JCPenney had IBM computers but there was a long backorder for them. So, for Product Service they chose instead to use Motorola Four Phase computers. The software was designed to maintain a record of every merchandise sale and to print lists of expiring warranties and service contracts for the telephone solicitors.
    Motorola set up 10 temporary terminals and hired as many data entry clerks. Information was entered into the computer from "sales slips," with customer name, address, phone number, product and model number, warranty expiration date and so on.
    I had no experience with computers but it seemed the data entry was going very slow. I watched as typists entered "King of Prussia" or "Conshohocken" or "Atlantic City" and thought there must be a better way. It's a computer and all this work is in "my" budget.
    I had a suggestion. Couldn't the typists enter "kofp" and the computer would post King of Prussia or "cons" to get Conshohocken or "AC" for Atlntic City? The programmers agreed and I watched as they modified the code for these and a couple more shortcuts.
    Finally all the sales slips were entered, three terminals were kept and set up for my dispatchers and the JCPenney and Motorola programmers left.
    I quickly realized that my workload had doubled. All sales slips had to be entered along with service contract information. But it was still necessary to file and process our normal paperwork and to type the service contracts.
    I had to fix this. Other code changes had been needed along the way and I watched as the programmers modified and "compiled" the revised programs. The source code read simple enough and the process of modification and compiling was pretty straight forward.
    So I went to the Motorla programmers and asked what was necessary to enter the Zipcode and let the computer generate the City and State.
    The answer was that a Zipcode

file had to be created and then opened, read, and closed in the source code. I aksed "How?"
    They explained it to me and that night I created a Zipcode file from the phone book. The next night I modified the code to open the file, read it, generate the City and State and close the file.
    The next morning I proudly told my typists they no longer had to enter a City and State. Just type in the the zipcode. With that sucess under my belt there would be no stopping me. This was FUN!
    One of the biggest consumers of time in the data entry process was figuring out the warranty expiration date which varied by Model Number. Especially for products like water heaters.
    With my success at generating the City and State from a Zipcode file I figured I could generate the warranty expiration dates from a model file.
    Listing all the models took awhile but I built that file. The tricky part was the program code that would calculate the dates.
    One-year warranties were easy. Just add 1 to the year. However, for 30-day warranties I could not just add 3 to the month. A purchase made on 12/22 would expire on 15/22. In those cases the code had to subtract 12 from the month and then add a year. Either warranty had to be adjusted again if it expired in a leap year.
    While the zipcode and warranty files saved a lot of time entering data we still had to type every service contract even though all the information was in the computer.
    As luck would have it, a truck load form-feed service contracts was delivered. I saw an opportunity to print the contracts from the computer. Up until now I had only modified the existing data entry program. This would require writing an entire program from scratch.
    First I wrote a program that would seek out all the new service contacts entered since the last printing. Next was a "print program" that would print name, address, product, warranty and service information on the form and aligned with the pre-printed

text on the contract.
    The programs worked. Soon the computer printed all our contracts, addressed and sorted by zipcode for the post office. No More typing.
    Meanwhile I had such an excellent staff of telemarketers that I soon took over sales for Delaware, Eastern PA and North Jersey service centers. My sales staff increased to 30 people and my boss never caught on how I was able to process then increase in contract sales from $10,000 to &1 million with no increase in typists.
    By the next year JCP was ready to begin "Phase II" of the computer operation. However, when the programmers arrived and laid out the new plan, I had to confess that the computer already was doing much more than their new plan.
    By now the computer not only printed my contracts, it also scheduled all my service calls and generated the daily dispatching for all the technicians.
    My boss was not happy but the programmers I had worked with in New York the year before were stunned and amazed. The day they callled and told me that my programs could not be improved and would be used in Phase II as they were written confirmed I was actuaally a programmer.
    One programmer from our NY office that I had befriended during the initial installation even sent me an 18" steel business forms ruler as a congrtulatory gift.
    Unfortunately, by November 1981 Penneys decided to eliminate hardline merchandise from their stores laying off every employee of product and auto service centers including the managers.
    After the layoff, Montgomery Ward was the only company offering a middle management position but the job was in South Carolina. Bob was about to graduate high school and was not happy with the idea of relocationg. I promised him we would stay in New Jersey.
    The next four years were an enomous struggle. I dabbled in sales. I got my Real Estate license. Nothing fit. Nothing worked. It would turn out that computers would become my salvation.