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What They Said X2

I started as a toll operator at NJ Bell in 1972. One of the first men to do the job. Watched every minute, begging for bathroom breaks (they were called "necessaries" - God forbid a caller should overhear the word "bathroom"!). When I was hired, they would not hire you as an operator if you were left-handed; the rationale being you would "throw off" the operator to your left. Also forget being hired if you were overweight. They'd tell you to lose X amount then come back. When I went to the business office after a couple years it was just as bad. Secretly monitored constantly. Automatic call distribution meant your next customer "arrived" the moment your last one hung up. Dumbass managers who didn't have an original thought in decades. Windowless offices. You may have thought that telephones ran on electricity. Wrong. They ran on fear and intimidation. No wonder so many employees turned to drugs and/or alcohol. We had a joke that when the telephone truck drove down the highway the white line disappeared. Nevertheless, it paid the bills for someone who barely graduated high school. I retired with a pension+paid benefits after 31 years of hell.

Ever wonder how area codes were assigned? Only the telco could come up with this! They were first used by the operators before customers could direct-dial long distance. So it was all determined by how long it took the dial to turn around. So cities with lots of incoming traffic had area codes that used numbers at the beginning of the dial: New York 212, Los Angeles 213, Chicago 312, Detroit 313 for example. Following that were "second tier" areas using the lower digits with a zero in the middle: Washington DC: 202, New Jersey 201, Connecticut 203 and so forth. [this post was last edited: 8/21/2012-15:59]
 
I've heard that about the area codes, and I believe it, but it seems odd they'd go to 201, 202 etc., instead of 211, 221, and so forth....if the object was just to make the dialing stroke shorter. Must have been some reason for it, though.
 
One Imagines At First The Job Looks Glam

But to be sat sitting for eight hours per day dealing with hundreds of callers per hour would drive one mad. Having to always remain "in character" would also kill the joy pour moi. I'm the sort that likes to cut loose every now and then to break the monotony.

And now for something really interesting.

 
Ethnic Diversity, and Women, This was the launching pad

These were tough jobs with tough supervison, not the most desirable working conditions and this was before all the current regulation protecting workers ( FMLA and ADA etc )

Working for "Big Red" I have seen so many examples of people who started out as line operators, pole diggers with a high school diploma who are now in Director and VP positons. The common thread was always looking for the next position and having a good understanding of where the telecom business was going and making tactical moves in your career and education to align yourself with the future oppurtunities.

These entry level postions paid a decent salary for an hourly worker during that time. Many people of color , women and to some extent gay and lesbian people used these postions as a launching pad and moved righ up the ladder. 16 years ago I was a CSR in a call center, now I am an HR manager and plan to move to marketing next.
 
If you look closely, at the deck of the switchboards, you can just make out the ticket timing device. It was known as a Calculagraph, or Calculograph. To begin timing a call, a time ticket is inserted and the green handle is pulled. This printed three clock faces on the ticket, with one of them showing the start time by printing clock hands. When the call is finished, the ticket is again inserted into the Calculagraph, the red handle is pulled, and hands are printed on the remaining clock faces to show the elapsed time and the stop time.
 
Tom, you are correct about separate space being provided in switching offices for cell providers as well as frame clouds for Cisco, etc.  Their equipment is usually surrounded by cyclone fencing and locked gates.  The LEC's frames (in my case Pacific Bell) were out in the open, but the other providers' equipment was always caged and inaccessible to LEC staff.

 

As for maintaining the network, that is indeed a huge expense and the monthly residential service charge doesn't even cover the cost.  One switching office I toured had an actual jet engine in it for back-up power.   Locally, GTE offered service in a pocket area with a fairly affluent population.  GTE's service was abominable and their  subscribers pleaded with Pacific Telephone to pursue taking over service there.  Pac Tel wanted no part of it.  Much of the terrain was mountainous and damp -- a land line maintenance nightmare and a money pit since most of the subscriber base was residential.  Once GTE morphed into Verizon, things improved and even surpassed the quality of Pacific Bell's switching equipment.  We lived in that Verizon pocket for 18 years and the improvement in reliability was dramatic compared to when we first started out with GTE in 1989.

 

Residential landline subscribership has been on the decline in the U.S. for several years.  That part of the telco business will continue to shrink, and this poses an even bigger maintenance expense problem than before and also makes investing in "fiber-to-the-premises" less appealing to shareholders.  I imagine that rates for the near 100% reliability and clear transmission associated with a land line will eventually be so expensive that it will become a luxury instead of a necessity.  What went around may well come back around, and just like when land line service was in its infancy a century or more ago, only the well-off among us may be able to afford one. 

 

How anyone can consider wireless service with its dead zones, static, choppiness and dropped calls an improvement is beyond me, but as with so many things today, the consumer has been conditioned to accept a sub-standard product. 
 
@ Supersuds

Easy explanation. Look at a rotary dial phone, there are no letters associated with "1" or "0".

Prior to DDD, there was no 1+ dialing and most exchanges were letters: MArket 6, COlony 5, so dialing a letter-specific number would route your call automatically. When DDD came about, the switching would recognize the second digit of 1 or 0 as long distance. Or in some cases the 1+ would signal long-distance switching.

