First Class Travel, 1994-96

First Class Travel is where I worked when I lived in Orange County, in 1994-96.

Getting the Job

I basically got the job immediately when I moved there. I remember going to the Orange Coast College Career Center and quickly scanning the printed blue cards that were pinned to a fabric board on the wall.

One caught my eye that had to do with computers. It was at a travel agency. That could be interesting.

I got in touch with the person doing the hiring. Dana McCrae. A nice, quick witted guy that I got along with really well from the get-go. He had set up the network, phone, and computer systems in the office. He was also involved at the business reporting layer, being an important source of information for the owners of the company. He had too much to do and needed a helper.

The Company

The company was a corporate travel agency. Basically an outsourced travel desk for local businesses. This was in the days before Expedia and e-tickets, so along with travel agents we had a fleet of couriers to deliver paper tickets to our corporate customers. We also had a vacations department, which was a perk to the corporate customers -- they could use our services to plan their personal vacations. You really needed a travel agent to help select hotels and activities back then, since there wasn't an Internet to do research on.

This was a great job. We were in a very nice building next to John Wayne Airport, the US Bank Building, up on the 8th floor. The building was all marble, with a huge foyer and an attached parking garage. We had to dress up in slacks, shirt, and tie to work there. I'd get a muffin most mornings from the cute middle eastern gal working the little cafe on the bottom floor. I was 18.

The Job

Dana trusted me with quite a few different things.

I learned how to work the phone system, from the punch-down panels to the PBX system.

The agency was connected to the airline's reservation system via US Robotics 9600 baud modem. That modem was attached to an IBM AS/400, which ran the agency software. The airlines supplied a turnkey solution for everything from booking trips to business reporting, all based on IBM hardware. This meant that every agent had an IBM PS/2 system, and it was all networked via Token Ring, so they could run their 3270 terminal emulation in Windows 3.1 to access the airline reservation system.

I also did graphics work for them, using Corel Draw 5. This was great fun to do business cards, envelopes, letterhead, and promotional materials. I had an HP 1200C inkjet printer at my desk where I could print out proofs. Most of the work went to a service bureau to have films made to then be sent to a press. I got really familiar with that whole business of graphics and printing in that job, and ended up building a little freelance business doing this on the side.

The final and perhaps most interesting and valuable thing I learned in the job was how to wrangle Excel in dark and dubious ways. My crown jewel project was an Excel macro that would fetch the current customer list from the AS/400, and for each one fetch its financial data and travel activity and generate full color graphical report automatically. One button push and hundreds of unique reports printed. I hope I kept one of those...

Dana

Dana was a great teacher and we had lunch together most days. It was here that I developed my affinity for the Reuben sandwich, since the restaurant next to our building had a great one. There was a room in the office for smoking, and I'd join Dana in there once in a while to look out over the airport, to the mountains in the distance catching the light of the afternoon sun in southern California. I always thought it was kind of gross that people smoked in there, but most people in the office smoked so it worked I guess?

Dana was happy to talk whatever came to mind. He was interested in a lot of stuff and clearly a smart cookie and a good conversationalist. I once joined Dana on a trip to one of his friends' houses outside of Long Beach who was having some trouble with his home network. This is where I learned Dana was gay and had a great group of older gay friends in Long Beach. This was a tiny bit on the taboo side in those days. They clearly had a lot of good times together. I was able to fix the network and went on my merry way.

I saw Dana 15 years later after he had a stroke and open heart surgery. It was nice to see him again, and a good reminder to enjoy the days with the capabilities that we still have.

The Sedgwicks

The family that ran First Class Travel was First Class Dysfunctional. The patriarch, Dave, was a jolly old racist with a cauliflower nose. His wife was an imposing woman, in stature and presence. She ruled the roost. They had an old southern way about them and weren't afraid to argue loudly in the office. Dave loved to tell me stories of their prior scam businesses. Their son worked there too. Looking back, I'm pretty sure he was on coke every day. He also loved to tell me stories of his prior scams, mostly selling stolen speakers out of the back of his van in Huntington Beach in the 1970s.

Dave loved to tell the story of trying to fix a telephone issue by climbing up in the ceiling of the office, but grabbing the wrong wires and getting a mighty electric shock. "I was never the same after that." Visions of him with smoking hair.

Dave died of a heart attack about six months before I left.

Dana tells the story that at his funeral, his wife wore sunglasses not to hide her crying eyes, but to hide the fact that she wasn't crying. Brutal.

Ivy

One day toward the end of his mortal stint, Dave called me into his office.

"Zack, come in. Take a seat."

He was always gravely, but genuine, and I was never afraid of him. He enjoyed being a bit of a clown.

"Zack, we need to get you some help."

