Serving the IT Underbelly of Alaska, Part 1

By the time I started working at Computerland of Anchorage in 1982, Alaska had begun to transform from the wild days of the Pipeline boom - but there were still some interesting things that went on in our biggest state, and I had some eye opening interactions in my first few months and years selling and installing computer systems across the state.

An interesting part of the city of Anchorage was an area around Spenard Road.   Interestingly, the first law firm my father worked for was located in the heart of Spenard, in a small office right next to a large Chinese restaurant which was a fixture of the area.    Another well known and highly visible type of business in Spenard were the...ahem....brothels, still doing (so I heard) a brisk business as Anchorage moved into the new era.

One day in my first few weeks at the store, a very nice lady came in looking for a system to help run her business.    Still sopping wet behind the ears, I sat down with her to find out what her needs were.

"I want to track information about our customers," she said.

I asked her what type of information.

"Basic things like name, phone number address," she stated.  "Amount of bilings and what dates the customer makes purchases."

"That's easy," I informed her confidently.  I was already visualizing accounting software or a small custom database.

"And you know, preferences," she added with a sidelong glance.

"Preferences"? I asked.    In reality, much of this conversation is about the cornerstones of modern customer profiling and segmentation, but I was hearing some of these requirements for the first time.

"Yes you know...what a customer likes, which...er...reps they like to work with," she stated, warming up.   "It's really important for us to match customer needs with our service representatives."

"Sure", I said, taking notes as we talked.

"We have more requirement that is really important," she stated flatly.    I asked her what that was.

"we have to be able to destroy the information on a moment's notice," she said.

"Destroy....?"

"Yes, instantly."

Now, i  had not been in the business long but this was certainly the first time such a requirement had been a part of a conversation.    While still new, I was not oblivious.    The storage medium of the day was 5.25" floppy disks, and it was frankly hard to keep the data from NOT being erased a good deal of the time.    I opened my mouth to inquire further on this driving requirement, but I took another look at her business card.  While the name of her...firm....did not stand out obviously, the address made the conversation click.

Spenard Road.

Through my career, I feel I can say that I have not and would not do anything immoral or illegal.   I would also say I'm not judgmental.   The feeling that I had at that moment was a feeling I would get many hundreds of times in the years to come.   Warm and fuzzy and confident, because I knew I had a good solution for her business and that I had a sales a-comin.    

I recommended a pot-belly stove to go a long with her new IBM PC, with secondary solutions including a shredder and a big magnet.

In this case I did not offer on-site delivery services.

As often happened over the years, this happy customer sent many more businesses from Spenard my way - certainly not hundreds, but quite a few.

All in a day's work.