I
began working for Northwestern Bell in my senior year of high school; I
had been interviewed and hired by Nelle Hartsock, and I started
part-time in December of 1956. Roseanne Neal was my instructor
for the two months of training and I worked hours such as five to nine
p.m. and six to ten p.m.
When I graduated from City High in
1957, I went to work full-time. At odd moments I had what one
could call "spot training" for various things; a supervisor would say,
"here, sit down," and then I would get on-the-job training at some
position, for example, inward or whatever. I well remember one
time when someone was needed to fill in at the university board.
No one was available who knew the position, so after the barest
minimum of instruction, I was put there. After about an hour
spent merrily ringing away on university extensions, I discovered that
I had not been ringing the numbers correctly - which meant that I'd
been giving university callers a lot of wrong numbers! The
operator sitting next to me gave me a quick ten-second course on how to
properly ring university extensions.
After about a year, Hattie
Goody asked me if I'd like to be a supervisor and I accepted. Of course
this meant twelve to nine p.m. hours all the time, or so it seemed.
Bu finally I moved up to eight o'clock splits. When I
married in 1960, it didn't take long for me to find out that eight
o'clock splits just did not work out at all. We were living in
the country and by the time I made two round trips to the office, and
worked eight hours besides, there weren't enough hours left in the day.
Also that was just too much driving back and forth. So I
returned to the board as an operator. This certainly improved my
hours.
As my children came along, I took maternity leaves.
The first was in late 1961 and others followed in 1963 and 1964.
When I was expecting my fourth child, I decided to resign.
Four children were just too many to allow me to keep on working
or so I thought. It didn't seem fair to the family and the
children hated to see me go to work or so they kept telling me.
My
fourth and last child was born in November of 1966. Would you
believe that my three other children had been asking me when I was
going back to work! I discovered that my husband had been napping
on the davenport while I was working, say in the evening, and the
children had the full run of the house - with a lot less supervision
than they were getting from me. They had been having so much fun
while Daddy was looking after them! His discipline was definitely
a lot less strict than mine.
So I returned to work, and started
off with part-time again. However, I soon discovered that I
couldn't get any hours which would fit in at home. Therefore, I
went on the occasional list and for about a year worked lots of
occasional time. Eventually, since the children were older, I
went on full-time. This meant lots and lots of not-very-good
hours, but after five years my service was bridge. Then, I got
much better hours, even the coveted short hour tricks such as five to
eleven-thirty p.m., six to midnight, and even seven p.m. to one a.m.
thought I liked the all night shift, too.
About this time I
accepted a temporary management position as group chief operator - that
may not have been the title then, traffic titles changes so often -
which was to last for only a couple of months. That was just one
of the many niches I have filled with the telephone company. For
example, I was once the back-up for the plant manager's clerk. At
various times I was back-up for the central office clerk. I'm
sure there were other back-ups, but it is hard to remember all the
details of such things now.
As I've mentioned already, I did
like working nights, and before Lillian Vrana - the night chief
operator - retired in September of 1975, I had worked on nights for
probably almost a year. After a new night chief was appointed, I
continued working a lot of night hours. The night shift at this
time was from ten-thirty p.m. to six a.m. When the new night
chief left after less than a year, I became the night chief operator.
This was in the summer of 1976, I think. Of course as night
chief, I had to work from ten p.m. to six a.m. There were no
short hour tricks for management people.
Eventually, two things
happened: It was decided that the office would not have a night chief
operator anymore; and one of the operator services supervisors - a
traffic title which had replaced that of group chief operator - left to
take an outside plant job, so I returned to days and took the OSS
position. This meant that my working days really varied. I worked
everything from seven a.m. to four p.m. on down to nine a.m. to one
p.m. and six to ten p.m. or in other words, down to ten o'clock splits.
As
I've said before, management titles in traffic did change quite often.
For example, those who had been group chief operators became
first, Operator services supervisors, then supervisors in
operator services, and finally group managers in operator services.
I really cannot vouch for the accuracy of the order in which the
title changes came. It did not seem important either at the time or
later on.
When I heard - sometime in 1978, I think - that the
exchange was going to close, I was surprised as anybody and could
hardly believe the news. Everyone hoped that the plan would be
changed, but of course it wasn't. The employment office began to
hire only "temporaries" as operators. I would say that the office
soon got a rather motley crew in the new hires. Many were not
good workers thought, of course, some were - even though they knew that
their jobs would come to an end.
There was a lot of absenteeism
and tardiness among the "temporaries." I'll admit they did not have a
lot of incentive to do a good job. However, they were being paid
to do the job, and better pay than most would have been able to get
elsewhere. As I said before, some were good workers, but there
were those whom I wondered why we even bothered evaluating. Their
work loads were almost non-existent.
When the Cedar Rapids
exchange closed, their traffic department, some of their operators came
to our office. At least they were experienced, and most of them
were good workers. Of course, some of those from Cedar Rapids had
also been hired as "temporaries."
I would say that the last few
months of the Iowa City exchange were sad indeed. When we lost
the Iowa City subscribers - in January of 1981 - that made a big
difference in the amount of business through the switchboard and in the
number of operators needed to handle the business. As we lost the
tribs, one or two at a time, the work load was also affected. Every
week we had fewer people at the board than we'd had the week before.
One of my jobs - and a depressing one - was to put plugs in the
trib trunks as they were cut away. We hadn't bothered doing that
with the Iowa City trunks for it had been easy to notify every one
about that cut.
We had over thirty tribs, I believe, to be cut
away. Those in charge of the cut over had given operator services
management a schedule as to when each trib would cut, but the schedule
was not firm and changed almost from day to day. That did foul up
our traffic scheduling quite a bit.
In the very last month, say
the last two or three months, the office had lost all the "temporaries"
and had only experienced operators at the board; that is, operators
with fifteen to twenty years of service with the company. The
work load continued t fall off as each trib was cut away, and we would
lose a few operators with each new schedule.
I think it was at
this time that the operators still with us were allowed to read at the
board, do crossword puzzles or have any other little diversion just as
long as they kept up with the signals. and there were not many signal
lights by this time. I can remember that during slow periods,
there were so few signals coming in that I even turned on the night
alarm bells so that the operators would not have to sit and stare at
the board all the time.
I remained a group manager in operator
services until I left the exchange in the early part of March, 1981,
less than a month before the office closed. My some twenty years
and six months of service with Northwestern Bell meant that I was not
entitled to any pension other than a deferred one, though I did receive
termination payments. When I left, I do not think that we had
more than a dozen operators still working, along with just one clerk.
Of course, Patricia Olsen Miller, acting manager - and Coletta Hoye
Eisenhofer, the other group manager still remaining - stayed until the
exchange closed. Pat even stayed several days beyond the closing in
order to complete all the paperwork associated with the closing of an
exchange. Coletta took a temporary transfer to Davenport, and
worked almost five months there before she retired from the company.
It
has always seemed to me that though the operators had been the backbone
of the telephone company, they never received due credit. As
traffic departments throughout the state closed, I did not feel that
the operators were given all the consideration they deserved.
They were simply cast aside. Surely the company could have
been more generous in its dealings with operators who were left without
jobs as the result of exchange closures.
Since the office
closed, I have been employed at the University of Iowa credit union,
and at National Computer Services where I am currently. I enjoyed
working for the telephone company and I met many friends there through
the years.