Inspired by another thread, what does an operator on the telephone do?
I was always told in an emergency you can dial zero, and they will connect you to whatever you need, or you can just dial 911.
What other services do operators offer?
They do things like person-to person calls, bill to a third party, collect calls (most of that is automated though, but sometimes it doesn’t work correctly or the automated system can’t understand you correctly). There are still quite a few international calls that need help to be placed (though you may have to dial “0-0” instead of “0”
I would imagine the “0” does a lot of redirecting to appropriate numbers these days.
I was a “0” operator in the mid 00’s for “your local telephone company”. We handled calls within the caller’s LATA, or “calling area”, which can be local (free) calls or “toll” calls. Calls between LATAs and international calls are handled by what most people call “long-distance companies” and you can reach that operator (maybe, good luck) by dialing “00”. Like everything dealing with the phone co, it’s highly complicated and hard to explain and the result of confusing regulation and deregulation.
Markxxx is right. Just about everything we did was already covered by some automated system or other, but we were a bit of a human backup. Actually, we could place calls just like the old days–if someone called and said, “Operator, get me 555-5555,” I could do it, but the charge for doing so was, frankly, insane. However, we still had takers. We suspected that many of them had figured out that it got around some sort of call screening. Others either mentioned that they were having trouble getting through or they were blind or otherwise disabled. For those customers, we put them through at the direct dial rate. We did a lot to help disabled customers, and kind of got to know some of them, since they would call so frequently.
We did put callers through to emergency services. 911 is definitely faster, because we would have to look up the number for your area (and those were the only numbers we had–for all others, people had to call 411) and then dial it. However, if 911 wasn’t working for some reason, or wasn’t available in an area (I don’t think that was really applicable by the time I was an operator, but there were some remote rural areas we served, so perhaps there were still a few places without 911 even then) it was certainly an option. We would stay on the line until we were sure that we were through to someone who could help.
We also put a lot of people through to the business office or repair for their phone company and told a lot of people what time and day it was. If the OP is referring to the thread I think he is, I explained there why we could only offer “approximate time” by looking at the clock on the wall. I dreaded the days when we switched from standard to daylight time (and vice versa).
I loved putting through collect calls and person-to-person calls. Those calls made me feel like a real operator. Station-to-station collect calls can mostly be handled by automated systems (we’d only get them if there were problems, or if an operator was requested) but all person-to-person requests went through to the operator, since there was no way the automated system would know if you’d reached the right person or not. Not very many of those, since they are expensive.
We also helped with pay phones, which were a dying concern even then. We could even tell which coins were dropped into the phone. We would come on the line if the person ignored the request for more money and disconnect the call if they did not comply. We also dialed a lot of toll free numbers for calling cards on pay phones. This was to get around the pay phone surcharge which takes away minutes from the card. We were told to just put the calls through back when I was working there, but the last time I tried it as a customer, in '07, I was refused, so that policy has apparently changed. Too bad, those were easy calls, and that surcharge is a ripoff.
The other big thing we did, which only we could do, was verify conversation on and interrupt busy lines. I really liked those calls, too. When we verified conversation, we could not hear what the people were saying. (No eavesdropping!) The conversation was garbled until we interrupted. We could only ask people to give up the line, but we were a bit more demanding if the police were involved. (Usually, the police had gotten a hang-up 911 call, and they are required to call back and make sure there is not a real emergency.)
Nowadays, most normal people will never need to call an operator. The verify/interrupt calls are about the only ones that could not be handled by some automated system or in some other way. The job was a lot of “You need to dial 411” and “Please dial 0 + the area code and number” and “You may want to try dialing ‘00’ to reach your long distance company.” Kind of frustrating. It was a basic call center job in many ways, but we didn’t sell anything, so that was nice.
in pre-911 the operator was important for getting emergency help. if you were in an emergency panic they could connect you without dialing and/or looking up the numbers (it was on phone book covers or just inside page).
Years ago I had a Toronto operator help me to find a phone number in England.
Reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon from the early 1950s. A pudgy Babbitish man in a business suit is on the phone saying, “Yes, I am aware that I can dial this call direct. However, I have no desire to do so.”
*I used to have a hardbound collection of all the NY cartoons, 1950 to 1955. How I was bereft of it I don’t recall, but I sure wish I had it now.
We dialed “0” for murder.
No, sorry that was “M”.
Back in the old days when you actually dialed the telephone, the operator did a lot of services for you. For example:
[ul]
[li]Person to Person Calling: Back in the days when long distance was Ma Bell’s main revenue generator (Ma Bell made little to no money on local calls, but a bundle on long distance. It was a way to ensure that all people were more or less able to afford phone service – and to get them to call long distance), long distance calls could be quite expensive. Cheap long distance has made this obsolete.[/li]
If you needed to contact a particular person for a brief message, but that person might not be there, you could use Person-to-Person long distance. You’d call the operator, the operator would contact the number, and see if that person was available. If not, the operator would find out when that person might be there and then let you know when you should try again.
