The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-21
TELEPHONE PESTS"
A Few Illustrations of What the Operator Faces Now
 and Then.
eEy John. Putnam. New Haven. in
Telephone Bulletin.)

Telephone Bulletin.)
 Considering the number of calls handled by our operating depart. ment every tWenty-four hours it is surprising how few complaints there are and how few people, out of the great number who. use the telephone, are dfscourteous the operators or those in supervisory positions over them.
 Once in a while, however, there appears one who might be termed a pest" Tn case any of this class of telephone user threatens to take Up the time of the operators to the detri- ment of her work. she is. trained to connect him with the complaint operator, the supervisor, or the chief
 These employees of the traffic de- partment are in turn trained to handle such eases without friction and to make the telephone user feel that the company Is desirous of pay fns. him all the attention in it's power and that the customers trouble is of real Interest to 1t.
 The Memory FIend.
 A type of telephone user is the one who remembers, or thinks he remern- bers. the number he wants. This person goes to the telephone, takes down the receiver and says, .'Give me 0647.'s The operator sees that this is party. line The customer. upon being informed of this fact, says, Well, try 0746.i. Finding this also ! is party line the operator so tells l him. whereupon our fri says, Try 06z4',s thus making avery pos sible combination of the numbers that he can think of. 0674 proving { to be a party line also, the operator tells him so and he says resi- ignedly, Well, I guess I'll have to look it up in the book
  1 one of the numbers called been as single line. the operator would have made the connection and rung the l wrong number. When the customer | got the wrong number would he have apologized 2 Probably not He would more likely have said, .'Oh. the operator gave me the wrong number sz Now and then we find the man who prpnounces ssoh'' and -four. alike, and sssfive's and nine . talks all around the transnitter. except in. to 1t, and talks with the back of his head to the telephone. Likewise the man who is looking out of the wine dow, who is thinking about something else, Or talking with someone in the room. The operator, being unable to get the number, tells him so, 1 Whereupon he gets angry. and yells the number directly Into the trans. hitter and the. poor girls ear-aI1d,ss of course, she fails again to under, stand Such serVice! is his com ment.
 Here is an actual occurrence We had complaint from g lady who said she never could hear her hus- band when he talked to her from New York. One of our men visited the subscribers house and got into communication with the husband in New. Y ork. Once in a while we could hear him and then all he could get was humble, humble, humble. Fin ally he said Sir, if you will stop dictating to your nographer while you are using the telephone, we could hear you perfectly 2 and. advising tEs lady to break her husband of this bad habit, he bade her, ssGood Morning.,
 The average man will wait with the utmost patience in a bank, a depart ment store, a drug store. on the cor ner for street car, at the station for train or in line for a theatre. ticket We have waited for atten-s ton in a savings bank for twenty minutes while the clerks did their bookkeeping on the pubIic's time Do they ever complain of this2 Very seldom.
 Bullet the same person wait. over ten seconds for an answer from