Science & Tech · Big Tech & Internet · 1 hr ago
Mainframe worker accidentally canceled a week-long inventory print job
A worker at Sperry Univac’s UK office made a costly mistake while operating an old mainframe computer.
The system used punch cards and printed its results instead of displaying them on a monitor.
One weekly inventory job took five or six days, including printing, and three managers had traveled from the United States to watch it.
When a separate job produced too many pages, the worker canceled its printing after checking with the programmer.
But the printer that stopped was the one handling the inventory results, and the output was lost.
The inventory job could not be completed successfully until it was run again the following week.
The managers were unable to proceed until then, although the worker said colleagues were sympathetic and did not blame him.
A mainframe worker accidentally stopped a week-long inventory print job after intending to cancel a different print task.
The worker, identified by The Register as “Mark,” was working at the UK office of Sperry Univac.
The inventory job took five or six days to run, including printing its results.
Three managers who had flown in from the US were observing the job.
The output was lost, and the job could not be completed successfully until the following week.
- Who
- Mark, a mainframe worker at Sperry Univac’s UK office.
- What
- He accidentally canceled the print stage of a week-long inventory job.
- When
- Not stated.
- Where
- The UK office of Sperry Univac.
- Why
- He intended to cancel the print stage of a different workload after checking with its programmer, but stopped the inventory printer instead.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
The output was completely gone. Not even the summary pages survived.
The rest of my day was spent realizing that the three senior managers from America were unable to do anything until the job completed successfully. Next week.
A smaller job generated potentially more pages than expected and asked whether to print them all.
Mark canceled the print stage he thought belonged to the smaller job.
The inventory printer stopped and its output was lost.
The inventory job could be completed successfully.
- Worker
- Mark,” a name assigned by The Register
- Employer location
- Sperry Univac’s UK office
- Inventory job duration
- Five or six days, including printing
- Paper supply
- More than 20 boxes
- Observers
- Three managers who flew in from the US
Sources
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