Patrick
Your comment regarding rudeness to male operators made me recall a situation that I had archived a long time ago. Upon giving my usual greeting ("Operator 837, may I help you?"), the male caller stated, "Why don't you get a job working in the field like the real men?" It really didn't bother me at first but then he said, "You sound like a faggot to me." Well, that set me off and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I calmly replied, "Sir, if you are soliciting a date, I'm not interested." He promptly hung up on me and I was lucky I was not being monitored by my Supervisor for tone of service. My friend Steve, who was sitting next to me overhard what I said and was hysterical when I told him the whole story(I too was somewhat of a rebel and was never shy about voicing my opinion to the Supervisors). What these ignorant callers did not realize was that not all male operators were gay. There were several male employees that worked in the field, became injured on the job and were realigned into Operator Services because they could not perform their regular job, some permenantly.
Additionally, in response to the question of resentment toward male operators by the females, I have to echo Fred's statement. I, as well as all the other males were embraced into what was previously a female world. I will never forget one tenured female operator though. Her name was Vera Gilliland and at the time, she had been employed for 25 years. She was my assigned mentor upon completion of training and my being new and low on the seniority list, I got crummy hours. Vera on the other hand worked Mon-Fri, 7am-4pm. After becoming more acquainted, she out of the blue said, "Robbie, you are young and probably like to go out and do things so I will trade hours with you on Fridays so you can go out and have fun." She did this every week until I was able to pull a 4pm to 11pm shift(nothing was happening at the clubs until after 10 anyway). I never forgot that and even after being promoted and moving over to the Business Office, I still stayed in touch with Vera. Even attended her retirement 5 years later. The sad part was that poor kind hearted Vera suffered a major heart attack and died 1 month pursuant to retirement. She was extremely loved and her memoral service was a fine tribute to a wonderful woman. On a smilar note, the phone company employees were very close knit and stuck together. Some had spouses that worked in other areas of the Company and formed a rather large network. When my mother passed away in 1994, there were 35 of my telephone company friends that attended the services, including a few of those old cronie Operator Services Supervisors I had worked for in previous years. Like Fred, I had a wonderful experience and an enjoyable career with GTE in spite of all the restrictions I initially experienced.
Robb
, "Mr Telephone" is the flipside of "Dance if you want to dance" (a somewhat nicer song).
