Telephone, Telegraph, Tell-a-woman

Up at 6 this morning and desperately trying to figure out how to do everything, and horror of horror, this appears:

You may be in trouble if your calendar is booked so tightly that you don't have any flexibility built into your schedule. Perhaps you thought that you could come up with a quick fix to your plans if something went wrong, but now it looks like you were being overly optimistic. Don't panic; it might take a few days to untangle all the variables, but you should be able to put the pieces back together in a way that's even better than it was before.

How do it know?

So, here I sit prioritizing the day and taking out two big chunks where I have made committments. Now to fit in a little wax melting and a little border-putting-on. But first, my morning digressions.

TY hates our phones, so he ordered a whole new set for the house. Before I go any further, let me say he THROWS phones- not at me, or the wall, he just throws them down, throws them onto the table, throws them in whatever direction he wants it to eventually BE. Phone don't last long but the previous generation of phone was built a whole lot sturdier than these bitty electronic things we can get today for megabucks. Remember the cast iron phones (I'm going way back) that sat on the hall table in the entry of the house? Sometimes there would be a little uncomfortable chair there too. And to have a private conversation (with the boyfriend who wanted you to do his math homework for him) you would go into the coat closet and sit on the floor, right? Well, these are not those phones.

This bunch comes with batteries a size I have never seen before, and a book that is 63 pages long on how to operate it. The so-called 'features' it offers (and the ones that sucked TY into purchase, a rare event to be sure) you can only get if you subscribe to that feature THROUGH YOUR PHONE SERVICE. Something that they don't tell you until page 35.

In my past history, with my (ahem) stellar talents and Masters degree in art, I wasn't able to get a job anywhere in Boston because I couldn't type (and I know a few of you are nodding in agreement if you read this blog regularly). Even a summer session at Katie Gibbs was a bust. The default job when one gets hungry enough was the phone company where they put any young woman who could speak in full sentences into a sevice rep job. Yup, here I am, 'This is Miss Townsend, How may I help You Today?' I learned a lot on that job: I learned I am not fit to deal with the public. I learned about telephone systems and equipment. And I learned that guys with 'mobile phones' in their cars do not like to be called about their bills even though they never seem to bother paying them- BUT they are so excited that SOMEBODY calls them on their uber-expensive car phones the size of suitcases that they will talk anyway in loud and uncomplementary tones. It took me a long time to realize this was because what they really wanted was to be seen talking on them at stop lights! So they wouldn't pay their bills in hopes that maybe Miss Townsend would call them again so she could be yelled at and belittled and perhaps brought to tears. But she never talked back, she just called again in 30 days.

Remember me, Mr. NC? (Fill in famous lawyer in Boston in the 60's...) Hope somebody keyed your car while you were too busy screaming into your receiver to notice.

But back to what I learned: I learned I loved to work with commercial accounts and set up systems because you would do this like a spreadsheet, a puzzle, a map putting phones of different types and sizes at every station in a new office and making sure they all communicated with the selected other phones. There would be big bluepriints unfolded and little symbols and signs all over it that only installers could understand. I loved this part and probably would still be at the phone company if they would have given me a quiet room, an ashtray, and a very big table to do this in perpetuity. Whole switchboards, loved it, though I was untrainable on how to actually use one.

I learned to hate the Princess Phone, especially in pink.

I learned about unions and overtime and scabs. I saw abuses on both sides since reps weren't unionized but we had to take over jobs that were during the strikes. One summer there was a big strike and my then-boyfriend was stationed on Nantucket for the whole season. He spent the whole summer sitting on his deck watching the sunsets and evesdropping on calls all over the island. Sick, and at time and a half plus room and board. It fell under the 'monitoring excellent service' clause. The thing I didn't realize until later was that this was somebody's REAL job all year round! Sure, they probably had to climb a pole now and then but they were basically paid 'listeners' who could easily patch their girlfriend into the line for tandem listening! And afterall, it was Nantucket. (We broke up because I hated the way he fell into it so easily, and well, basically I didn't like him all that much when he wasn't around to take me out once in awhile.)

We had heard rumors about our jobs 'in the future' and even participated in a movie about what was coming. Lights Camera Action (Miss Townsend picks up a pile of papers and walks across the room) and the narrtor says that we will all have little screens at our desk and we can punch in a phone number and get an immediate look at the customers account. Hallelujah- it would save about 10 miles a day running in heels between desks looking for someone's files! After my movie debut (which I saw at the preview as ruining a hopeful career as movie star because I walked like I was iin a full body cast), I quit.

I really missed the free long distance service I enjoyed on my home phone all that time. I really missed a few of the other women I worked with, but I am still in touch with some even to this day.)