4 ms·
> (truly: this was york) York, UK? I didn't know IBM had a place in York back in the day.
by cutthegrass2 5y ago
> (truly: this was york)
York, UK? I didn't know IBM had a place in York back in the day.
- ggm 5y agoThe chocolate factory was an IBM job shop. If you wanted to work on IBM in York, at scale, you went to rowntrees. It was cobol and other code, doing asset, records and plant operations. Not "work for IBM" -work in IBM based systems. Lots of people took the choice to align to the IBM/SNA world as a career path much as people nowadays do CCNA or CCIE
- kazinator 5y agoI'm somehow seeing Gene Wilder in a top hat and long coat, hunched over an IBM 3270 terminal.
- ggm 5y agoMore like oompaloomlas counting how many Jaffa cakes they can produce before anyone notices the leaking dirty water pipe in the corner. The factory was pretty run down. The sugar and chocolate warehouses across town were being converted to bespoke high end flats, they had to sandblast the brickwork 2-3mm deep to get rid of the redolent, slightly vinegary odour of the raw sugar and cocoa mass. When the chimney blew our way down fulford road it was almost like smoked fish, I never quite worked out why a chocolate factory smelt so unappetising.