Office Changes

When I started working at Airway’s Service Inc. at the airport in the office back in 1968…things were so different then they are today. We fueled Ozark Airlines and that was the companies bread and butter. We also had smaller aircraft that would stop for fuel and service, as well as lots of student pilots (learning how to fly).  They would come in and pay for their fuel of which I would have to manually multiply, the gallons versus the price. The ledgers were all added up on a manual adding machine where I would push in the numbers then pull the handle down to add or subtract the amount. All ledgers, payroll etc. were done by hand each day or weekly. Over the years the machines gradually changed, instead of being called ‘adding machines’ they were later known as calculators then eventually this was almost all done by computers. Typewriters went from manual ones to electric ones. I remember when my boss got an electric IBM Selectric, instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a traditional typewriter, the Selectric had a type element (frequently called a "typeball", or even more informally, a "golf ball") that rotated and pivoted to the correct position before striking. The type element could be easily changed so as to print different fonts in the same document, resurrecting a capacity that had been pioneered by the Blickensderfer typewriter sixty years before. The Selectric also replaced the traditional typewriter's moving carriage with a paper roller ("platen") that stayed in position while the typeball and ribbon mechanism moved from side to side, now that was the one I wanted to use all the time!! However, even then we had to use carbon paper to make copies of our letters or documents. Eventually there were copy machines, our first one had a heating element that you needed to heat up before ‘trying’ to make a copy on a specific kind of paper. It did not always work so well. Eventually the copy machines could do almost anything you would tell them to. Amazing how you can sit at your computer and tell the copy machine in another room to make x amount of copies in a specific order for you! Phones went from one line…where you would have to run in the other office to tell someone they had a call, to multiply lines you had to answer and were able to transfer calls to other offices with just the push of a button!!! And then there were fax machines…these changed immensely..due to computers. Instead of having to walk to a fax machine, you can fax something from your computer and never leave your office. Of course the biggest change was the computer! Scary?? Oh, yes…I never wanted to change, I loved doing my books, payroll etc. by hand. BUT, times change, business’s change and if you want to stay in the workforce YOU change! I actually have grown to love computers, in most ways it takes less time to do the work; it seems to be more accurate and efficient. Smart people of this world have written software programs that are specific for different businesses, most of the time making people’s lives so much simpler. The best thing about all of this..thanks to computers, I was able to work from home! How amazing is that? Most days toward the end of my 30 plus years career I would work half days in the office and the rest of the day at home. Due to my MS, this gave me the opportunity to rest for a while in the afternoon before getting back to work. And of course if we had a “snow day” I would work the whole day from home and not have to worry about driving on those dangerous…slippery roads! Thank you Jesus for ‘change’ and for us being able to accept it!

I wrote this article for our South Bottoms newsletter...showing how things have changed over the years and thought you might enjoy reading it!

Blessings and have a wonderful day...