Start An Exciting New Career - Become A Toll Telephone Operator

[launderess]

Vintage Bell Atlantic training film from the 1970's. It's killing, simply killing!

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[launderess]

Another

AT&T's last central "office" before being shut down, replaced by direct dialing.

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[wayupnorth]

Working at the phone company

Yes, Laundress, it was a real good job. My mother was an operator for the Bell System before it became New England Tekephone. I went to work for them through all those transitions then Verizion finally ruined everything. I was one of the 500 plus that was laid off, a long time before I planned on retiroing.

 

[gansky1]

That was awesome!  My dad worked for Western Electric (Ma Bell's wire and cable plant) for 32 years, my mom's cousin was there 36 and his wife at the phone company for 28 years.  They were good jobs and you could raise a family and have a comfortable, secure retirement.

 

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[rp2813]

I was never an operator, and I am thankful for that.  I heard many war stories from co-workers who had been operators at one time.  I could relate, because the position of customer service representative was oppressive enough during my first seven years with Pacific Bell.  The best operator story I heard was about a male operator who needed to take a "health break" but wasn't allowed to.  Apparently this had happened to him and others one time too many.  He stood up and relieved himself all over the switchboard.  No doubt he became a hero among his peers and you can bet he got written up for is behavior.  All due to spineless predominantly female management personnel who couldn't bring themselves to make a decision on their own for fear of reprisal from further up the chain of command.

 

[whirlcool]

My mother was an operator for Illinois Bell back in the late 40's. She used to talk about how strict the place was. Somebody was always watching over you. You had to ask for a bathroom break. She said that the supervisors treated you like you were in kindergarten. But she said it did pay good. She worked there for about two years before she had enough of it.

 

[arbilab]

I was at the Western Electric "works" in OKC in winter/spring 1977. Making boards. Yes, very regimented. The building even looked like a prison, besides operating like one. Pay was high, $4/hr was a lot back then, and if we made rate we got bonuses as high as 20%/mo. That is, they took your whole pay for the month including overtime (which was almost always mandatory) and multiplied it by .2 and gave it to you.

I "gave it up" to work in TV engineering for about the same hourly. The "bonus" there was it wasn't a prison, it was a TV station and fascinating.

 

[coldspot]

wow we had switch boards here till the mid 80's then 4 number dialing. I missing the 4 # dial for local calls. What folks forget bell was not the only phone company out there we were GTE. Use to be able to pay bill in person till about 1986 and could see the woman at the switch board working her fingers off. Payphones had no dial and ones that did were locked drop the changed and here number please.

But when most of the usa was on dial system it was cool also. They had a system say you call me from ohio you would never know you hit a manual switch board. They at there end had like caller id it would let the lady who to hook up.

The switch board is still in the office not used but there and could be used if needed. Bad thing can no longer go into the office or even look in the windows since they blocked them out.

 

[hunter]

Laundress, Laundress, Laundress..

No Bell Atlantic in those days. It was "AT&T and Associated Companies" though it may also have been spelled out as "American Telegraph and Telephone."

Yes, operator was a very tough job, though for a lot of people, they considered it dues to get into the Bell System which was a GREAT place to work. Heck, I went to work at the Labs and expected to spend my whole life there. (At the announcement of splitting into AT&T, Lucent, NCR in 1996, I left, believing that they were history. They were but it took a few years to get there.

Yes, there were other companies; three that come to mind were "General Telephone" (GTE) mentioned above, which was a separate company, and others such as Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone (SNET) that were partially owned by AT&T.

Yeah losing Central...Direct Distance Dialing came to the USA in the early 1950s, and International DDD came in in the 1960s. Progress, progress...imagine if you had to phone an operator to make a cell call ;-)

AT&T had phenomenally bad management who could not transition away from a regulated monopoly. The company called AT&T is not -- it is Southwestern Bell who BOUGHT the corpse of the old long distance company, which had once been the largest manufacturing company in the world, and the world's largest employer.

 

[lordkenmore]

Yes, there were other companies

I know of a couple of examples where someone was served by someone who was NOT either AT&T (old days), or a "Baby Bell" (more modern era). I don't know the history--although it would be interesting to find out. My best guess is that the area was rural (which was definitely the case both times), and somehow a small company got in there before AT&T could get around to it. Maybe in some cases AT&T would never have bothered. Indeed, I can even remember a newspaper article probably the late 80s where some odd corner of WA finally got phone service. (Very low population area, undoubtedly.) I can't remember the details, but there was one person quoted who couldn't care less. He liked living with no phone. (Apart from safety, like 911 calls, I can certainly appreciate his view!)

One thing that interests me is the "fate" of the Baby Bell for my area. It was USDirect years back. They got bought out by Qwest. And now Qwest has been bought out by CenturyLink, which apparently started out as one of those small, local phone companies years and years back. It's interesting that such a company could grow to a point where it eventually owns part of the old AT&T system.

 

[rp2813]

the corpse of the old long distance company

And from what I've heard from people still working at the SBC version of AT&T, that company is headed in the same direction, at least from the perspective that they have farmed out so much of the operation that very little of it exists in-house anymore.  As a result, the land-based communications system in this country which has always been among the best in the world, has been seriously compromised with proprietary and sensitive information being shared among vendors all over the globe.