[li]Emergencies: Before 911 service, you called the operator because they knew the various emergency numbers for all the local towns in their exchange. 911 service has made this obsolete.[/li][li]Regular Long Distance: I still remember back as a little kid in the 1960s my dad dialing the operator in order to call my grandma who lived quite a distance away. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s when we got 1+ dialing.[/li][li]Looking up Long Distance Numbers*: Before 555-1212 service, you had to ask the operator for the number.[/li][li]Overseas Calling: Calling overseas was not automated until the 1980s. If you wanted to call a foreign country (other than Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada which had area codes), you called the operator.[/li][li]Phone problems: You use to call the operator when you had problems with your phone. The operator could connect you to the local repair center.[/li][li]Collect Calls: There was a time when a collect call was the price of the call plus a $2.00 charge. After a while, they used 0+ dialing (you dialed the number, and then the operator would come on line to take the information). Then, MCI and AT&T battled it out with 1-800-COLLECT and 1-800-OPERATOR service. Funny thing is that these services charge you $6 for the connection + $2/minute. With dirt cheap long distance, you never call collect.[/li][li]Calling Cards: Not the ones you dial an access number and then a password and then your number. Ma Bell had her own you give to your child or for you to call from pay phones. Originally, you had to call the operator to use them. Later on, you used 0+ dialing. Somewhere along the line, these became extremely expensive charging $1.50 per minute. [/li][li]Lonesome and Need Someone to Talk To: See this Jim Crose song Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)[/li][/ul]
Now, there are TWO Operators (local one and long distance one), and I am not sure who I get if I dialed “0”. I haven’t done it in years. Long distance is free as part of my calling plan, so person-to-person and collect calls are simply irrelevant. We now dial 911 for emergencies, I prefer to look up numbers using GOOG411 on on the Internet instead of paying $1.75 to find a number. (Besides, if the person only has a cell phone, information won’t have that number).
Telephone calling cards are simply obscene, and you’re better off using pre-paid third party cards that charge only a few cents per minute. Even better, almost everyone has a cellphone, so there’s no need to use a pay phone.
Some places use 711 for local phone repair and service, but most of the time, you have to look in the phonebook (what’s that?) to find the local service number. The operator won’t connect you there any more.
International long distance is either accessed by dialing 011 or 001 or 1010101111 or who knows if you want to pay a bazillion bucks per minute, but is a few pennies per minute if you use third calling parties. My wife dialed direct once using AT&T and ended up paying $30 for a ten minute call. She suddenly decided that Skype wasn’t all that complex.
Dialing 0 for the operator was something everyone had to know at one time, but technology has rendered almost obsolete.
Another thing you used to need the operator for was ZEnith calls. There was no Z on the standard telephone dial, and in those days television pitchmen were always telling you to call ZEnith 5-5555 or whatever the number was, to order the product. I don’t remember for sure but the Vega-Matic, and the Ronco gadgets, were probably sold through ZE numbers. There were also RIchmond numbers that were much the same. You could theoretically dial an RI number, but you needed to go through the operator to make the call collect, as you were always invited to do.
ZEnith calls were a precursor to toll-free (1-800, etc.) numbers. It was a way to automatically call a company collect–they would always accept the charges on that number, so no need for the operator to stay on the line to ask. I was taught about them in my operator training, and was lucky enough to get one request for one! We had a place in the database for the ones that were active in any given area, with the toll-free numbers that they actually use today (that’s what we would dial).
One day, I was walking around my neighborhood, and saw an old plaque on a telephone pole that gave the “call before you dig” number as a ZEnith number. Looked it up when I went to work, and sure enough, it was still “active”.
I remember dialling 0 to ask an operator to reverse or reduce the charges for a long distance call where I couldn’t hear the person I had called or they couldn’t hear me.
I’ve used Operators a few times in recent years to call a number that, when I dialed it, yielded only silence (as if it were waiting for more digits). They were generally able to reach it.
When I started my current job (which was quite a while ago), the local hardware store could only be reached by dialing 0 and asking for them. Shortly after this they finally got a direct dial number. I gather this was pretty unusual and had something to do with the old management of the store and the local phone company office.
Occasionally one must call the Operator to find out what one’s number is, for example to page somebody to call a public phone with an unmarked number.
I did a short stint as an operator in the mid 90’s for an LD Company. I loved the ones who would call and want the charges dropped on an LD call that was “poor quality”.Oh? It was poor quality and you managed to talk for 20 minutes? “Yes but there was static and the volume was very low.” :roll:
I get that people try to game the system, but is it impossible that there was static and low volume? It’s not a stretch to think that people could talk for 20 minutes through static & low volume.
No it’s not a stretch. But to go ahead with the call for 20 minutes THEN ask for a refund? Thats like going to a restaurant and then asking for a refund on the terrible food, not after a bite or two, but after you’ve cleaned the plate.
People did used to game the system by calling collect as a pre-arranged signal, such as “OK, I got back home”. The callee would then refuse the charges, having obtained the needed information.
I remember my parents doing this to give us the “all clear” call home when traveling overseas, by asking for a specific name in a person-to-person call that was a prearranged fake.
<system cheated>
“This is a collect person-to-person call for Mr. You-Know-Who from Mr. Wink-Wink calling from Somewhere Very Far Away…”
“There is no Mr. Wink-Wink here at this number, sorry.”
click
</system cheated>