Annette and I are in the unique position of having worked for each other. First I worked for her, then she worked for me. She’s been my teacher, my customer, my friend.
I created my first computer program in 1973 using punch cards. But we didn’t actually punch holes in the cards. Instead we marked the cards with pencil, like one of those standardized tests we all used to take. From that moment, I knew I wanted to be a computer programmer.
I went to Mississippi College. They didn’t have a Computer Science degree, but they did have a Hewlett Packard mini-computer with several teletype terminals the students could use. So I majored in Math and lived in the computer room. The school added a Computer Science major my junior year, so I got a double degree in Math and Computer Science.
I knew I wanted to start a computer software development company. I told this to my wife Jamie on our first date. To this day, she denies this conversation ever took place.
After I graduated, I bought a pocket-sized spiral notebook (we actually used paper back then) and listed all of the types of businesses who might use PCs. This was 1984 and the IBM PC had just been introduced. I remember listing restaurants, doctors’ offices, and videotape rental stores. (I really dodged a bullet on that last one.)
At the top of my list was tax preparation. Tax prep was still done by hand in most offices. Problem for me was, I didn’t know how to prepare taxes.
I figured the best way to know how to create a tax prep program was to actually be a tax preparer for a season. So I signed up for a tax prep course offered by the local H&R Block. It was taught by Annette.
Annette owned an H&R Block franchise and she ran seven tax offices in the area. She also personally prepared more tax returns than anyone on her staff, and reviewed every tax return that was prepared in her office. I would learn that hard work was one of Annette’s trademarks. She had a preprinted sign on the wall that said, “Women have to work twice as hard as men in order to get half the credit. Fortunately, this is not difficult.”
I took her tax course in the evenings. Anyone who graduated was offered a job during tax season. This was H&R Block’s way of getting temporary staffing during tax season. So I worked five hours per week during the following tax season.
After the season was over, I approached Annette with an offer. I would develop a tax prep program for her offices, and she would help me design the program so it would be more efficient than preparing tax returns by hand. She agreed to run a pilot with three of her tax preparers, including herself. Annette became my first customer.
This was a big risk for Annette because she had a big workload, and she was pretty darned efficient cranking out returns by hand. Fortunately, it worked out that first year, and she installed a PC at every desk the second year. That was 1988.
Annette and I developed a friendship during the evenings after the office was closed. I remember standing at the door of her office and talking, not just about business, but about personal things. This would become a ritual, and I would be standing at Annette’s office door for years, even as her office changed. We talked about her family. She also had taken in a young woman and appeared to be raising her like family. They even fought like family.
I was designing and programming the tax forms for the computer myself. I needed help, someone who knew taxes. Annette was thinking about selling her franchise already, and so that’s what she did. She became my first employee.
I feel funny calling Annette “my employee” because she was more than that. As the company grew, she helped shape the culture, became an elder of our company “family,” and became our model for honesty, ethics, and hard work. She continued to be the lead forms programmer her entire career with the company, and then trained her son to take over from her.
Annette was blunt and always said what was on her mind. Once you understood this about Annette, you learned to really appreciate this about her. There were no games, no manipulation. You could relax, because you always knew where you stood with her and what she thought. I wish everyone could be like that.
You knew when she had a cold or the flu because she had her jug of orange juice at her desk. This was her remedy because taking a sick day wasn’t an option. She was famously frugal, and would run her car until the wheels fell off.
I never saw the surface of her desk. It was always piled several inches deep with papers and books. Yet when she needed something, she could reach into the pile and—almost with looking—pluck out the exact thing she needed.
By 2000 I was completely burned out and retired from active involvement in the company. I was so thoroughly cooked that I stopped coming by the office. I lost track of almost all of the people I saw day-to-day in the company. I regret this deeply, and the person I regret losing track of the most is Annette. She continued to work for the company for several more years, ran a tax office again for a while, and continued to prepare taxes well into “retirement.”
Despite not seeing her for years, I still hold a fondness for Annette in my heart. I’ve never met anyone quite like her, and I don’t think I ever will.
Update: Annette still runs a tax office, still prepares several hundred tax returns per year, and even continues to do work for the company I founded. I met with her in her office, just like I always did.