Monday, September 21, 2009

My First Job - Long Distance Telephone Operator for Ma Bell of Canada


Back in 1959/60, I was hired by the Bell Telephone Company of Canada as a long distance operator. I remember that the tests to be hired were extensive. They told me I qualified for either a long distance or information operator and asked me which I'd rather do. The pay was the same to start (not very much), so I picked what sounded like more diversity: long distance. I was never sorry. I liked the work.

This was before "Direct Dial", which some of you may not even remember. Local calls were automated by this time in Hamilton, Ontario, but all calls outside the city went through us. Each pair of cords handled a single route call. Complex calls to rural places like northern Quebec, had to go through other operators and sometimes involved more than one pair of chords. We looked up the destination in a route manual. There was one at each desk and was updated frequently. We dialed on a rotary dial, I doubt there was any other kind at that time.

There was a monitor knob that could be pulled back to listen, but we were firmly forbidden to use it except at prescribed times. The many rules were strictly enforced. In the year I worked there, I saw two girls fired on the spot; escorted out of the building. One was more or less lifted out of her chair by her dress collar and escorted to the elevator as the supervisor spoke strongly into her ear.

Our fifteen minute breaks were precisely recorded. The clerk at the door wrote down the minute and seconds that you left and returned to the work room. At your review you were told how many minutes and seconds you were 'tardy'. I remember an early review where I was told that I had been tardy for six minutes that month. I couldn't believe it since I was in the habit of arriving early. The supervisor told me that the six minutes had added up from coming back late from breaks.

You were given set phrases to use to respond to customers and you were not to deviate from them, period. I still remember the phrases we had to use, for example: "The line is busy, would you like me to try again later?" Busy calls were tried every ten minutes for one hour then the customer was called back and told: "That number is still busy, would you try our call again later, please."

I can still feel the headset we wore. It was so heavy that by the end of a shift it had imprinted my head, not my hair, my head. The back-combed hairstyles were squished down too, but one doesn't worry about that when the top of your skull has an indentation.

Pay phone calls were the most fun. At least, they were to me. Perhaps because of the service men who liked to flirt with operators. Some of the "escorted from the building gals" had been caught making dates with these fellas. Anyway, I never did; too scared to lose the job. A quarter made two bongs; a dime, two pings; a nickel, one ping. We timed these calls pretty closely so we could break in on the line and request the additional coins. The supervisors monitored us frequently.

When I left the job to accompany my family to California, I was taking classes to be a Training Supervisor; so I was up for promotion. In the next forty-four years I only had one other job that I liked as well and that was with AAA Arizona. I worked for them as an Auto Travel Counselor for over ten years. For that job I had lived my life to that point, it suited me so well.