Gosh So Many Operators!
Totally forgot how segmented the system was back then. Local, Toll, Long Distance, Overseas, Overseas with the ability to speak the local language, all required operators.
If one wished to call Paris, France person to person, or reverse charges one had to dial "O" to reach the local operator, who would give the information to and hand you over to an overseas operator to complete the call, and at the other end you got another operator (French) who took things from there since not many Americans back then spoke foregin languages, and MaBell probably wasn't paying any extra to those that did.
Pee Breaks!
Yes, sounds like nursing. Petty supervisors who suddenly became Sargent Majors once they left the ranks, forgetting what is was like when then were in the trenches.
Single Mothers With Children
Yes, again; those female pink collar ghetto jobs were sometimes the only things a single mother (gasp), or divorced/widowed mother (anyone remember Julia?)could get, badly paying as they were. And as moms do, they had t omake phone calls to check their kids and those who were minding them. Being a single parent also meant many times women had to call in sick because their children were ill, and there was no one to mind them. Of course if this happened too often, one was let for being absent too often.
Can only imagine some of the sick pervs that many operators had to deal with over the lines.
Moral Responsibility of Operators:
Always wondered, in the days before Enhanced 911 and such, if an operator took a call and could hear something not nice going on, say a woman being screaming as she was being beated by a husband or boyfriend, and either never got out the words "get me the police" before the phone hung up, or the line simply went dead, did operators have any legal or moral code of ethics to contact the local LE?
L.
Totally forgot how segmented the system was back then. Local, Toll, Long Distance, Overseas, Overseas with the ability to speak the local language, all required operators.
If one wished to call Paris, France person to person, or reverse charges one had to dial "O" to reach the local operator, who would give the information to and hand you over to an overseas operator to complete the call, and at the other end you got another operator (French) who took things from there since not many Americans back then spoke foregin languages, and MaBell probably wasn't paying any extra to those that did.
Pee Breaks!
Yes, sounds like nursing. Petty supervisors who suddenly became Sargent Majors once they left the ranks, forgetting what is was like when then were in the trenches.
Single Mothers With Children
Yes, again; those female pink collar ghetto jobs were sometimes the only things a single mother (gasp), or divorced/widowed mother (anyone remember Julia?)could get, badly paying as they were. And as moms do, they had t omake phone calls to check their kids and those who were minding them. Being a single parent also meant many times women had to call in sick because their children were ill, and there was no one to mind them. Of course if this happened too often, one was let for being absent too often.
Can only imagine some of the sick pervs that many operators had to deal with over the lines.
Moral Responsibility of Operators:
Always wondered, in the days before Enhanced 911 and such, if an operator took a call and could hear something not nice going on, say a woman being screaming as she was being beated by a husband or boyfriend, and either never got out the words "get me the police" before the phone hung up, or the line simply went dead, did operators have any legal or moral code of ethics to contact the local LE?
L.
, "Mr Telephone" is the flipside of "Dance if you want to dance" (a somewhat nicer song).
