How Simes entered the Tower

Long long ago, far down in the Mists of time, Simon was at the end of his second year of university. He was about to start his third and final year. As this was going to be the most important year, with a full seven tenths of the real work being done, he decided to get a job on the weekend to stave off the hunger of the bank manager which was starting to use lots of red ink in its hunt. So Simon walked for four days and nights through the scary forest of Portswood and Swathyling until he found a place named "Computronik Systems". Whilst it was a small place, it appeared to have people within with a clue, something even more unusual then it is now for computer shops to have. Upon talking to the king of the place for a while, Simon ended up getting a job at Computronik Systems crafting computers, mending the broken machines and tending to the customers as they came into the shop. Whilst he only worked on Saturdays, the money he thus gained proved enough to force off the deadly bank manager. He also came to be known as good with software and with programming. He helped out on one or two internal projects which helped the shop run better. Simon wasn't so good at hardware. Whilst he could easily sell the hardware to the customers that came into the shop, mending and building it was another matter. He started to get a reputation as a person who killed hardware just by looking at it. This all came from a single day when, due to no fault of his own, he killed three computers. One just sat and sulked. Another let out all of its magic smoke and the final one got so angry at its abuse that it blew a hole in its own body. But even with such a reputation, Simon was a useful person at Computronik. Then the big boss, Shin, heard of the Internet. He came to Simon seeking knowledge of that place. Simon, having used the Internet since he started University several years ago, gave Shin the information he was looking for. In the end, this included a full layout of the systems an ISP would need and the software they would run. At this point, Shin decided to start up an ISP. Phil thought of the name "Total Connectivity Providers", or "TCP". And they all lived happily ever after, chained up in the TCP Towers, bashing out code and earning money to keep the tower stable. In time Phil and Simon were joined by John the Unstable and finally the Phone firewall. Thus TCP Towers was formed.

	Over-worked
	A few months before I left, I was just about coping with the amount of work I needed to do. It wasn't great and I was tired most of the time, but I coped. Then a major project came along and I had to do a lot of the work involved in it. This almost burnt me out and I started getting very stressed.
	Unappreicated
	I felt that I was unappreciated by the boss. Whilst this turned out to be wrong (I think the 2.5 hour chat he had with me when he tried to persaude me to stay showed that) it was how I felt.
	Extremely cramped working environment
	I could reach out and touch the shoulder of the phone firewall with ease.
	Endless
	The problems at TCP seemed to never have an end. When I handed my notice in and I could see and end to all of the stress, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
	Other reasons
	The later TCP Towers posts ("Rebellion at TCP Towers!" is a good example) give the other reasons as well.

I was doing the job of several people. The boss knew this, but he couldn't hire anyone due to the lack of space in the office TCP is in. He did say that he would be hiring quite a few people when TCP got some more office space. However, he had been trying to get new office space for over a year.

Never posted - written 3rd September 1997