Um, ok I guess? This was news to me.

"Zack, I've hired a Chinaman to help you out. She'll start next week."

What?!?!!?! I had no idea what to say. Really. I was speechless and just walked out.

Ivy was a lovely Indonesian woman who I enjoyed working with.

Margo

The business was growing when I joined, and about a year into it, Dana hired a woman named Margo to be my boss. She was good with the airline systems, and a whiz especially on the business side. She was always really nice to me, but seemed sad. She outwardly pined for the days before an autoimmune disorder changed her body shape. I think she was lonely. I hope I was wrong.

Salt Lake City

Margo and Dana arranged for me to go to Salt Lake City to go to Travel Agent School and get my travel agent certification. This seemed silly to me at the time, but why not check out a new place? Salt Lake City was a trip. I found one of the only coffee places there at the time and spent some time chatting with the guy who ran it. We ended up having dinner at his house and he played a great record that I never heard before -- Moodswings - State of Independence. He had a good stereo system and maybe we smoked some weed? I don't remember.

There was a nice older woman that was also there getting her agent certification. We got to be friends and traded a couple of letters afterward. It felt a little Harold and Maude to me, but I was happy to play along.

Somehow I graduated from Travel Agent School and got my Travel Agent ID Card, which ended up being awesome. Several airlines would let you fly standby for free or for a low cost ($25) anywhere. This is mostly how I would go home to San Jose to see my parents. I should have used that perk more!

The Agents

There were around 20 agents working at First Class Travel. It was a nice group of ladies - they were all women. Part of my job was supporting them and helping them if they had computer problems. They soon started calling me "Doogie", referring to the TV show about the young doctor. It was fun being there. :)

Mark

Mark was the main accountant in the office. He was a mostly nice guy, but ended up getting fired and possibly arrested for embezzling money by setting up some fake vendors. I remember he would bring checks to Dave to sign each week, and must have had some audacity to sit there and lie to Dave's face about what a check was for. I'm not sure what did him in, but probably just got over-confident like most criminals.

Angela

Angela worked in Accounting with Mark. She had a twin sister who would come to the office semi-regularly. It was kind of a trip to see twin adults. She took over accounting when Mark was fired. I felt like Angela was a very trustworthy choice.

Edwina

Edwina was hired to help out in accounting. She was middle aged, petite and full of energy. She had hair like Pat Benatar. I noticed that if I was working in the computer room, she would often come in there looking for something or putting something away. She eventually started getting more bold with her moves, and eventually things got a little physical. Not in any kind of serious way, but it was definitely titillating (lol I can't believe I'm writing that). I enjoyed the attention, and I suppose she did too. I wasn't attached, and I'm not sure about her situation.

Sean

Sean was also in the accounting department. He was a Vietnamese guy, and we got along well. Sean is the person who introduced me to Pho. We would get in his 85 Celica Supra and drive to Westminster ("Little Saigon" is the sign on the highway offramp).

I remember one pho place we went to, we opened the door and there were all these plants hanging from the ceiling. The plants were all at face-level for me. As soon as I walked in, everyone turned to look. I had to crouch down on the way to the table. I would let Sean order for me, and at this place he ordered cow blood pho. Cubes of congealed blood were in the soup. It was OK ... I wouldn't order it again. Another place he told me in his Vietnamese accent that he ordered us "Cow dick soup." I wasn't afraid!

I later found out that Sean was buying computers with agency customer credit cards and then selling the computers in the classifieds in the newspaper. :facepalm:

David

David was one of the couriers, but he was really interested in computers. He was in the Computer Science program at UC Irvine, which put him several echelons above me in terms of the computer elite. He was really into raytracing graphics at that time, and also liked cars. He and his friends put lowering springs on my 94 Civic that I bought from him. Great, generous group of guys. David ended up taking over my job when I left.

David also introduced me to Jermaine, who became a good friend at Cal Poly.

The End

After about two and half years, it was time for me to move on. I had gotten enough credits at Orange Coast College to transfer schools, and thankfully Cal Poly was a piece of cake to transfer into at that time. A new step awaited me.

I let Dana know when my last day was. He was happy for me.

The next day, Dave's son Steve called me into his office (Steve took over when Dave died). He had a letter printed out. It was a counter-offer.

They offered to pay off my car (about $12K) and pay me $75K a year to stay. I think they were afraid that David and Ivy wouldn't be able to pick up my slack. I absolutely knew that they could, and would in fact make things a lot better. It was a huge amount of money to me at the time, more than double the hourly rate I was making, but I also felt confident that I'd be able to make more than that soon after finishing college.

I didn't think about it for more than two seconds. I needed to finish college. And I certainly didn't want to make First Class Travel my career.

And that was that!