My misspent career in the travel industry began in the spring of 1979 at the tender age of 23 when I was hired as a reservations sales agent for TWA in their San Francisco call center. I was laid off in September of the same year, a warning I should have taken to heart, and then moved into a different industry with fewer ups and downs. I didn’t.
For all of the wackiness of the airline business, I appreciate the fact that I began when I did. In this day and age it seems unheard of, but TWA spent two intense months training our class of 20 future employees. (Not all made it – some were cut.) Computerized reservations systems had been a mainstay of the airline industry for some time by the late 70s, but they couldn’t do everything; there was a great deal of technical knowledge that had to be taught.
Not to mention – as in any industry – even if the computer could do something you needed to know what it was doing and why it was doing it (or why you were telling it to do it).
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