The board is warm by quarter past one and the cords are heavier than people imagine. Each one is a length of fabric-insulated copper with a brass-tipped plug at either end, and through them this afternoon will pass three hundred and forty conversations, give or take, all of them traveling out of one mouth and into another ear across miles of wire I will never touch.
My business is to make sure each voice reaches the right ear and no other. The supervisors say a good operator is invisible. I disagree, gently: a good operator is present. You listen for the small change in a caller's breath, you remember the regulars by ring as much as by number, and you do not rush a person who is rushing.
This is the working log of my shift at Position 7. Sixteen subscriber lines are mine for the afternoon, listed below as they sit on the board. Incoming calls wait in the queue at left; the connections I have completed sit beneath. You are welcome to take the seat for a few minutes — select a waiting call, then place the answer cord at the correct subscriber jack. The board will tell you, in its plain way, whether you have routed true.
— F. A. W.
Mrs. Hazlitt rang asking after the small striped peppermints she sends to her grandchildren in Findlay each fortnight. Mr. Polk took the order himself — three pounds, paper-bagged separately so the boys do not fight over the larger sack, ready Thursday afternoon.
She apologized twice for asking after the same thing again. I told her honestly that I would be sorry to lose the standing order. Duration: 2 min 14 sec.
Indianapolis Central rang through on the trunk with a placed call from a Mr. Ellsworth Penn, attorney, requesting Mayor Pike personally re: the second reading of the water bond. Held the line while Miss Vance fetched the Mayor from chambers.
The Indianapolis operator's name is Miss Bridget Halloran. We have spoken across the trunk perhaps forty times in two years and have never met. She wished me a good afternoon and asked after my mother, who was unwell last March; I told her improving, thank you. Duration: 11 min 06 sec, with relay hold.
Mr. Vance at the Lyric box office, urgent: the Thursday matinee picture has been switched from "The Spoilers" to "Hearts in Exile" on account of a damaged third reel arriving from the Cleveland exchange. He needs the change in the evening edition's amusements column without fail.
Connected to Mr. Atherton in advertising directly. Mr. Vance was breathless — he had run from the projection booth. Duration: 3 min 41 sec.
A boy, perhaps nine or ten, rang and asked for the Fire Brigade in a very small voice. Held the cord without ringing the brigade and asked him quietly whether anyone was hurt. He explained that he had a nickel and wanted a licorice rope but did not know the number to ring for Polk's. I told him there was no harm done and placed his call to the candy counter myself.
Mr. Polk reports the boy was very polite at the receiver. The fire brigade did not need to know about any of this. Duration: 1 min 52 sec (incl. instruction).
Mr. Harlan Stebbins requested the wire office to dispatch a death notice to the family of the late Mrs. Clara Henshaw, addressed to her surviving daughter Mrs. Iverson in Detroit. He read the notice aloud while the cord was held, which I am not strictly meant to listen to, but Mr. Stebbins is a careful man and does it the same every time.
The notice was brief and unadorned, as Mrs. Henshaw would have preferred. Duration: 4 min 22 sec.
Mr. McCready required clarification on a dosage for Mrs. Tremaine's heart-drops; the doctor's handwriting on the slip was, in his words, "an experiment in penmanship." Dr. Cobb confirmed: ten drops twice daily, not twenty.
A serious call, dispatched quickly. The drug-store clock and the surgery clock are seventeen seconds apart, which I have noticed without ever mentioning to either of them. Duration: 2 min 03 sec.
A gentleman identifying himself as Mr. R. Hollifield of the Pemberton Mercantile Credit Bureau requested connection to First National's afternoon clerk to verify the standing of one Mr. J. Pollard's commercial account before a hardware purchase on credit could be finalized at Cassady's. Connected to Mr. Atwood without delay.
This is the third such credit verification inquiry the board has fielded this month. The supervisor has not yet given us a column for them in the bound book, so I have written it under Business Transactions provisionally, with a small star in the margin so it can be tallied properly when categories are revised. The new ways of doing business move faster than the forms do. Duration: 4 min 11 sec.
Mrs. Lindstrom requested a placed call to her son Albert in St. Paul, Minnesota, whose scarlet fever had been the subject of three earlier worried inquiries this week. Connection placed through Chicago to Minneapolis to St. Paul, total relay time eight minutes.
When Albert came on the line, Mrs. Lindstrom said his name twice and could not manage a third time. He told her the doctor had pronounced him out of danger that morning. The cord stayed live perhaps a half-minute after they both fell silent. Duration: 9 min 14 sec, incl. relay placement.
After Mrs. Lindstrom's call I sat with the cords for a moment longer than I should have. Her boy in Saint Paul has turned the corner of his fever and she could only manage to say his name twice before her voice gave out altogether. Voices through copper collapse the miles between us — I hold the line warm a moment after the click, which the supervisor calls sentimental and which I will not stop doing.
The work is in the listening, not in the routing. Any clever girl can learn the jacks in a fortnight. What takes the four years is learning who is calling at half-past-two on a Tuesday in September, and why, and what they need that they cannot quite ask for plain.