Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1922-01-12
TELEPHONE
CO. ANNUAL
MEETING
No Changes in Board of Directors.
Conditions of Affairs Is Ex-
celIent.

I
on Monday evening, was not very
| largely attended, and was very quiet
affair, as one member expressed it mo
fun here, since there is no argument" "
The financial condition of the company
was found to be excellent. The net
gain for the past year as shown by
the printed copy of the financial state
ment for December 81, 1921, was
! $1,471.28, while the surplus Of resour-
ces over liabilities was shown to be
SAG, 1868.
/ There has been little complaint and
much commentator of the service this
company is giving to the public during
the past year. The chief complaint
has been in regard to wrong number"
calls. In discussing this trouble, Man
ager Ben Smart said, that it is chiefly
due to careless calling on the part of
users of the telephone. He says that
! it takes about four weeks to make a
telephone operator, during which the
learner is given very careful instruc-
tion and much practice in learning to
catch the numbers, before she is plac-
ed at the operators board. Only the
brightest and most capable of the ap-
| plicants for positions are trained.
These operators are compelled to work
at high speed and to listen to careless
mumbling of numbers, and it is not to
be wondered at that there are some
mistakes. The wonder is that there
are not more faulty calls.
when you come to think of it"
said Mr.. Smart, s'it stands to reason
| that no telephone operator is wilfully
| sighting her work or making mis-
| takes. If she puts a call through cor
rectly the first time, then that one is
done with. She doesn't have to do it
| over. But every mistake or wrong
call adds to her work. 1t may double
Or treble the demands upon her and the
wear upon her nerves. SO you see,
the right way is the easiest way"
| He said if people would call the de-
sired numbers distinctly there would
be far less trouble with wrong num-
bers.' Remember if you fail TO call
distinctly, you not only bring annoy
ance to yourself and the operator, but
also to the third party who is put to
the trouble of answering a call that
| is not for him. Especially in calling
for party line number, should care
be used to give the call, exactly as it
IS printed in the directory. If you
call 1912 when you want Red 1912, you
will get Black 1912, because the single
line rings are always given ION the
black Again, it is better to call the
color BEFORE the number, because
the color is selected before the num-
Der is plugged in on the board.
If you wait until after giving the
number before giving the color, the
operator may have plugged in and CIV
en- the ring on the black before the col
or is named. Such is the speed at
which they work.
To show what the speed of handling
! telephone calls in the local exchange
is, we may take the day before Christ
mas, Dec. "a, 1921, which was busy
day. On that day, with three opera
tors working full time and one one
third time, 1926 calls were handled
from Z O'Clock a. m. to z a. m. of
Christmas morning. Of these all but
525 were taken care of between z in
the morning and eight in the evening.
That leaves 15,00l calls in the thirteen
hours of that day, an average of over
1000 calls per hour or about 300 calls
per hour per operator, five calls per
minute. Each operator then averaged
for her full time on the job, one COM
pleted call every twelve seconds. Could
you do it?
But that isn't the whole story. Be
tween and 10 that morning the auto
matte counter on the switchboard re-
gistered 1890 calls, which gave the
four operators who were probably al
the work during that hour, nearly 40(
calls eac hto care for This cuts down
sle time for each call to about nine sec
onds.
Following is the tabulation of the
fifteen thousand calls for that day, a.
kept in the records in Mr.. Smart's of
fee:
, Hour No. of Calls.
q to A.
i8 TO 1224