If you don't mind answering publicly, can you tell me the shop(s) you were at?
Some Tandem facts from an employee posting on The Motley Fool's Compaq forum (I added the examples):
"For anyone who doesn't know, this is a list of some of the things that Tandem servers do:
Telephone and wireless companies
More than 135 public telephone companies
More than 50 percent of 911 calls in the United States
The majority of wireless calls worldwide
Wireless Home Location Register (HLR) business
Operator service, service control point (SCP) services, and many other services
Financial markets (banks)
80 percent of all ATM transactions worldwide
66 percent of all point-of-sale transactions worldwide
75 percent of the world's 100 largest electronic funds transfer networks
General branch bank activities
Securities exchanges
106 of the world's 120 stock exchanges
95 percent of the world's security transactions
Retail
Credit and check authorization (Ex: Visa)
Refund processing
Customer relationship management (CRM) services
General activities for large retailers and grocery chains (Ex: Target Stores)
Healthcare
Patient care, patient tracking, billing (Ex: Mayo Clinic)
General activities for large healthcare providers (Ex: Kasier Permanente)
E-commerce and service providers
NonStop Himalaya servers also support:
Internet service providers (ISPs), including the world's largest ISP
Application service providers (ASPs)
Solutions for business-to-business (B2B), business-to- consumer (B2C), and business-to-employee (B2E) services"