One of my first jobs was at an isp/web/cohost company. We had a big bank of modems for dialup customers, had some customers who terminated isdn with us, a rack of colocation and built websites as well.
The company was partially owned and housed primarily in a print shop, we worked above the press floor and I was sometimes pressed into service helping when we were slow (I had some experience working in a print shop in highschool (helping with pagemaker and helping to run the big hidleberg), similarly in college.
Nothing like ending your day writing perl cgi scripts and troubleshooting customers damn winsock configurations and then going home and coughing up whatever color was running on the presses that day.
I had an early job with an ISP that was similar, had modems in people's garages all over the county since this was when calling local could get expensive. The ISP was in the back of a computer store though. Once an ISP customer came into the store. I was just answering phones in the back room, but they sent me to the floor to talk to the customer. I was wearing sandals, and the sales manager fired me on the spot for being on his floor with sandals. The person who I really reported to tried to hire me back when he found out that sales manager had sent me home and fired me.
The company was partially owned and housed primarily in a print shop, we worked above the press floor and I was sometimes pressed into service helping when we were slow (I had some experience working in a print shop in highschool (helping with pagemaker and helping to run the big hidleberg), similarly in college.
Nothing like ending your day writing perl cgi scripts and troubleshooting customers damn winsock configurations and then going home and coughing up whatever color was running on the presses that day.