 

So much for the term "No use beating a dead horse."  Looks like SBC has done exactly that and is killing itself off again to appease its greedy cowboy executives and short-sighted shareholders.

 

[circlew]

My mom worked for AT&T two separate times. The first was as an operator at Southern Bell (later known as South Central Bell) in the mid 40's, while my dad was away for the war. In the early 50's while Dad was in the Korean War, she worked for the Western Electric division. She was a secretary to the engineers who were designing and installing the equipment for one of the test areas for Direct Distance Dialing. Both of these jobs were in Hattiesburg, MS. She always spoke highly of the company and the people she had worked with.

Like Coldspot, the area I grew up in had GTE phone service. It was beyond bad. After they installed direct dialing for long distance (70's), they would ask you for the number you were calling FROM. Of course, people would often give someone else's number, which resulted in being billed for calls not made. Connections both local and LD were many times poor, and it was very common in the morning to try making a LD call, and get a fast busy signal (busy trunk) after dialing 1. Add in frequently reaching wrong numbers and crosstalk, and you have a frustrating situation. Also, calls to nearby areas were LD, and cost as much as calling California. Cincinnati Bell Telephone's service area is just a couple miles away, and had far superior service. Many times I went to the closest CBT pay phone to make calls, and many times had to wait in line to use the phone. We finally got local calling to most of the Cincinnati Bell area about 15 years ago. A few years ago the GTE territory was sold to Verizon, and service vastly improved. A couple years ago it was resold to Frontier, and is still good service.

 

[hunter]

cost

Nobody wants to pay the cost of maintaining the physical plant of telephone lines, the cost of central offices with battery backups, etc.

While they may have cowboy executives, I already pay about $100 per month for landline service+dsl. With a huge percentage of folks getting their phone service from cable companies, who will maintain the physical plant?

The money has to come from somewhere.

RIght now the most valuable asset the land line phone companies own is all the copper buried in the ground.

 

[wayupnorth]

Yes, the "phone" company is becoming a dead horse, so to speak. In 2007,Northern New England's division of Verizon was very craftily marketed to FairPoint as the best thing since sliced bread. Only problem was that Verizon had put zero into any capital improvements of the systems and most systems were the old antiquated ones from Ma Bell times. FairPoint had a major struggle to make the improvements needed and lost alot of subscribers because of new system crashes and failures,finally declared bankruptcy, and yours truely was one of the many laid off. Unfortunately in this area of the country, cell service can be spotty at best, due to the rugged terrain, so landlines are sometimes only the reliable way to stay connected because many times there are no other options like cable or alternate phone companies.

 

[hunter]

True for me too.

That was true for me, too, when I lived in western Massachusetts.

It's a bad situation.

 

[franksdad]

I applied for a job with Southern Bell in August 1977, was interviewed, tested, and everything.  I went back for my final interview and was told "We're sorry, but we are unable to hire you at this time because the next "X" number of positions must be filled by minorities."  In other words, I was denied employment because of my skin color.  My next option was to go to college - which I did.  And I wouldn't trade my college degree for all the telephones in China. 

 

[circlew]

In this area at least, both cell and cable phone services are dependent upon the local operating co. (Cincinnati Bell, Frontier, etc.) landline facilities. Cables run from the cell tower sites to the local switching centers to connect calls to landline phones, other cell co. subscribers, and other areas. The Time Warner phone service leases equipment in the local exchange building to connect their calls, as they don't have their own. I'm sure Ralph knows more about this than me, and it may vary by location.

 

[jamiel]

Biggest city to be served by an Independent was/is either Tampa (GTE) or Las Vegas (Centel); other significant cities which were independent: Lincoln, NE (LT&T), Cincinnati (Cincinnati Bell), Rochester NY (Rochester Tel), Lexington, KY (GTE); Ft. Myers, FL (Sprint), Irving, TX (GTE), Ft Wayne, IN (GTE), Lorain, OH (Century) Independents could run the gamut from great (Cincinnati Bell is/was phenomenal) to awful (rural GTE lines apparently were atrocious). If you were in a rural area, you probably were better served either by the Bell System or by a small local independent. Lorain County, Ohio (next door to Cleveland) was the symbol of telco proliferation...there were at least 4 companies in the county (Ohio Bell/Alltel/Century/GTE) and it was nightmarish to do things like internet (my aunt/uncle tell of $500 bills for dial-up internet access in the mid 90s). There was a small pocket of Chicago (O'hare airport/Park Ridge/Des Plaines) which was Centel when the rest of Chicago was Illinois Bell...Illinois Bell finally bought it from Centel in the mid 90s (always weird to visit my grandparents in big bad Chicago and they had a weenie little phone book for Des Plaines/Park Ridge)

 

[mark_wpduet]

Oh wow

I did this for 8.5 years from 1999 to 2008! It was GTE when I started then Bell Atlantic & GTE became Verizon in 2000 I think.

MY MY MY - It was amazing as to how you just became NUMB & UNSHOCKABLE after doing it for a while.