A 101-year-old woman keeps getting mistaken for a baby because of an error with an airline’s booking system.
The problem occurs because American Airlines’ systems apparently cannot compute that Patricia, who did not want to share her surname, was born in 1922, rather than 2022.
The BBC witnessed the latest mix-up, which she and the cabin crew were able to laugh off.
“It was funny that they thought I was only a little child and I’m an old lady!” she said.
But the centenarian says she would like the glitch to be fixed as it has caused her some problems in the past.
I think my phrasing was a bit poor. To my knowledge, there aren’t many COBOL jobs out there. I don’t believe there’s much of anyone using it for active development anymore. But there’s plenty of places running on legacy back ends that have nobody to turn to when it breaks. The folks who wrote it retired years ago, and there’s fewer and fewer people left with the skills to maintain it (some of whom may or may not have been in the latest round of layoffs for Company X). The value, IMO, is being The Guy when something goes pear-shaped, and someone says, “Hey, I know a guy…” Then you get to go in as a consultant/contractor and look at un-commented spaghetti code last modified in 1973 and go to town. Do a good job and they’ll call you first next time. And if it breaks enough, then they might offer a position.
Meanwhile, the one who wrote it is off somewhere sipping Metamucil, possibly musing about how back in '96 they submitted a report that said the company really should migrate off of the platform, but nooooooo that was too expensive/complex/inconvenient.