Changes. They happen to all of us. Some of them welcome, some not so much. There's an old saying to the effect that 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.' This is true, to some extent. The world changes around people, all right, but human nature pretty much stays the same, absent a deep fundamental change is made. Again, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes due to circumstances around them. When I sought and obtained a job outside my home, my life changed dramatically. I became part of a large group of telephony employees who were like another family. Nowadays I seldom see most of them, but my fond memories remain. Dear Margaret Cobb, who trained a country girl who almost walked out when she saw that long switchboard, has gone to her well-deserved reward. As have others I worked with through the years. Change happens.
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‘Split tours’ and ‘late straights.’ If you recognize those terms you’re probably one of a vanishing sisterhood. A generation to whose hands iPhones appear to be surgically attached have no conception of the history behind their most cherished possession. Once people did not carry in their hand or wear on their ear the means of talking with someone on the other side of the world.
After several years of being a stay-at-home mom, I decided to look for a job. I don’t remember how I hit on the idea of applying for a job as a telephone operator. At that time over a hundred operators worked overlapping shifts at the telephone company downtown. I called, was told to pick up an application and then call for an interview with the Chief Operator.
The Chief Operator’s office opened off a long room filled with a constant buzz from women wearing bulky headsets, their hands in constant motion. I was ready to bolt from the building at my first sight of that long switchboard with its thousands of flashing lights and snaking black cords. But when she interviewed me the attractive dark-haired woman, who became a good friend, apparently saw something in me that told her I would be a good employee. She hired me.
For training by patient soul, Margaret Cobb, I was paired with Donna, still my sweet younger friend, who yet labors in the vineyards of telephony. (Or may be retired by now. I need to get in touch.) Though always an introvert, preferring a book to interacting with people, I learned and even became a competent operator. An enjoyable part of the job was connecting to operators all across the country as we ‘built’ our long-distance circuits for calls. Some of them would try and keep us talking a bit longer to hear our southern accent. We handled ship-to-shore calls through marine operators and complicated ‘ring-down’ circuits to telephones in the deserts out west.
Computers, fiber optics, cell towers, and orbiting satellites changed in a couple of decades the way our world communicates as completely as the internal combustion engine changed transportation a hundred years earlier.
After several years of being a stay-at-home mom, I decided to look for a job. I don’t remember how I hit on the idea of applying for a job as a telephone operator. At that time over a hundred operators worked overlapping shifts at the telephone company downtown. I called, was told to pick up an application and then call for an interview with the Chief Operator.
The Chief Operator’s office opened off a long room filled with a constant buzz from women wearing bulky headsets, their hands in constant motion. I was ready to bolt from the building at my first sight of that long switchboard with its thousands of flashing lights and snaking black cords. But when she interviewed me the attractive dark-haired woman, who became a good friend, apparently saw something in me that told her I would be a good employee. She hired me.
For training by patient soul, Margaret Cobb, I was paired with Donna, still my sweet younger friend, who yet labors in the vineyards of telephony. (Or may be retired by now. I need to get in touch.) Though always an introvert, preferring a book to interacting with people, I learned and even became a competent operator. An enjoyable part of the job was connecting to operators all across the country as we ‘built’ our long-distance circuits for calls. Some of them would try and keep us talking a bit longer to hear our southern accent. We handled ship-to-shore calls through marine operators and complicated ‘ring-down’ circuits to telephones in the deserts out west.
Computers, fiber optics, cell towers, and orbiting satellites changed in a couple of decades the way our world communicates as completely as the internal combustion engine changed transportation a hundred years earlier.
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