Arizona republican., 1893-03-21
THE TELEPHONE GIRL.
,oording to Her Story She Has a
 Hard Time of It.
o, inc Poor Unfortunates Unbosoms usr.elf on the Disadvantages of Having to Ohiciate as
 "Central."

prt tell you there are some things ., some subscribers don't know; in
 % s., YOU might say lots of things that
 ,of them do not know, and if they
 .n1 come up and take look at the
 N.honre room they would understand
 S;aTs that occasionally vex them now"
 ',a n telephone girl to Washington
 Post reporter,
 aVow. for instance, a man comes to
 As phone in a hurry and gives a vio-
 i,Dt ring. Well, his operator has thir- ,,sn out of the fourteen pairs of cords :. her desk in use and don't have a Nance to answer for few seconds, and yr Man rings violently and continu-
 ,nslv for whole minute. Does he
 .,rtle the whole room and call particu- ,r attention to his demand? Not ex- ,1lv The little drop on the board Ans quietly from his number, and we Int hear any of his ringing, and, what
 more, his call can't be answered till .e ouiets down.
 This is the way it works; watch that Derator. You see she has an upright sard in front of her full of numbered pes, one for every telephone in the srvice, and on tho ledge below the ses are fourteen pairs of cords with metal ends like shoe laces, and each uir of cords serves to make the connec- dOn between pair of subscribers, so hat an operator can have twenty-eight ,ople in conversation on the switch Nard at once.
 Now, below the cords on the switch
 bard are numbers that correspond to
 he subscribers on the operators list,
 m average of one hundred and twenty
 i've to each girl, so girl is kept pretty
 ,1sy attending to all of them. Each
 rlmber is covered by a black disk on
 f1gas, and the slightest touch on the
 ell on your phone makes the disk over TOUT number fall down. But no matter bow hard you ring the operator does ,ot hear it. She just sees the number, throws down little lever that connects wur phone with pair of office cords,
 nd then says: Number, please?'
 You give her the number and she srks the metal-tipped cords into the mmbered hole you called for and rings p the man you want by pressing a button. The central is out of the con ursation till you hang up your receiver nd ring off, This drops a red disk over your number, and central knows Ae can cut off and have the connecting cords ready for the next call.
 But when the operator shoves the Nrd tips into hole and hears click, dick she knows an operator at one of the other boards has a subscriber talk ing on that line, and then she says. Can't get them now; line is busy Iais is what makes a great many peo- pe mad. They think central means se is too busy to attend to them and they put it down to a novel or sweet asart every time.
 "The greatest trouble a subscriber las is usually in getting at the wrong nnge from his phone. Four inches is he right distance. We had a man call h here the other day that his phone vas out of order The chief operator sked him how far he was standing rom it. and he said:
 "Oh! about yard
 Come up closer said the operator.
 Why said the man, I've got my nose right in the thing now
 The girls have all been wanting to see that man ever since.
 We are kept pretty busy the most of ihe time, The girls work on eight hour stretches and average one thou sand calls day, and there are thirty two operators employed altogether, some of whom are on all night, though hat work takes fewer than during the day.
 We have to keep posted on all sorts d news, and during the baseball season la.f of our afternoon calls are to tell what is the score, and it is the same With the football games. We turn in a bod many of the fire alarms, and on lection night gave the white house the lNt news on the election returns.
 The subscribers are almosi without Iception very nice and courteous to us, nd l think they would be even less apt be yeXcd or misunderstood if they would come mn to the exchanpp and seq