Don\u2019t stop me if you heard these stories before, they\u2019re still good ones. From 1989-1992 I used to work for an end user office trade magazine. It was the oldest publication in the industry, started in the late 1930\u2019s. The founder was still driving in from New York City at age 90 and his son, no Justin Bieber himself, was now the publisher. Even though we wrote heavily about office technology and computers, the editorial staff, and everyone else in the company for that matter, was still using electric typewriters. One day I received a demo unit of a new Xerox electronic typewriter with a two-line memory display. It wasn\u2019t exactly a computer, but it was a step in the right direction even if it was only one to two lines of memory at a time.<\/p>\n
So there I am setting it up and reading the manual when the publisher walks by my desk, sees the new typewriter, asks where it came from, and marvels at this thing as if it\u2019s something out of The Jetsons.<\/i> After giving it the once over, he says, \u201cDon\u2019t spend all day learning how to use that thing, we got work to do here fella.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the same guy whose only question in my job interview was, \u201cYou\u2019re not a clock watcher are you?\u201d No questions about my past work experiences or my writing, editing or reporting skills even though I\u2019ve been working as an editor and writer for nearly four years.Then there was the time Lanier I think it was dropped by the office on a press tour to demonstrate a new fax machine and I asked if it was similar to another recently released fax machine from another manufacturer. I was told in no uncertain terms by my publisher after that meeting, \u201cNever ask about a competitor, they all hate each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cut to six months later, we\u2019re having another product demo, and after the demo, my publisher asks them, \u201cIs this similar to X\u2019s fax machine?\u201d<\/p>\n
I kid you not.<\/p>\n
I left that publication in 1992 and by 1994 they were history, never ever making it into the computer age. Is it any wonder?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not looking to make a point with these stories, just telling it like it was back in the day.<\/p>\n
Then again, maybe those are some of the reasons I am where I am today.<\/p>\n
New stories this week include:<\/p>\n
Thanks for reading and please support our sponsors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don\u2019t stop me if you heard these stories before, they\u2019re still good ones. From 1989-1992 I used to work for an end user office trade magazine. It was the oldest publication in the industry, started in the late 1930\u2019s. The founder was still driving in from New York City at age 90 and his son, no Justin Bieber himself, was now the publisher. Even though we wrote heavily about office technology and computers, the editorial staff, and everyone else in the company for that matter, was still using electric typewriters. One day I received a demo unit of a new Xerox electronic typewriter with a two-line memory display. It wasn\u2019t exactly a computer, but it was a step in the right direction even if it was only one to two lines of memory at a time. So there I am setting it up and reading the manual when the publisher walks by my desk, sees the new typewriter, asks where it came from, and marvels at this thing as if it\u2019s something out of The Jetsons. After giving it the once over, he says, \u201cDon\u2019t spend all day learning how to use that thing, we got work to do here fella.\u201d This was the same guy whose only question in my job interview was, \u201cYou\u2019re not a clock watcher are you?\u201d No questions about my past work experiences or my writing, editing or reporting skills even though I\u2019ve been working as an editor and writer for nearly four years.Then there was the time Lanier I think it was dropped by the office on a press tour to demonstrate a new fax machine and I asked if it was similar to another recently released fax machine from another manufacturer. I was told in no uncertain terms by my publisher after that meeting, \u201cNever ask about a competitor, they all hate each other.\u201d Cut to six months later, we\u2019re having another product demo, and after the demo, my publisher asks them, \u201cIs this similar to X\u2019s fax machine?\u201d I kid you not. I left that publication in 1992 and by 1994 they were history, never ever making it into the computer age. Is it any wonder? I\u2019m not looking to make a point with these stories, just telling it like it was back in the day. Then again, maybe those are some of the reasons I am where I am today. New stories this week include: BTA Summit Targets the Patent Trolls Secrets of E-mail Introductions Revealed Art Post\u2019s Latest Post What\u2019s Hot & What\u2019s Not? March News Bytes Thanks for reading and please support our sponsors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4460"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4507,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4460\/revisions\/4507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}