An unusual pushbutton failure on computer tape drives

On June 25, 2019 there was a Shark Tank article on the Computerworld web site titled Ready, set, go. It described how the operations manager of a computer center figured out why pushbuttons on their mainframe computers were repeatedly breaking during the night shift. The story took place back in the early 1980s and it involved large IBM 3420 tape drives used for data storage. Those tape drives were used for offline data storage, and the computer operator was told to mount a tape before running a batch job. After the tape was mounted, he or she was supposed to push the square READY button located on a control panel over five feet above the floor, as is shown above.  

The operations manager sneaked into the basement computer room and was horrified by what he saw. Instead of using a finger to press the READY button the rambunctious young operators were grabbing an overhead horizontal pipe, like an Olympian on the uneven bars, and doing a high kick. He applied a generous layer of soap to lubricate that pipe and discourage those late-night gymnastics.   

Images of a tape drive and an Olympian came from Wikimedia Commons.