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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.
 
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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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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. 
 
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.
 
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)
 
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.
 
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.

http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/digpl...ry:Telephone_numbers/Telephone_exchange_names
 
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.
 

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