Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-10-22

for six months. to give time to get the old
telephone directory with the old number in
1t out of the way, and to allow the people
who have telephone numbers in their pri-
vate note books q chance to use up the
books and discard them before the line is
used for some one else.
The board In front of the operator has a
lot of little plugs in many of the holes red
blue. white and black indicating that the
telephone is discontinued that the SUBJ
scriber Is out of town for the summer, that
the line is temporarily in trouble and the
like. The girl has only to glance at tho
board to see If for any reason there is no
need to try number and is able to tell at
once what the reason Is.
or course, the telephone girls life Is not
altogether easy or pleasant. There are a
lot of foolish subscribers who give her
lot of trouble, and 1t is little wonder If oc-
casionally you find your girl trifie tart
when she answers your ring.
There are a lot of things that telephone
girl is not paid for doing, but which she is
expected to do nevertheless. Thousands of
people Will ring up to ask the operator the
time, knowing that she has a correct clock
In front of her. fire alarm is never
turned in but that there are lot of people
calling up to ask the telephone girl whero
It Is and she is usually able and willing to
tell them. Some of the subscribers who
have to get up early in the morning will
ask the operator to ring them up at GER
| tain hour to save buying 49-cent alarm
clock and there was recent case in which
| a woman called up I'm the busy hour of the
| day and demanded that the operator should
call her In half hour. The girl was
| fired so it is said, not because she failed
| to comply with the request, but because she
| lost control of her temper and told the
| subscriber what she thought of her.
The busy hour for the downtown dis
! tricts comes regularly between 10 and IL
| o'clock in the mornings. That for the resi-
dence districts an hour later. There is
| total of over $1,000 or 900 calls In a day
| of twenty-four hours.
| Between and ) am. there is an aver
| age of only eighteen calls an hour In tho
main exchange. This is the part of the day
| when the new operators are broken IN Oh
| the regular switchboard. Some of those
| who pass through the school cannot stand
| the regular work on the board one glrl
| resigned, explaining that she FOUND herseh
| waking up at night and showing her Stock
! ings into the openings at the footboard OF
the bed under the impression that she was
| plugging in lines.
| The work of the long distance department.
IS different in a good many ways from the
local work There toll sheets TO De
kept and the length of conversations 70 %
recorded. The telephone is used regularly
| up to i6OO miles. There is one packing
firm in Boston that calls up Its Omahe
Office regularly every morning for con
yersation that costs $725 for the first three
| minutes and 50 % for each three minutca
| thereafter The only reason why the long
distance is not used straight through be-
| tween New York and San Francisco Is that
the traffic would not pay for the instaiia-
| ton of the line. The difficulty is entirely
commercial and not mechanical.
| One interesting phenomenon Is the exist
| ence of the phantom line" This Is the
| case where there are two or more long dis
| lance lines running between two points
| For instance. If there are two lines running
| between Washington and New York, thru
| conversation can pe carried on by pair
| of subscribers without any line at all and
| without disturbing the other two pairs or
| takers on the real lines. This necessitates
careful arrangement and perfect eictricai
| balance of the two real lines. but IL Is
| fact in electrical science that is taken ad-
| vantage of every day and the phantom
| lines" arc made to carry almost third OF
| the long distance business where there are
| a pair of lines that can be arranged TO sup
port the third wireless line.