Okay, well here it is. The reason this series of stories was called “Will you do me a favor?” So, I was talking about working as a long distance operator and how we used to get some unusual customers.

Well, one night I was working the late shift – probably 11pm-7am or something like that and I got a call from this dude that would occasionally call, always from a payphone and ask us to do him a favor. The funny thing about this guy was that he would whisper “Will you do me a favor?” and we would always say no. That night I was feeling pretty funny so I figured I would see what it is that he wanted. Here’s the exchange that followed as best I can remember it:

[b]Weird Guy:[/b] Will you do me a favor?
[b]Don:[/b] Sure, what can I do for you?
[b]WG:[/b] You’ll help me?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, what do you want me to do?
[b]WG:[/b] Okay, is there a girl near you?
[b]Don:[/b] Uh, yeah.
[b]WG:[/b] Is she pretty?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, she’s attractive.
[b]WG:[/b] Okay. Go over to her.
[b]Don:[/b] (still sitting in his seat) Okay, I am walking over to her.
[b]WG:[/b] Is she there?
[b]Don:[/b] Yeah, she’s right in front of me.
[b]WG:[/b] Okay, take her shirt off (at this point Weird Guy’s voice is really beginning to betray his mental instability!)
[b]Don:[/b] Okay, her shirt’s off. Now what?
[b]WG:[/b] (breathing is getting heavy) Now rub your hands up and down her.
[b]Don:[/b] You got it (I can’t imagine the kind of guy who would really think that I was doing this at work!).
[b]WG:[/b] Now…uh…take her pants off…uh…uuuh
[b]Don:[/b] No, I can’t do that (completely breaking the illusion).
[b]WG:[/b] What? You have to! You said you would help me.
[b]Don:[/b] I can’t do that here! I’ll get fired!
[b]WG:[/b] (sounding very over-the-edge)P…Please! Please. I will give you a million dollars! Please. I will give you a million dollars!
[b]Don:[/b] Okay, but we’re going to be here for a long time. Please deposit the first $3 in coins now.
[b]WG:[/b] (click….)

The funny thing about this to me is picturing this guy in a phone booth somewhere with his pants around his knees, severely abusing his member with one hand and digging for change with the other!

Well, there you have it. Probably a little anticlimactic (no pun intended) but I hope it was worth the wait.

Last month I said that I would say a little more about working as an AT&T long distance operator. Well, December is nearly over and you’re probably wondering where part 2 is…here it is. And you will find out why I called this “Will you do me a favor?”

We used to get calls from all kinds of people. Since we were one of only two call centers in New England, there were several prisons that we serviced. Prisoners were only allowed to make collect calls so we talked to almost every prisoner who was making a long-distance drug deal or just trying to talk to his wife who’s cheating with his best friend while he’s in the clink. Some of these guys were okay, others would try to get you to put calls through for free or to connect them to 800 numbers and the like in order to pull off some scam. Some of the younger women we worked with were caught chatting with the prisoners from time to time and they were reprimanded. I guess it was the ‘danger’ that was the attraction – who knows?

There was also this other guy – not a prisoner – who we called Mr. Miller. This guy was a wacko who had had a legal problem with AT&T somewhere along the line and he was no longer allowed to have phone service at his home. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, but he had been calling and berating the operators on a regular basis for many years before I began working there. I guess he now had some mail-order bride chick in Nicaragua. He would call every day and have us place a coin-paid, person to person call to his Nicaraguan sweetie for him. The funny thing about this was that she would always tell him that she was going to come to the States next month and he would send her airfare like every month! This happened for the whole 4 years I was there! No doubt she was livin’ large on his cash!

Here’s a typical conversation with Mr. Miller.

[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Hello operator.
[b]Op:[/b] Hello, Mr. Miller.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Operator, coin paid person to person call to Lea in Nicaragua, please.
[b]Op:[/b] Okay Mr. Miller, please deposit $3.25
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay. [sound of depositing coins] Make sure I don’t get cut off this time, operator.
[b]Op:[/b] Don’t worry, I will make sure you get connected, Mr. Miller.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay, that’s $3.25.
[b]Op:[/b] [hearing only $2.00 drop] No, Mr. Miller, that is only $2.00. Please deposit $1.25 more.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay [deposits $1.25]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, I will connect you now and after I get her on the phone, I will have you deposit $2.25 more. Okay?
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Yes operator. Make sure I get a clear connection this time. I couldn’t hear her last time.
[b]Op:[/b] I will.
[phone rings in Nicaragua, Lea’s mother answers. operator asks for Lea. Lea eventually comes to phone.]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, please hold. Mr. Miller please deposit $2.25 for the first 3 minutes.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] I just did. The coins must be jammed.
[b]Op:[/b] No, you didn’t deposit anything. Please deposit the coins.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] [drops a few coins in] Okay.
[b]Op:[/b] That was only $.75
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Okay. [drops a few more coins in – eventually gets them all in]
[b]Op:[/b] Okay, I will stay with you to make sure you don’t get disconnected [note: this was not standard practice, but we did it with Mr. Miller because he was such a pain in the ass]
[b]Lea:[/b] Hello Lee [in thick accent][yes, their names were very close!]
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Hello Lea. How are you?
[b]Lea:[/b] Fine Lee. How are you?
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. I will send you the money next week. When are you coming here?
[b]Lea:[/b] Next month, Lee.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. How is your mother?
[b]Lea:[/b] She is fine, Lee.
[b]Mr. Miller:[/b] Good. Operator, I can’t hear her well. Is there any way we can connect again?
[b]Op:[/b] The connection sounds fine, Mr. Miller….

