Sat
Aug 23 2014
09:12 pm
By: R. Neal

"We wore the blue suits, white shirts with button-down collars, striped ties, fedoras and wingtip shoes,” Mr. Akers said. "The customers felt they could count on us."

I made my bones on John Akers' watch at IBM. I was a hippy who, with the help of my Dad getting me a job in an IBM shop where he was a manager, learned important lessons about business, customer service, work ethic and character. (Lessons my Dad had already taught me a lot about which probably helped me get the job).

I went on to work in many IBM mainframe shops. Indeed, customers could count on IBM if there was a problem. They would "parachute in with their white shirts and wingtip shoes" as we used to say, and do whatever it took to get the bank statements out in the morning or the payroll checks printed on time. Oh, the stories I could tell about their extraordinary customer service.

Over the years, I rose up through the ranks of various IBM customer companies where I worked, eventually rubbing elbows with top level IBM executives all over the country on various projects.

Every IBM employee I ever worked with, from the Customer Engineers who came out in the middle of the night to fix a mainframe circuit board, the Systems Engineers who helped with system planning and implementation and stayed up all night on the phone to fix an operating system problem, to senior executives who worked with technology partners on multi-millon dollar system development and rollouts, exemplified the "white shirt, wingtip shoes, whatever it takes" attitude.

It was a culture of service, integrity and professionalism that rubbed off on me, and served me well in my business career. And yes, I proudly wore the blue suits, white shirts and wingtip shoes (when I had to).

It's something we've lost, I think.

RIP John F. Akers

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bizgrrl's picture

Thanks for imparting your

Thanks for imparting your culture of service, integrity and professionalism on to me. It's been very beneficial through the years.

Only once did I work with some IBM system engineers. They were baby SEs and they too exemplified the "white shirt, wingtip shoes, whatever it takes" attitude.

Metro all the way's picture

Halt and Catch Fire

Any thoughts on "Halt and Catch Fire" on AMC?

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