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Late to the party.......

What a great bunch of collections we have here! Amazing the cross-interests that keep popping up amongst us all.

Here's the obligatory shot of the current state of the collection. I'd guess about 10 years ago or so I shifted into bringing home only a couple sets each year. Back then of course you could still find desksets for a buck or two at the yard sales. If I went on a big trip I'd bring back a phone. There's a red rotary model from Amsterdam, a desktop payphone from England, etc.

No switchboards here (I wish!) but there is a red Independent booth in the backyard wired up to an AE side-mount wall set : ) I keep the more obscure stuff on another set of shelves and the riffraff piles up here. The latest addition is a WE Explosion Proof set that was reconditioned and mothballed sometime in the 80's.

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A former TSPS Operator

What memories this brings back. Fred N, you & I have shared stories about being telephone operators. I started with GTE in Redondo Beach, CA in Jan, 1975, as a toll operator. Worked the cord boards until TSPS was implemented. Bell had it well before GTE but then, that's why were #2. The stories about the breaks, etc. were factual. If you had to use the restroom, you had to call the control desk and "ask" to go on a "special". You could get a reply like, "I have one person out and 5 waiting, I'll put you on the list." To boot, if you had a record of taking too many specials, you would be written up and placed on disciplinary action. AND, God help you if you took a special for anything other than a bathroom break. I remember one of my co-workers took a special and went into the break room to place a call to check on her kids. The Operator Services Supervisor caught her, hung up the phone and told the employee to go back to work....phone calls were to be placed on lunch or scheduled break time only. Naturally, the employee got written up. You could not EVER be late, not even 1 minute. That was 1/2 of an attendance occurence (an absence equalled 1)and if you had 4 occurrences in a 6 month period, you were placed on discliplinary action. OH THE MEMORIES!! I spent 9 months as an operator before being promoted to Supervisor. I only stayed another 3 months before transferring to the Business Office as a Supervisor. What started out as a temporary job ended up being a 20 year career for me. My last job with GTE was in the Executive Offices as a Customer Relations Manager. Job was phased out and took the buyout in 1995, almost 20 years to the date I was hired.

Greg in GA (hey fellow Georgian)....here's the Telephone Man song you referenced. We used to laugh like hell at that song. My partner also worked for GTE as an installer and it was funny how so many of the guys had that exact reputation.

Robb

 
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.
 
Backing Up Thread

Never has one woman done more for silk slips, than Liz Taylor in Butterfield8. Back then a girl had to start laying down plans at about 13 to fill out a garment like that. Today of course one simply visits the wizard on Park and 73rd.

Ahh the days of cigarette smoking, booze drinking (and for brushing one's teeth in a la Liz) broads! *LOL*

The one thing I've found so funny about that film is Liz running all over Manhattan trying to give that damn fur coat back to her ex lover, that she nabbed out of his wife's closet.
 
Lilly Tomlin

I have that recording and love it! It really captures the mood at the phone company back then. My board is a 556A (manual auxilliary to a 556A crossbar PBX) which has ten manual circuits which work like a 555. All hooked up with AC and DC power to the vintage phones. What fun. You will also notice the genuine WE switchboard chair that goes with it. I also have a genuine multi-leaf and mark-sense pencil and dialer. Ahh, the good old days.

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Meant to ask, but thought I shouldn't.

Was it hard for you men that were "male" telephone operators? Cannot remember ever hearing a man's voice whenever I dialed "O" or "411", as a youngster, though common enough after the 1980's or so.

Seem to remember hearing that women where chosen for switchboard operators because of their perceived better hand to eye cordination. There was of course the fact MaBell though her customer's preferred to hear a female voice, over a male.

How did the women operators react when men started showing up on the scene. It never was easy for "male" nurses, outside of phsyc, and the military. Many female nurses gave them a hard time, and or would call them first if there was heavy lifting to do or move a patient.
 
Laundress

I had a great time in the toll office. In Park Ridge, they had a few male telephone operators, primarily students. In DeKalb, I was the first. They loved me. I only remember one subscriber who freaked out when I said "Operator". I told her to hang up and call back. That story is recounted in the newspaper article posted. As Mike said, I could write a book, of my experiences and the conversations I heard. The rules were strict, but the pay was good and the hours right for a student accountant at Northern Illinois University. I only have fond memories of the experience.
 
By the time I started working for the phone company (1979) about 1/3 of the operators were men. Yes, you did occasionally get the rude customer (almost always a man) who wanted a female operator. Sometimes they would be bold enough to say something like "get a real job" or some other slam. You learned to deal with it. What I hated the most were the emegency calls. This was before the days of 911. I remember as if it happened yesterday the first call I had with a woman screaming for an ambulance because her father was having a heart attack. I swear my adrenaline almost gave me one.

Then there were the constant 'verify' and 'emergency interrupts' before they started charging for them. This was before many people had call waiting or their areas switch didn't provide the feature. It was usually teenagers that couldn't deal with the busy signals and so wanted the line interrupted. One time I listened to see what the emergency was (I know-shame on me!) They just wanted to play their friend the new record they had bought that day. No kidding!

Another treat was telling customers that their long distance call could be directly dialed by dialing 1, the area code, and the 7 digit number. Boy did the old timers hate hearing that. They wanted it dialed for them. I could go on and on!!!