The telco also used three-digit numbers internally. 211=long distance, 411=information, 611=repair service, 811=business office. And of course 911.

BTW, remember the days of dialing "0" for fire, police, ambulance? Try doing that nowadays! "Press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc." It will take almost a full minute to reach a live person while your stove is on fire. Progress....
 
This Is Part Of The "Area Code" Problem Some Large U

Areas such as NYC are having. Am old enough to remember the noise people made when NYC was broken up from "212" covering the entire area. Soon even that wasn't enough and plus "1" dialing was not just for long distance but calling anyother area code even if it was a local call.
 
GTE, omg I remember! Dont forget the Party Lines!!

Like Coldspot and CircleW, I remember GTE, they were our local company as well. I guess they covered all of Kentucky back in the 80's. I'm about 2 years too young to remember 4 number dialing in this area, but I do remember party lines. In this area they were not phased out until the mid 90's. Around the same time they phased out the long distance system CircleW described.

A lot of people liked the party lines, they were cheaper (a private line cost extra), and many used them for entertainment by picking up the receiver and eavesdropping on the neighbors conversations, lol. My Grandparents as well as one uncle and his wife held onto their party lines right up until they were phased out in the mid 90s and were not happy at all to be "forced" to pay the extra for having a private line, lol.

As for the long distance system they used, there were some benefits to having to give them the number you were calling from. If you were using a payphone, you could have the call billed to your home number, instead of having to keep feeding the thing quarters or calling collect. Also, it was great for if you were using someone elses phone. When relatives were visiting from out of town, they could call home to check on the kids and such, but have the calls billed to their own number.
 
Switchboards vs Computers

When I started at the call Center here in Lexington in 1999, there were two offices in the building. Toll and DA (Directory Assistance)... I had initially been interviewed for DA, but when the class of (fourteen) people started, they said we were going to be Toll. All of us looked at each other because we didn't know what "Toll" was.

This job was NOT a bad job at all! Nothing like what you saw in the video. There were no switch boards (although some of the operators that started in the mid 90s said they used to work in downtown Lex using the switchboards). We had computers and comfortable chairs. It was very stressful because the calls were back to back and EVERY call was unique and different. So many different scenarios and the main thing I noticed when we started after our two weeks of training was that when the calls came in, most of the calls had NOTHING to do with anything we were trained in!

A good example: Lady calls me from Tampa and she has an elderly aunt who lives alone in rural MN and her phone has been busy for days! She is worried about her. I tried dialing and received a busy as well. Since it was a different phone co in Rural MN, I explained to her that I had no way to check the line. I suggested that she call directory and get the # for the non-emergency police or sheriff and call and explain the situation and see if they could send someone to check on her. I didn't know what else to say? It was things like that that came up all the time that was not on any training material. You sort of learned as you went along. The first year was the most stressful and you learned things everyday.

Another interesting thing: If the customer picked up their phone and dialed (Zero), we were their local operator, so we could not dial long distance. If they needed assistance with LD, we instructed them to hang up and dial double zero (OO) and that would get (whatever LD company on their lines' telephone operator) If they happened to have GTE LD, the call would come right back to us. It was the way that it came into the computer that would allow us to help them based on what they dialed.

We weren't monitored that often and there were never any supervisors hoovering around at all like I saw in the video.

It amazed me how I had to learn subtle things for myself by asking other operators instead of being trained on them......A good example would be when a phone number entered your screen if that # showed up red, there was some sort of block on it and you weren't really supposed to bill a call to that #. Often, people would call and ask you to dial a # for them and you would have to re-key that # in so that # would turn black then dial the # they wanted. Lots of operators did that because they just wanted a local call.........What I found out LATER is that these people had their phones disconnected for non-payment of their phone bill, but if they used their phone to dial (911) , it would go to the ZERO operator since they didn't have 911 service in their area, then they would just ask the operator to dial a # for them. FREE CALL and a lot of operators did it

Third party verification where people would want to call one # and bill it to their home. Someone HAD to be at their home to OK the charges, and if no one was there, we could not do it and they would get angry usually until I would explain to them that anyone could call and bill a # to their home. For whatever reason, they would think WE had records to their account (as if we were the business office of something)......That would annoy me because they always assumed that we could look up their billing info.

I don't EVER remember dialing (0) growing up. It amazed me how many people called the Operator and these were young people. Even if I needed a telephone operator for whatever reason, I do not think that it would even have occurred to me to dial (0). We took calls all over the country. A big area was Tampa and Los Angeles (Part of LA had GTE), and often it was back to back calls.
 
Catholic women

When women entered the work force, early 1900s I mean, the Bell System learned that Catholic women, with a life philosophy that said that hardship was not a big deal, made great 'phone operators.

I kid you not.
 
@ Hunter

You're absolutely right! In the 50s-60s it was a regular thing for Bell System employment people to make visits to Catholic school business classes to recruit. I wish I had not lost a telco internal newspaper want-ad from 1960 that my cousin had saved. One of the come-ons was, "You know what kind of girls we want - girls like the ones we have now".
 