This would go on for about 15 minutes. About every other day or so, we would get a call from Mr. Miller and he would say that he had been disconnected and that he needed a refund. We never allowed him a refund. Some days, he would be very nice and others you would have to take a break after you spoke with Mr. Miller because he would make you so tense.

Oh, look at that! Where did the time go? Looks like you will have to come back next month to see why this is called ‘Will you do me a favor?’. Sorry!

I used to work as a telephone operator when I began my career with AT&T. I was lucky enough to get a job with “the company” when I was pretty much right out of high school. My friend Chris’s grandmother worked for AT&T as a middle manager and she heard that the company was hiring in the Worcester, MA area. Chris and his sister and I went down and took this long test to get hired by AT&T. We weren’t 100% sure what the job was that they were hiring for, but I knew that whatever job I got, it beat the hell out of slaving away in the Millbrook warehouse or being a dishwasher and mopping floors in a nursing home! We took the test, aced the test (it was pretty simple – if you could do eighth grade math and could think logically, you would pass the thing), and got the whole orientation all in about 2 hours. We were hired on as “term” employees and told to come back next week for training as long distance operators.

Well, the training was pretty exciting, and for the actual job was pretty interesting for the first few months, but then Boredom – with a capital [size=22]B[/size] – set in. These were not the old cord-board days that most people picture when you think of a telephone operator – this was even less active than that. You sat at a terminal with a keyboard and monitor and a headset that you plugged into the outlet at your workstation. This job was really tedious and the “old school” supervisors made it even more difficult.

[b][u]Here were the rules[/u][/b] (in a nutshell):

[u]Be at work on time[/u] – anything over 30 seconds past your “plug-in” time was considered late and you would be talked to about it. There were large digital clocks mounted all over the building that showed the correct time so there “were no excuses for being late.” On top of this pressure, there was the problem that you hardly ever worked the same hours two days in a row. One day might be 10am-6pm, the next 2:30pm-10pm, the next would be a 7am-10am and then 2pm-6pm split shift. And you never knew what you would be working the following week until the hours were posted on Mondays. Oh, and unless you were really high up on the seniority food chain, you always worked weekends.

[u]Answer calls as they come in[/u] – you sat there with your headset on and calls would come in to you one after another, with only a beep and the callers information flashing up on the screen to let you know. The only way to stop them was to hit a button or unplug from the station.

[u]Take a break or lunch only at the scheduled time[/u] – watch those clocks! If you are on a call, finish it ASAP or turn it over to another operator, but just get “off the boards” at the scheduled time! The two breaks were each 15 minutes long and lunch was 30 minutes. Come back on time! And if you needed to go to the bathroom, you had to check the “Out-a-Minute” board to see if there was currently anyone out that that moment. Since only one agent was allowed out at a time, you would call the in-charge desk and ask if there was anyone at that time. If there was not, you were told to unplug and go. But, you had to first sign your name and the time you unplugged. Then, upon your return, you had to write that time down as well. The person in charge had to total up the OaM’s at the end of every hour. If you had excessive OaM’s you would be talked to about it.

[u]Be polite and offer good customer service[/u] – these were things that I thought would be easy, but it became increasingly difficult as you dealt with more and more morons who should not even be allowed to use a phone! All of the operators were monitored by managers on a regular basis and the results of their listens were revealed to you in a review session. There was also off-site monitoring done so that the second-level managers could also listen and see how we were treating our customers. There were several folks who were dismissed after being caught telling customers to “f**k off” or, better yet, people who were having “personal” conversations with the customers.

Lest you think that working as a long distance operator for AT&T was all bad, there were some good things about the job and many entertaining moments!

– We received lots of free training.

– The hours were variable and people were willing to exchange hours so you could often get the days off that you needed.

– The pay was great and you always got nice differentials for working Sundays, holidays and over-time.

– There was a lot of time to read (especially during those all night tours!).

– Days off during the week made avoiding weekend crowds much easier.

In the next About Me feature, I will cover some of the interesting things that happened and wackos…uh, people I spoke with.