Where Have All the Telephone Operators Gone?

It’s all my fault. Well, maybe not *completely* my fault.

The obsolescence of the telephone operator -- a result of ever-emerging technologies which were already spinning well out of control by the time I came on board as a voice of automated telephone prompts – is a bittersweet casualty of progress.

Virtual Switchboards — which use IVRs to sort callers and connect them to their destinations swiftly, around the clock, and cheaper than posting an actual human at the controls, was inevitable. I just came along at the right time in history to fulfill a need for uniformed, consistent, easy-to-use automated voices which never register disappointment, fatigue, and keep their emotions in check — and never ask for time off.

It used to be that operators were essential if you needed anything other than calling telephones across a shared party line. Gradually their necessity faded as phone systems became more sophisticated.

We think of the domain of the telephone operator as uniquely feminine – but a lesser know fact is that the first telephone operator – in 1878 -- was actually a male by the name of George Willard Croy. And that the first female operator — Emma Nutt — put in place a few months after Mr. Croy — was hired by Alexander Graham Bell himself (and reportedly could remember every number in the telephone directory of the New England Telephone Company). It’s also interesting to speculate on the fact that teenage boys were widely employed as telephone operators (due to their ability to shimmy up ladders to the higher jacks on the early floor-to-ceiling switching boards — they were, however, universally phased out due to their “unacceptable attitude and behavior”.

Back in the 1870’s, telephones were rented in pairs and could only talk to each other. It was not uncommon for small towns to have the switchboards installed in the operator’s home so that the operator could answer calls on a 24 hour basis. It took until the 1960’s for men to again be routinely hired for the job.

The nuts and bolts of the technology used to be painfully manual — when a call was received, a jack lamp lit up on the back panel and the operator responded by placing the rear cord in the jack and throwing the front key forward. The operator could now converse with the caller and find out to where they would like to be connected. If it was another extension, the operator placed the front cord in the associated jack and pulled the front key backwards to ring the called party. After connecting, the operator left both cords “up” with the keys in the normal position. Lamps alerted the operator when the conversation was finished, and the parties went “on-hook”.

Being in complete control of calls, operators were naturally in the position to listen in on private phone conversations. With the advent of Direct Dial in the 20’s, labor costs were reduced and ensured greater privacy to the customer.

In her book “Your Call Is (Not That) Important To Us”, Emily Yellin explains the meticulousness with which telephone operators were hired: “…They were required to be unmarried and usually between the ages of about eighteen and twenty-six. If they married, they were let go. Dress codes meant they had to look prim and proper always, even though no subscribers would see them doing their jobs.”

Of great fascination to me is the elocution training given to operators as part of their rigorous training. Yellins explains: “They were taught to draw out certain words for clarity because early telephone lines were noisy. So the word please would be pronounced “pleeeyaz”. The number nine became “niyun” and the word line turned into “liyun.” What I always thought of to be a regional “tick” (or stereotype) was actually borne out of necessity to overcome the sound issues of early crude telephony lines.

Like most professionals which have gone through paradigm shifts as a result of newer technology taking over, the telephone operator has become almost an anachronism; a signpost of times which have come and gone — and I, for one — even earning a living working with the technology which essentially killed them — feel more than a pang of sadness to see the end of the “Hello Girls”. And just as they epitomized the reputation of gossipy, overly-involved members of their communities — privy to vast amounts of information they probably shouldn’t even know about — they humanized the medium of telephony. That personable, accessible “feel” is what IVR designers are after me to re-create every day that I voice phone prompts. “Just pretend you’re talking to your best friend,” they always urge; inviting me to capture that warmth and personability of a bygone day when the phone was actually answered.

By an actual someone.

And as an added bonus: someone who likely truly cared whether your call made it to its destination or not.

Allison Smith is a professional telephone voice, heard on platforms globally. www.theivrvoice.com, [email protected], @voicegal.