To save paper, mainframe tech ruined a week of work

Mark, a mainframe technology worker at Sperry Univac's UK office, learned a valuable lesson the hard way when he nearly destroyed a week's worth of work. In the days of punch cards, operator scheduling, and large disk platters, Mark's team processed inventory jobs that ran in 'top memory' and printed results on two printers. One manager even flew in from the US to oversee the weekly job, which typically took five to six days to complete.

During a recent run, a smaller job accidentally generated far too many pages for printing. Mark consulted with the programmer and was given permission to cancel the print stage, preventing further damage. However, one of the printers had stopped while processing the inventory job, resulting in the loss of all output – not even summary pages remained. The day was spent dealing with the consequences, as three senior American managers were left waiting for the job to finish successfully.

Mark, feeling terrible about the incident, was met with understanding and no blame. The article encourages readers to share their own workplace errors and missteps, emphasizing that there's no blame to be placed.