30 Years in the Making and Oh Yes, Can I Borrow Your Belt?

I first met Tim when he worked for (I think this is the name – it’s so long ago it is outside of the ken of the World Wobly Web) Lex Software who had built, with Microsoft, an Executive Information System (EPM/CPM in today’s language) toolkit that married Excel to what was then Arbor’s Essbase (at least I think this is what it was). Tim was the teacher and we (my fellow J&J Executive Information Systems colleagues) were learning about the new client/server paradigm. For any J&Jers out there, this was at 410 George Street, right across the street from Corporate; I believe it is still a J&J office.

That is exactly everything I remember about that training session, other than this: Tim forgot his belt, felt self-conscious, sized me up as being (probably) nice and generally the same size, and asked if he could borrow a belt. With me as recent(ish) college graduate, I had exactly one black belt to go with my suit (everyone wore suits), that left my one other belt:

 

Truly, an artefact of the 1990s.

I think Tim felt he was underdressed for J&J – at the time (and maybe still is – it’s been 29 years since I last set foot in a J&J office) a very conservative and buttoned down place.

The Past is a Foreign Country, They Do Things Differently There

What was it like, boys and girls, when all and sundry wore a suit to work? Kind of like this:

No, that is not me, but in fact Tony Randall (Who knew I hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty?  I didn’t, of course. AI can be a wondrous thing; I have no idea who the woman is.) What is accurate is this is how people dressed. I cannot speak for the woman, but that is a fine example of a charcoal grey sack suit and a repp tie — my Ivy Style exemplar. Work environments are so different now, it’s almost inconceivable. Such is the passage of time and through time reputations are made – Tim’s is stellar as is this second part of his interview.

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