The Olden Days: Number Please

In 1963 I graduated from high school and took my first job as a long-distance telephone operator for Pacific Bell in downtown San Francisco. I was 18 years old and thrilled to be working in SF, grown up and ready to take all that life had to offer.

OK, it wasn't glamorous, but the building was on Bush Street just down the block from Grant Avenue, and I was eating lunch out at real restaurants, not Mel's Drive-In in Millbrae. I worked with women, not girls, and some of them were married! How romantic was that!

I thought about this job the other day when I was walking down the hall at the big corporation where I work a couple of days a week and realized I had smudged pencil on my white sleeves. This was a problem at The Phone Company (as we called it in those days) too, and we solved it by making our own sleeve coverups, which were fabric sleeves that had elastic at the wrist and were pulled on over our blouses and went almost to our shoulders. The lovely ladies in this photo are not wearing such sleeves, and so they will go home with smirch on their cuffs and shirt sleeves.

In those days, if you wanted to make a long-distance call, you had to dial "0" for Operator, and we'd answer, "Operator, may I help you?" and you'd say, "I'd like to make a person-to-person call to . . . ." and I'd jot down the information on a card with a pencil and start dialing. Person-to-person calls were more expensive than your simple long-distance call. Normally we would dial a number and plug you in and go on to another call. With person-to-person calls, you didn't pay until we connected you with your Person. So I'd dail, let's say, an office number. "This is San Francisco calling for Mr. Person." Sometimes Mr. Person would be In the Field. "He's working in the field today," and being only 18 and naive and seriously limited in my understanding of the business world, I would imagine -- well -- a real field.

Person-to-person calls were the most interesting because sometimes it was like a game, dialing first one place and then another trying to find Person for the Caller. I once had to place a call to Red Skeleton, and that thrilled me. My brush with celebritiy.

And while we're talking about The Olden Days, I recall that the elevator had an operator, too, an elderly African-American man who sat on a stool next to the number pad. He always said, "Good morning" and he always wished us a good evening.

My friends were all in college, but I wanted to make money, so I was working and being grown up in downtown San Francisco in the years when a young woman could walk the length of Market Street and feel quite safe, even after dark. I think it was probably more dangerous than I ever imagined, but that's what made it so glorious: I didn't imagine danger, not when I got off the Greyhound bus at the 7th Street terminal, not when I walked up Market Street and cut across Union Square, not when I smiled at strangers and tried to eat with chopsticks at the Imperial Palace Restaurant on Grant Avenue.

I didn't stay long. My parents moved from South San Francisco to San Jose, and I wanted to go with them, so I left the job after six months, went to a community college in the Los Altos Hills, listened to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan while I did homework. But for six months, even though my father often picked me up from work and took me home, I felt all grown up and there was no better place than downtown San Francisco in the summer and fall of 1963.

Comments

[Matty]

What a co-incidence! In 1968, I worked for the CIL house in Montreal as a switchboard operator and got to meet 'Johnny JellyBean' which was a kids show...and I remember being so thrilled to get his autograph....it made my day., and yes, he came into the building dressed like Johnny Jellybean but with a briefcase. Weird,,,,,how a few words from you can bring back visual memories!
Thanks.

[NUFIGHTER]

Remember People!
I, NUFIGHTER; King of Randomness,
declare December 20th, 2006 to
be called National Pacific Bell
Worker's Day! Remeber to wear those Pacific Bell Uniforms! Of course, I will wear mine!
:)Finally, my own holiday!:)