<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So let's continue your career. So you're at Wells Fargo, spend a few years doing the check processing, and then after that, what did you get into?

RK: I became a computer operator. I did that for maybe five years, and then I became a unit supervisor.

TI: And these are with the, I'm thinking bank systems. I spent one summer working at the IBM sales office, and banks were always a big customer. Because they would buy the big computers, right, the biggest computers that they could...

RK: Yeah, when I first started, they got their first 360s. I think it was the 65, third generation IBM equipment. It was state-of-the-art machine. But I was told, working with the second generation equipment, I was the unit supervisor on that site, so we had two different types of computers.

TI: And for people who watch this interview, they think computer operator, back then, operating computers, back then it was the old IBM punch cards and all of these things that you have to... so it was a very, sometimes, mechanical process doing computers back then.

RK: Once they started getting into the third generation equipment instead of using the punch cards, everything was on disk.

TI: And then terminals...

RK: So all they had to do was, yeah, get on the keyboard and issue start disks like that, whatever. But the second generation equipment still had to use the old punch cards.

TI: And those would get jammed?

RK: Yeah.

TI: And so this is, when you started working with computers, about what year was that? Like 1970-ish? I'm trying to think.

RK: Yeah, about 1970, because I was supervising that. And then what they did was they merged two departments. The merged the computer operations department with another department, and I found myself out of a job. So I went to a unit called Quality Assurance, which basically was a unit that enforced Wells Fargo Bank computer operations standards, so I interfaced with the development people, making sure that whatever they were doing conformed to Wells Fargo's way of doing things.

TI: So that was probably an interesting experience, because then you interfaced with a lot of different, or a lot more people?

RK: Mostly development people.

TI: And then after that, what did you do? You were QA and then where did you go?

RK: I went to QA, and after that I went into a group called Tandem Support. Tandem at that time was a smaller computer, but the ATMs, Wells Fargo ATMs were all hooked up to the Tandem. And that was a different development group on its own. So we basically did the same thing, they used to give us the source, we used to compile it for 'em, made sure that it followed standards, and whenever they were satisfied with it, we would install it. And I've always been around the operations, quality assurance type business.

TI: So I'm going to do a little segue here. Because it's about this time when you met Grace, in the '70s, right? So do you remember what you were doing at Wells Fargo when you first met Grace?

RK: Yeah I was a shift manager.

TI: Like a graveyard shift?

RK: I started off on graveyard for, I was there for fifteen years, thirteen years, something like that.

TI: Shift position supervisor?

RK: And then I decided I wanted to see what the other two shifts were doing. So on my own, I just went to my manager and I said, "I want to spend a week on swing shift, after that I want to spend a week on day shift to see what's going on." And then I went back to third shift, and I don't know, my manager decided he was going to maintain this. So every three months, we rotated shifts. Each manager had to rotate through.

TI: And that's a little bit of cross-training, which is probably good?

RK: Yeah, more or less. Because there were times when I was third shift, we would leave the place clean, and we would come back the next evening, we would find ourselves eight hours behind. And it was like, what's going on here? So I just decided, I'm going to find out what each shift is doing.

TI: So you were the one who initiated this sort of shifting...

RK: Yeah, you could say that. I was just doing it on my own.

TI: Because you wanted to find out why the other shifts weren't doing their work?

RK: Yeah, why is it that I'm leaving this place clean, and I come back and I still see the same stuff?

TI: And so what was the reason? What happened to the other shifts?

RK: Well, they sure had this thing where, "Oh, we can't do it because we have to pay preventive maintenance on the machines." That was their big crutch.

TI: This is the day shift?

RK: Yeah. Swing shift, we had to catch up whatever day shift leaves, and we got to do our own stuff. And then when third shift comes back in, we got to finish this before we can get started on our stuff.

TI: That's so interesting. It's sort of upside down in that in today's world, you do your maintenance in the middle of the night because you don't want to take... I mean, because everything's so interactive. The day shift, you need the computers up and running and you would never take them down.

RK: Well, it was, third shift was always the busiest, because you get all the checks coming in during the day, and then swing shift would have to start processing, and third shift would have to finish it up and then start the normal daily work and trying to make your bags, get the reports out on time.

TI: No, that makes sense. So, actually, graveyard is actually a really important shift.

RK: Yeah.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.