Patrick
 
I love all things telephony and have a growing pile of them since they're hard to resist when found cheap.
I can still remember our home phone number from the 50's EDgewater 72691 and my aunt next door Digby40956. We shared a two line party with them because for one thing it was cheaper and secondly granny lived 140 miles away, long distance, so mom, aunt, and granma could have a "conference call". Our partyline had ordinary rings though, not those distinctive long short varied rings that multi house party lines had.

A couple of other things I remember from waaay back was when touch tone service was introduced around 63 or 64 and Bell had a display downtown with the new pushbutton phones hooked up to these big clock like timers so when you picked up the receiver to start dialing the timer would start and you could see how fast your call went through. Then one day at school about grade 3 or 4 I remember a guy from the phone company coming to class with this fun setup of two desk phones with long cords hooked up to a little suitcase size "operators switchboard" complete with yes Toggleswitches and we all got turns putting the calls through between the two desk sets which were set on either side of the classroom. How I'd love to have that little gizmo now.

Can you believe that in the 40 years since Touch tone service became available and they charged you extra for it, that Bell here no longer offers dial service yet they still charge $2 something per month on our phone bill for Touch Tone service extra. They're still ripping.. LOL Don't get me started on their customer service calls routed to India again..geesh.

Oh,,just remembered something else going way back to when I was a kid and there were still the old 3 slot payphones. You could rip a strip off the cover of the phonebook just wide enough to go down the dime slot and sometimes get a free call LOL
 
That's crazy that any telco is still charging extra for touchtone. You'd think it would be the other way around.

When I was a service rep we had a situation where we had a lot of rain and the parking lot was starting to fill with water. The people at "in charge" (so many terms were shared by both Ma Bell and Verizon) kept everyone on the phones as the water continued to rise. They were all women and were too chickenshit to make a decision to evacuate. They called the area manager who had to drive over to the building in the middle of a storm to tell us to evacuate. As soon as he got into the office he was incredulous that they didn't already have us out of the building and angrily asked those women what they were thinking by keeping us on the phones. He was a big bear of a guy and I always liked seeing him. It was nice to know that he was also a reasonable person.

Still today these "in charge" people are glued to what I used to refer to as the "boob tube" that displays everything every service rep has been doing and for how long. They let that boob tube call the shots. They refuse to think for themselves. It was really hard to respect any of them and I was definitely considered a troublemaker a lot of the time.

I was so glad to get out of that environment, but it took a boss who actually wanted to see her people advance to get me out. The others did everything they could to keep you from getting out of the business office.

The days of mutual loyalty between Ma Bell and her employees are long gone and the turnover rate for service reps is off the charts. This is why you can't get decent customer service anymore. Nobody stays in that position long enough to learn it--and there is tons to learn--so you're getting a seriously diminished level of overall experience from the business offices anymore. Basically they have dumbed down the job so much that they could pull somebody off the street and sit them down at a terminal and they could do the job. That speaks volumes about the long lost focus on customer service.

I never could relate to Ernestine, although I couldn't help but love her. I was always happy with Pacific Telephone's service but I guess over in NYNEX country the situation was quite different.
 
Gisele MacKenzie

Has anyone heard Gisele MacKenzie's "Mr. Telephone" ?
.... "Mr. Telephone.. RING your MAGIC BELL..da da da da da. Let me hear the voice I know so well.... Why did we drift apart? Oh WHY did he break my poor heart? "

Back in the mid 1960s we found my Grandmother's Gisele records. Of course, we played the flipsides. When we found Gisele's BOMB "Mr Telephone", we laughed ourselves silly and played it over and over and over and over and over. I though my Mom was going to KILL US!
If there are any record buffs here :), "Mr Telephone" is the flipside of "Dance if you want to dance" (a somewhat nicer song).
As a joke one of my friends bought me the CD "The Best of Gisele MacKenzie". And NO - the disc was not blank.
 
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
 
Robb

I'm with you. I have some very fond memories of some wonderful people who were "lifers" at the phone company. One of my best friends had two aunts who worked there as operators and died millionaires with the pension (and stock) they received (of course, they never spent anything either!)

The only time I got in trouble was when I was just "coming out" and called my boyfriend in Chicago from the toll service desk "on duty" and saw the supervisor light flashing on my position. Boy, I hit the release key faster than lightning!!

Fred
 
Gosh, I've learned so much reading this thread! Fabulous!

So, all this talk about phones... had my eyes open while out thrifting today. I found a cute little burgundy trimline... Was only $2.99--so I grabbed it. It just needs a new cord. So I thought.

Went to try it out, and I get a dial tone, but when I push a button... nada, nothing, zilch.
I tried a different handset cord and a different cord to the wall. Still nothing.

Any ideas what could possibly be wrong with it?

I'd love to get it up and running again! And... any clue where to find a new handset cord--should I be successful in getting it working..?

~Fred

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Freddo

You have an early Trimline. The circular buttons give it away. Two wires for the light in the handset and two wires for the phone. The phone wires must be wired properly (tip and ring)(polarity) or it won't work. These things are bullet-proof. Give me a call and we'll work you through it. There is hope for you yet as a phone guy!

Ida
 

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