Reminds me of something similar I did about 20 years ago as a new and lowly employee in an HR department. Said department was part of a larger organisation whic

Reminds me of something similar I did about 20 years ago as a new and lowly employee in an HR department. Said department was part of a larger organisation which of course kept everything centrally on huge mainframes, access to said mainframe being allowed in the regional office by means of a green-screen terminal connected to a dedicated line. While the mainframe was of course the ultimate authority of what was what, for everyone, our local department just wanted to do some basic employee management on the then new wave of Windows 3.1-based softwares running on local PCs. But how to populate the PC data? Obviously retyping it was the only possible way, and I was hired literally to do that and nothing else for a month. First thing I said, naturally, was "why not just export it from the mainframe?" Not possible, I was assured. The mainframe was a secure device for storing secure data and no talk of exporting would ever get through the layers of bureaucracy. The mainframe terminal had no disc drive or local storage, being a thoroughly secure device with a secure connection through the secure floorboards. And anyway, I was hired as a typist so would I please get on with it for the next month, which was how long they had estimated would be required. An hour later the job was done - with no retyping at all, thank you very much. How? Well, I'll admit to feeling rather too pleased with myself for knowing that the terminal's attached dot matrix printer was not the only device that could speak RS232. Connected the secure terminal to an entirely not secure PC, and printed everything I wanted straight to disc. Edited the captured file in Wordstar and fairly quickly had a CSV-type file that went straight into the standalone software. Although I'd effectively instantly put myself out of a job, they were good enough to keep me around. I ended up staying for years.