, the sharp eyed finance people could make any financial statement balance with paper, pencil and calculator. These (mostly) girls would sit at their desk and crank out calculations all day, and only leave to go to break (this will be important later).

One of them, my 2nd in command, Carmen Gomez had huge boobs. I’d love to sit with her while we she figured out numbers as she’d plant those babies on my arms at the desk for minutes at a time. I couldn’t have cared less about balancing the numbers. That was her problem. This is the only time I’d sit still for more than 10 minutes. There is no way she didn’t know she was doing this and I was a walking hormone at 22. I didn’t move until she finished as they were the biggest tits I’d been near my whole life.

During my first stint on the DOS, I heard someone say as a joke that you could spread any expense overages like peanut butter over all the departments and no one would notice. It was like when I heard that you could kill a hangover with the hair of the dog. I tucked that nugget away and it would serve me well later.

Here’s where I skip the boring parts where I worked 6 days a week from 8 in the morning to sometimes 11 at night. The only part that matters is that I was alone at night this time.

What is important is that I’m in charge of the computer as I’m the only one who can make it work. I’m alone at night when the computer is crunching and I can see the reports first. They had stopped the manual version so there was no number detail that I had to balance to, just the final expense per category.

Besides drinking, here’s the other Madmen stuff. I now have finance trainee’s working for me doing what I did. In this case they were also girls. There was no hanky panky during the work day, but stay tuned, there will be.

My desk wasn’t in the computer room, so I’d have to run back and forth between the two (me not sitting still, except at Carmen’s desk). I’d pass by the controller’s office. I found out later he was worried about what I was doing because I was never at my desk hammering the calculator like the rest of the robots. His name was Bob Dillon and was about 5’6″, so we nicknamed him shorty. Even Carmen, who was a stiff would come to laugh at that one. His pants were never wrinkled, so we wondered if he took them off to sit down.

When the day workers went home, I put my magic to work. I understood real clear the part about getting it done on time. I also understood the peanut butter reference. I couldn’t balance this thing with scales from NASA, so I gave in quickly to spreading any leftover money to everyone. They each took a few dollars hit and wouldn’t know anyway so what did I care? Since we were fully automated now, they didn’t have a manual version to compare it with, so I was the only one who understood this little secret. They just knew that I was on time and delivered reports every morning.

SOME MORE MADMEN STUFF

As I mentioned, it was my turn to have trainee’s working on the statement. Burdines hired college students by the busload, mostly girls on the marketing side to buy and promote mostly high end merchandise. I got used to the assistant buyers lasting about 6 months and being recycled for new grads. It was like feeding time at the crocodile pit at the zoo when they brought the trainees in. I went out with a million of them, all with bad intentions. This was the Miami Vice time of life so being single in Miami was a time you could live like the Playboy Mansion, and we did. We’d have new stories every week and the girls were in on it too at this time. No one reported anyone to HR for hanky panky with the co-workers or playing grab ass in the hallways. The girls thought it was great and grabbed back. I got picked up one time by the fragrance girl who would spray you with cologne as you went down the escalator. This was before the Karen’s who ruin everything were born.

My trainee on the DOS though was Terri. A 6 foot girl with an attitude that said I could drink with any of you and still get to work. I was busy with the assistant buyers while she worked for me, so I kept it professional during the intense DOS time.

Remember, I had to have it on time and I knew it’s integrity wasn’t going to get in my way.

I missed a lot of life over those months, and a lot of beach time on Saturday. No one could question my commitment to getting it done, although my work ethics might have been somewhat iffy.

After busting ass over many months with many working parts, I sat alone those many nights running programs and printing thousands of pages of reports. They balanced every time because because I forced it. I was about getting it finished on time and not letting shorty know what was going on.

SHENANIGANS

Needless to say, I got it done. It was the first time Burdines was ever on time with the DOS to Federated headquarters. I knew that it was close enough to being mostly representative of what went on (and exact in some places like payroll because Carmen did that one) so I met my personal challenges and my goals at my review. I was a star in the minds of the big shots. Even shorty was happy, although he never knew the shortcuts I took.

On the day we finished, we decided to celebrate by going out to Joe’s Stone Crabs for dinner. The whole crew went (not Carmen, fortunately). The professional drinkers were on display and I was recently out of college in an Animal House fraternity, so I was more than 10 Heineken’s down by the end of dinner.

I told Terri that I was ready to go after a while and I think she wanted me to drive her home. My original intentions weren’t lascivious, but as we drove by Miami International Airport on 836, I decided to throw a trial balloon. I said how about a version of the submarine races? This involved watching planes taking off, with me taking off as much of her clothes as fast as I could.

As I said, she was a good sport. She acted like one of the guys, and no one hit on her during the DOS, so I figured she was ready for action (and many beers down herself). As for looks, I was the best she could hope for and I’d been pulling ass from assistant buyers well out of her league (and she knew it). I was on a recent breakup and ready for a rebound that was meaningless, but hopefully meaningful memory wise.

I also knew she was done in statistical and was moving to her next assignment, so what the hell. She didn’t work for me anymore.

I found what I thought was a private place and parked. I made my move quickly as I figured we were drunk and if I got any push back, I’d just go home. I wasn’t going to try that hard. Well, she was in on the plan and probably hadn’t gotten any since college so her shirt was unbuttoned in no time. I’d had a steady college girlfriend who had the same bra that unsnapped in the front. I had it undone faster than Fonzie from Happy Days, to which her surprised response was wow, you did that well. I said I’d done it before, so she knew she was going to have a ride that night. Let the rodeo begin.

One thing led to another and an hour later we were still going at it. She had a big boat of Mercury with a huge bench seat in the front, so there was plenty of room for her tallness. We were at it from every way you could in a car. The windows in the car were fogged by now.

I thought I’d found a nice sequestered place, but in my drunkenness, I’d parked under a window at the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant. That is the chain at airports that has big windows for watching planes take off and land. They got the show of the century. No one watched the planes that night. Here’s an actual picture of the view at that restaurant. We were right parked right below this.

When we were done, we went home to my apartment for another round. The next morning, I woke up with morning wood and her hand stroking my Johnson. We still had to work (on a Saturday) to clean up records and get it published. Both of us acted like it was just another day, but later I heard she spread the word that I was an animal that night, so it garnered interest from a number of young unsuspecting trainee’s that I wouldn’t otherwise have had a shot at. After we’d both moved on, I’d call her up for beers and sex with no commitment and were friends with benefits.

She even signed my going away card with a reference to watching the planes take off.

Needless to say, the DOS was done on time. I asked and received a transfer to Data Processing to start the PC program, which would start me on my real career in all things personal computing, cloud, networking, PR and AR.

I still got high at work with the internal auditors and did a great job, but moved on from Burdines with an education in how to prioritize things to get the job done, in many aspects of life.

Those were the good days before HR and woke busybodies ruined all the fun. I’d have been fired for any of that stuff today. It’s a damn good thing I retired.