π«π½πππ πΏπΎπππ: OPERATOR! ©KENNETH E. HALL LONDON DECEMBER 3, 2017
"Operator, well could you help me place this call?" -- from the song by Jim Croce
"Operator: Get me Alexander 2222!" pleaded a frustrated and befuddled Lou Costello in that 1942 comedy classic "Who Done It?"
In the Sixties, we still had telephone operators for long-distance, but not for making everyday phone calls. We still had exchanges, like ALexander-2222, and payphone calls then cost a dime. Heck, in New Orleans, they only cost a NICKEL!!
It's been a very long while since I dialed "Zero" for an operator, and just as long since I dialed anybody - since rotary phones have been replaced by push-button sets since the later Sixties.
So what of the Operator, who sat behind a switchboard and helped us complete our calls? They are but a memory - a Sixties memory to be sure.
Here is my tribute to them:
In the Sixties, we still had telephone operators for long-distance, but not for making everyday phone calls. We still had exchanges, like ALexander-2222, and payphone calls then cost a dime. Heck, in New Orleans, they only cost a NICKEL!!
It's been a very long while since I dialed "Zero" for an operator, and just as long since I dialed anybody - since rotary phones have been replaced by push-button sets since the later Sixties.
So what of the Operator, who sat behind a switchboard and helped us complete our calls? They are but a memory - a Sixties memory to be sure.
Here is my tribute to them:
ONE thing I remember about the Fifties, and even the Sixties was the telephone operator. Even well after the days of old fashioned switchboard operators completing calls, the more modern telephone operator was still an important, yet never-recognized, part of our lives — at least it was back when.
If you needed help right away, you could always dial "0", and a nasally voice answered immediately "Ah'prader!"
In the 'Sixties, Lilly Tomlin on Laugh-In poked good-natured fun at these ladies-behind-the-scenes, but they put our calls through, and were a human voice behind an otherwise impersonal system.
Nowadays we use the phone so much more than we did back then - like comedian George Carlin once said: "We talk more, but say less."
The late, great Jim Croce sang about the operators of our land as he asked the Operator: "Oh won't you help me place this call?"
How many of us got into a jam, and there was this human voice on the other end, ready to contact the fire department or the police.
.....And they did all that and more, for just one lousy silver dime!
I haven't "dialed" "0" in so very long.... I wonder what would happen if I did? Would I actually hear someone on the other end, or would I just get treated to a litany of inane generic prompts, recordings, and tinny music?
What my point is, is that along the way through the years, we have lost that HUMAN touch. In our mad rush for instant gratification, we find that now, the 0perator is by and large ... extinct.
I remember those days long ago when there were real people out there, somewhere, on that phone line, and somehow whatever problems or issues I might have had were made a bit less stressful, less sad, less frustrating when I'd hear that voice come through the receiver.
"Thank you for your time, ah, you've been so much more than kind!
And you can keep the dime!" — "Operator" - sung by Jim Croce
https://youtu.be/zaE-sBJQixg
