First day on the job - Bank of America
It was January 9th, 1989 and time to go to work. I had graduated in May of 1988 with a computer science degree and after several months of job searching, landed in the Entry Level Training program at Bank of America. The previous Friday, I moved out of my parents house packing second hand household goods into my 1969 Dodge Dart. I have no recall of how I spent that first weekend. I do remember going shopping at Safeway on Friday night and getting a frozen pizza. Cooking the frozen pizza only to realize I didn’t have oven mitts nor a knife to cut it with.
On that first day of work, I dressed in a sports coat and slacks. I carried a soft leather briefcase although I had nothing to put into it but a notepad and the first day agenda. The Bank of America campus was located in “downtown” Concord, CA with my apartment a short 10 minute walk away. I didn’t want to arrive early and have to be social so I ended up leaving too late to get there on time. Running to the office in my ill suited close, cheap shoes, and swaying briefcase.
When I got to the office building, I used some kind of invitation letter to get in. I was worried then, and worried now, about asking for things. I especially worry about getting in and out of buildings without asking. The kickoff meeting was in a large meeting room on the first floor of Building A. The room could seat maybe 200 people and had chairs arranged neatly in rows. There were 50 of us ELTs. Some were fresh college grads, some had industry experience, some were transferring from branches. What we all shared was a technical aptitude regardless of background. It was DEI before DEI and it mostly worked.
Most of my fellow ELTs had arrived by the time I sat down, row 3, two seats from the right edge. There was no one on either side of me. Then in came a woman, and I could see she was heading towards my row. I noticed her. She sat down a couple seats away from me and introduced herself. Mimi. She asked me some questions in her wired style. I probably mumbled some replies in my style. She changed seats. Mimi and I would marry.
After the kickoff, we adjourned into two training rooms. There was some mingle time which is about my least favorite thing to do. An older balding ELT, early 30s, said “hi” and made some small talk. He then discretely told me I could take the brand label off the sleeve of my sports coat.
The ELT training program lasted three months. We learned how to submit batch jobs to MVS. How to write COBOL. How to develop Rexx scripts. We learned the basics of banking and the systems involved. During the three months, two of the ELTs dropped (or were asked) off and the rest of us were placed into jobs. I was placed into the VM/CMS systems group where I would spend the next nine years.