Dad's Memories

Accounting - at the Royal Liverpool Insurance Group

When I moved into Accounting, one task the new boss let me have was to allocate, or apportion, the monthly charges for floor space, electricity, and telephone equipment, thruout the entire 8 story building that occupied the whole block where we worked - by individual depts, and in total - to the three companies in the Liverpool Group.

Some depts did work for only one Co, others did work for two or even all three Co's in the group. The mix of floor space, and charges for electricity would change as dept size fluctuated from month to month, and the volume of phone equipment in a dept also changed -more than I expected- but it was a big building with a lot of people working there. I had to keep "on board" with these changes, and it gave me an opportunity to know all the Dept heads (and a lot of good looking girls) thruout the building. To make this job easier for me, with the help of an IBM tabulating Dept "setup man" who also played with me on the Co. Softball team, we developed a set of 80 column punch cards. Each card identified one dept, who they worked for, their floor space, and their phone equipment. Now all I had to do was check the dept head for changes, get updated cards punched up if needed and Jack, my buddy in Tab would run me off a new tab - giving me new totals that I could easily use to allocate the Gross Monthly costs by dept -if they wanted that- or in total by Company, which they were after in the first place.

Nice to know people in the right places, Jack didn't have to go out of his way to help this kid, but he liked the idea of a new application for his beloved IBM Tabulating Machines. My Boss thought that was pretty neat, a rare accolade from him--got me a $5 a month raise & since my job was so much easier, he could let me (?) do some other things too--Ya just caint win nohow.

So - I took on a bit of audit work, a nuicance job, checking Expense Acount weekly reports from Claims Adjusters thruout the country for error, and to ID any of the outrageous and inadmissable items that they'd include on occasion - for the Big Wheels in Acctg to handle if they chose to deny payment to the Adjuster. At least he had no idea who "blew the whistle on him" - I hoped.

There were several "Late Model" electric calculators in the dept, and some did not get a whole bunch of, or steady use. I had an old clunker - probably the first model ever invented, I thought. And it was literally a CLUNKER - hand operated you punched in a number and to multiply - say by 369, you hand turned a crank -9 times for the 9, shifted the carraige one position, turned the crank 6 times for the six, etc. - and EACH turn of the crank gave forth a loud CLUNK. No big fun cranking that contraption and seeing pretty li'l 'lectric jobs sit idle on an old hands desk. So one day I asked Mr Sawyer if as long as I did a lot of work for him, could he maybe persuade my boss to get me one of those 'lectric calculators. He sure had a lot of "influence" cause a Brand New latest model Calculator was on MY desk very soon. The noisy old KLUNK-KLUNK became a rapid ,quiet, clik-klik. I could finish Mr Sawyers important work much quicker. A couple on noses in my dept were "out of joint" - and I thanked Mr Sawyer for intervening on my behalf. He was no doubt the nicest Big Wheel I met in the 10 years on that job, and I did enjoy my time doing things with, or for, him.

Still, HAPPY to leave for a better chance in Connecticut.!!!!!