Prattling Before the Pratfall

In early 1988 I was about to close on buying my first house¹ and then get married, but I couldn’t take any time off from work. I needed to go on a business trip to install a medical laboratory system at a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The plane’s approach into Baton Rouge was rough because of a snow storm. Yes, snow in Louisiana. The turbulence was strong enough that everybody applauded when we landed safely. That flight was the one and only time I ever needed to use a barf bag.

Driving from the airport to the hospital took me past the palatial estate of the now deceased televangelist con artist Jimmy Swaggart. Saying “con artist” after “televangelist” is, of course, redundant.

https://opplehouse.com/jimmy-swaggarts-home-a-complete-tour-of-the-ministers-private-estate/

The hospital was the field test site for my employer’s new, proprietary computer terminal. It cost significantly less than what customers would have had to pay for a PC in those days. I quickly found a problem that had been missed during development of the device. I called the lead developer to tell him the bad news, and I’ll always remember what he said. “Oh, damn. I forgot to double-buffer the UARTs!”² Well, it was funny at the time. Guess you had to be there.

I had about a dozen of those terminals on hand to do what I needed to do that week, but they weren’t going to work as delivered. The developer scrambled to edit the firmware he had written for the device, and he pressed one of the other developers into service to burn enough PROMS³ with the updated code for my purposes that week.

That meant waiting for a Federal Express shipment that would bump out my schedule by a day, so I would return home on Saturday, rather than on Friday. I explained the situation to the lab manager, a very competent woman who doubled as a computer system supervisor.

To tell this story I must emphasize that she was very attractive, well-dressed, and not much older than myself. By “well-dressed” I mean “flattering” more than “conservative.” Her manner was totally professional, which made me wonder why her appearance was more about her being a woman than a manager.

Having some extra time on hand, I asked her about the system I was replacing. She said there were lab instruments the other software vendor had never been able to get interfaced. They had to laboriously transcribe results manually from the machines into computer terminals. Their technician from the instrument service company was there now, and could I see if there was something I could do? Sure.

Long story short, I got the instruments working on the competitor’s system to make the lab manager’s life easier until our system went online. She was very appreciative, and said her boss, the hospital’s CFO, wanted to meet with me. Okay.

We went in the CFO’s office. There were two leather chairs in front of his desk, and we sat down. He leaned back, and in a condescending Southern drawl he said, referring to the snow, “Well……….. it looks like y’all brought some of that Yankee weather down ‘heah’ with ya.” I chuckled and replied, “Yeah, sorry about that.”

“I hear y’all have a problem and are waitin’ on sumthin’ from Boston.” I was about to answer when he looked at the lab manager and told her, “Would ya git us some coffee, darlin’?” His tone implied, “Why haven’t you already offered to do this?”

As if a switch had been flicked, she smiled and said “of course.” She immediately stood up and headed for a coffee tray that had been set up in back of the office.

I couldn’t believe the sexist power trip I’d just heard and how she had responded so readily to it. I’d brought more than Boston’s winter weather with me, I’d come with a sense of propriety regarding how to address women. I said I’d get my own coffee and I followed her to the tray on the table in back of the office.

The rest of the meeting was polite and perfunctory. I explained the problem and I thanked him for his understanding and the hospital’s willingness to be the test site for the new product. She explained how I had gotten those lab instruments working on their soon-to-be-replaced system.

The next morning, waiting for the FedEx package so I could swap out the PROMs, I met with the manager in the hospital cafeteria. Nothing at all about her or the CFO gave me the slightest inkling they had any sort of a personal relationship, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d made overtures and been rejected. She simply seemed to be filling her subservient female role as she was expected to do, in both her dress and manner.

I tactfully commented that chief financial officers were usually the ones who made the final decision on computer system purchases. She took the hint and explained in a tone of weary acceptance, “I know how different it must seem to you here, but this isn’t Boston.” We understood each other, and we left it at that.

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¹ I had negotiated the final purchase price over the phone from a hotel room in Butler, PA, where I was installing a system at the same hospital where Trump was taken after the assassination attempt a year ago.

² UART – Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter

³ PROMS – For Programmable Read-Only Memory, not the BBC summer music festival.