I don’t know when it happened. Somewhere along the line I became “tech savvy”, but it wasn’t always so. In 1991 I was working in the upstairs office of the Copley Plaza movie theater in Boston. My co-worker Mark rushed into the office where I was typing up letters for our boss. I was using a computer, but it was the most basic of word processing software. To me, it was just a glorified typewriter. Mark tried to act cool, but there was panic in his eyes.
“Do you have a second to look at something?”
We went into the other office where he was working on THE other computer. He had a Lotus123 spreadsheet open. I had never worked on a spreadsheet before. I was curious and mildly envious of his superior skills. He showed me some numbers he had typed into a column labeled “March”. He said, “You can see these numbers I just typed, right?” He sounded as if he thought he might be hallucinating.
“Yes…I see them.” I said, unsure of where this was going.
He saved the file and the numbers disappeared.
“You saw that, right?” He said hopefully.
I nodded. He typed the numbers in again and saved. This time more numbers disappeared from other columns. February had been wounded and January was looking squeamish. December 1990 was terrified.
Mark put his hands to the sides of his face and sang the Twilight Zone theme song, trying to keep it together. “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” He surmised. His report was due to the boss that day, but at least he could now be sure he wasn’t typing imaginary numbers.
I was flummoxed and not sure how to help. I could only offer moral support. “Try it again.” I said.
He typed in a few numbers and saved. The spreadsheet disappeared completely this time and the screen was now taken over by a swirling storm of scrolling characters. We watched in bewilderment until finally the screen cleared except for one ominous yet amusing statement.
“Your PC is now Stoned!”
https://www.khq.com/news/throwback-thursday-computer-virus-in-1990-says-your-pc-is-stoned/article_5ec2ff26-9ad4-5130-b56c-db5782ff8edf.html
Mark wasn’t sure how he would explain this to our boss, who was even less tech savvy than I was, but somehow he did, and he managed to get anti-virus software installed to save December.
Fast Forward to Florida
At the beginning of 1992, my fiancé Rob and I moved to Orlando, FL. We were young, fresh out of music college and now looking back, we were either breathtakingly reckless or just incredibly naive. Neither of us had jobs waiting for us in Orlando. We only knew one couple who lived here , and that was casually through a mutual friend. In spite of these hard cold facts, we had stuffed all of our belongings into a U-Haul trailer and convinced his brother Steve to help us drive it down to the sunshine state.
The money we had saved up by living in a “convenient” studio apartment in Boston where the refrigerator was in the main room and the kitchen was only big enough for one person at a time, barely covered the move-in expenses for our luxurious(by comparison) Florida apartment.
We bought a small used loveseat for $25 which smelled like a big used dog once we got it home. We made an entertainment center out of used milk crates and old shelf boards.
We applied to work at temp agencies. One of the agencies we called, said we would need to take a timed test to demonstrate our proficiency in Microsoft Works. Neither of us had ever used Microsoft Works.
Rob was much more into computers than I was. He had an early Mac and he had majored in Music Synthesis at Berklee. I had majored in Film Scoring there, but the program wasn’t really using computers much yet.
This was before we had internet so I checked out a VHS tape on Microsoft Works from the downtown library to study over the weekend. I took some notes and hoped I could get through the test.
I was nervous – I had never really had a job interview before. At the movie theater, I had talked with the Assistant manager in the lobby after filling in the application, but the conversation was limited.
Him: “Which position would you like to do? Box Office, Concessions or Usher?”
Me: “Box Office.”
Him: “Ok, what size uniform do you need?”
When I moved upstairs to back office support, there was no interview. One day I was called to the manager’s office. I sat down, a bit intimidated, and the manager Brian said, “How would you like to work upstairs with Mark and Me for more money?” I said, “Sure!” Mark had worked in the box office with me before he got promoted to the office. He was quirky, kind and fun to be around.
The Timed Test
We arrived at the temp agency and talked with the two recruiters for awhile. I have no memory of that conversation. I was anxiously awaiting the timed test. We were led into the testing room, which had several computers. Rob was directed to a PC on one side of the room, and I to one on the other side.
We started the timed test. I thought it wasn’t so bad. I was glad I had borrowed the video. Rob finished a few minutes before me, the recruiter viewed and saved his test results and sent him out to wait in the waiting room. When I was done, she came over to review and save my results and it came up empty. Nothing had saved. She said something about computers and asked me to do it again. I did it more quickly this time, having learned my way around. She came back and looked at what I had done before saving the results and generating her report. It came up blank again. She said, “I know you did it! I saw it. Would you mind trying one more time?” I did it with her standing right there. This time when she saved it, the screen cleared. Then a swirling storm of characters took over the screen followed by…
“Your PC is now Stoned!”
She called in the other recruiter and they scratched their heads. Rob and I tried to explain that they had a computer virus and needed to install anti-virus software. They looked at us like we couldn’t possibly know what we were talking about.
It was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.