In light of the news that Lech Walesa plans to visit the Occupy Wall Street crowds in NYC soon, I’m reminded of a summer long distant.

Back in 1980 I had gone to work for a start-up, a health, fitness and social club in Honolulu. I was the Data Processing Manager, and as such was responsible for all things computer, including most importantly getting monthly bills out to the club members. The club didn’t accept cash, so those bills were the only source of income it had. My three data-entry people worked like crazy building the membership database and entering the daily charges at the bar, restaurant and pro shop. Meanwhile I was tweaking the programs (or writing new ones) to suit the club’s particular needs, which were somewhat different from the club which had sold us their version of club software. In other words, we were busy. The entire Accounting department worked day in and day out for several months.

Sometime in August we were all exhausted. One day that month Walesa and his Solidarity Union all declared they weren’t going to work the next day at their shipyard in Gdansk, and the headline above the story about that in my local paper read “Poles Defy Leaders, Take Day Off.”

One of us clipped the story and put it on the corkboard in the office in plain view of everyone who walked in, including the boss.

He got the point. We all took the following weekend off.