Back in '93 I started working at IBM, which at that point was on the ropes (speaking of boxing). I worked in PC assembly where they had quarterly all-hands meetings. The first or second of these, they played “Eye of the Tiger” over the PA as someone from upper management approached the stage. He gave this long speech about getting back on top, being champion again, like Rocky Balboa. “It’s the Eye of the Tiger! Keep telling yourself: Eye of the Tiger! I want everyone here tonight to go home and watch Rocky III and think about Eye of the Tiger.” I did some mental calculations, there were probably several hundred (maybe a thousand) of us in the room (and that was just one shift). Assuming 2 dozen Blockbusters in town, each with 3 or 4 copies of Rocky III, it would be impossible for us to watch it, not that I would have bothered anyway.
Other than that spectacle, it was not a bad place to work. I liked hand soldering (not that they paid me much). Since then, I always figured that if my current job went down the toilet, I could always go back to hand soldering. But I figure that particular job may very well no longer exist in the United States (and I’m not sure what, if anything, IBM still physically manufactures – they sold off the Austin PC plant about 16 years ago, then the company that took over moved out, and it’s all a shopping center now).
