My dad was a data clerk at this point, that's what it says on my birth certificate - his dad had been a "Sales Ledger Clerk" all through his career - it always tickled me that my grandad felt it important to make the distinction between working on the sales ledger rather than purchasing :)

Anyway it was doing this job and feeding the mainframe that got my dad interested in computing - he left this job and became a trainee at the Austin Motor Company where he learned the basics of programming, which then led to him working as a programmer, writing accounting software, for the next twenty years. I don't know about your dad, but mine found some comfort in being able to express the world in numbers, giving him a bit of control over the chaos that was elswhere!