And it's easy to say

It is easy to say 'oh these working conditions are terrible,' forgetting that working conditions everywhere weren't great.

Or to diss 'The Tupperware Lady' as being a stereotype.

But for many women, this was freedom and a way up.

(How many of you have a Tupperware lady? We do, she lives about a couple of miles away. We've never hosted a party though that would be too irritating LOL)
 
I often equated the business office environment to a Catholic school classroom scene.  The women at the "In Charge" desk were the nuns and we students were kept strictly in line.

 

Mark, I can relate to your story of learning as you went along.  You got covered on the basics, but Ma Bell relied on "OJT" (on-the-job-training) across the enterprise.

 

When I started out in project managment, I knew nothing.  I dialed in to conference calls and all I could do was listen and try to learn.  Everything was out of context and it was up to me to make sense of it.  Once I knew what I was doing, that turned out to be the most skate job I ever had.  It made me understand why so many in management loved their jobs as opposed to those on the craft side of the operation hating their oppressive conditions.  Job security was never assured in management positions, but I relished the respect I got from my bosses and being treated like a responsible adult.
 
Well Sort Of

In any mainly female occupation including the pink collar ghettos such as telehpone operators, nursing, primary school teaching, sales girls, etc... you find at least in the early incarnations things being run almost like a boarding school. This was no accident.

It was a long held theory that a pack of females had to be "controlled" as they ddin't know their right minds. Allowing them free rein would encourage their "base" instincts and or let them wander down the wrong path.

Remember while many of these new occupations opened up for females, the proper place for women was supposed to be at home. If a girl should be allowed out to work the place had to be *respectable* so not as to taint.

Despite their image the famous (or infamous) Playboy Bunnies worked under all sorts of rule and regs not too far removed from what one would find at say Ma Bell. They were watched, clocked, told where they could go and when, etc...
 
The "Phone Company" structure, methods & procedures were all based on a military model.  The employees on the front lines were the "Force."  Those people didn't have shifts to work, they had a "tour." 

 

One of my favorite terms was "treatment."  Anybody who was having trouble paying their bill ended up "in treatment" if the condition continued to worsen.   If treatment wasn't effective, the death knell was the dreaded "NPD" or Non Pay Disconnect.  The biggest red flag the system could place on a (closed by default) subscriber's account.

 

Another one I loved because it really captured the issue well referred to subscribers in treatment who had been or were in danger of getting "snipped."  It wasn't spelled that way, it was just a pronunciation of the USOC (Universal Service Order Code -- [you sock]) "SNP" or Suspend for Non Payment.  Kind of like Purgatory compared to NPD Hell.

 

Again, like the military, Phone Company operations were acronym-rich.  Management would have fun coming up with catchy acronyms applied to in-house operations outside of the service order process which didn't require applying for a new USOC through Telecordia, the USOC clearing house. 

 

Creating training materials and order examples would often require creating fake customer names.  My favorite was one that a peer of mine in project management came up with:  Anita Date.

 
 
You are right Laundress

When my mother worked at the "phone" company as an operator there was a certain protocall you HAD to follow or ELSE. It was always "Number PLEEZE". And the necessary Bathroom breaks were Not allowed, especially if it was busy. The supervisors were witches, she said. But she brought home a nice paycheck and I guess thats what made her go back for another week. A few of my great Aunts were supervisors there and even my mother said they had a Jeckle and Hyde personality in and out of the working atmosphere.
 
The First Telephone Operators Were Actually Young Boys

But they were always getting into trouble and or running off/not proving reliable employees.

In the case of most all "pink ghetto" jobs for women employers took advantage of what essentially could be called cheap labour. This goes from everything to convents/religous insitutions, to hospitals, to offices/businesses, children's education and so forth.

Historically "nice" girls had two options in life: marriage or the convent. Those whom had to work found menial jobs such as becoming servants, child minders or paid companions. Of course failing all that there was always going on the game.

When all sorts of employment opened up for them outside the home in offices, shops, etc women leaped at the chance. Considering their vast numbers empolyers were often spoiled for choice. Though wages were low and working conditions often poor (sexual harrassment was quite common), and turnover high. Right up until the 1960's or so employers could legally refuse to hire married women and or those whom were in a family way. If either event did happen whilst employed a woman was expected to clear out before she "showed" if not sooner. Worse a woman could be discharged from her job for something her father, husband, brother or other family member did totally unrelated to herself.

The idea was to impose regime and discipline amoung female workers whose otherwise natural tendencies to prattle on all day and or other habits unsuited to the workplace would take over.

The phrase "women and children" may sound romantic, but at it's core it meant both were subject to and required to have the steady hand of authority (usually male) acting as a control because neither were capable otherwise. Each were weak, feeble minded and totally incapable of "understanding" the larger world. Thinking was a man's job.

Yes, the female supervisors at telephone companies may have been monsters, but who put them there? Can assure you at that time you'd be hard pressed to find few if any women on the otherside of the glass ceiling. The male management gave those women supervisors their marching orders, and many were happy to carry them out.
 
A tour, not a shift

is what we also had! I remember when I first heard that word used I thought it was strange but thought nothing more about it after that.
 

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