Wage theft outstrips bank, gas station and convenience store robberies

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

11. In the early 1980s, I worked for what was then Bell Labs

We were expected to work 50-60 hour weeks. And while theoretically we were supposed to be paid overtime, trying to get it was such a hassle that no one bothered.

One thing I remember was my bosses' boss calling me into his office because he had seen me coming in to work at half past ten. I told him that I had been working on a hardware installation for a computer that turned out to be problematical (I was upgrading the RAM on the DEC PDP 11/70 from half a megabyte to 1.5 megabytes, and I discovered that PWB Unix release 2.0 could only address one megabyte of RAM. Of course, before I changed the kernel parameters, I had to ensure that it was not a problem with the RAM itself) and it took me until 2 in the morning. I will say that he apologized for chewing me out for supposedly coming in late, but it still rankled.