Going postal, IT style

It's the 1980s, and when this company's IT department needs to get a copy of customer data to diagnose problems, the internet isn't an option, says a pilot fish in the loop.

"If the problem was urgent we would send out a service tech to collect the data in person," fish says. "But for lesser problems, we asked the customers to mail us their data using the standard media of the day: floppy disks."

Those aren't rigid 3-1/2-inch Mac-style disks, but the easily bendable IBM-style disks -- and fish and his cohorts notice that many of the disks show signs of having been folded in half, rendering them unreadable.

To prevent that, they start asking customers to reinforce their envelopes with stiff cardboard. But that doesn't always solve the problem.

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