"Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> (09/02/90)
It seems appropriate that members of this forum recognize that today, September 1, was the day in 1878 that Emma Nutt became the first "telephone operator" as recorded in Bell annals. Prior to that time, the telephone industry had suffered a real problem in that its labor practices of having young boys work in sweatshop conditions (as was commonplace in that era) was a real customer service problem. It seems that the "phone business" hadn't really as yet gotten its act together about servicing customers, and that foul language to the telephone exchange was more the order of the day. With what amounted to a Victorian-era stroke of management genius, the manager at the Boston (or was it New Haven?) exchange employed young Miss Emma Nutt to make the customers talk to a female, a class of person who in that point in history NO male would DARE utter foul words to. The improvement in customer relations and reduction of delay in work attributed to placing courtesy on the telephone was supposed to have been nothing short of incredible. And, we know of course that it began a legendary era of the female telephone operator. Miss Nutt must have done something very right. Perhaps some enterprising institution will honor her name in an appropriate field of today's telecommunications education by establishing a Nutt Fellowship or a Nutt Chair. [Moderator's Note: Perhaps if the educational institution had a rule that all freshman students had to live on campus, a dormitory could be named for her; i.e. Nutt House. Even though Emma's gender and class did indeed cut down the profanity, the Victorian era was not without its kinky people; the earliest obscene call noted in ancient AT&T records occurred in 1879, when a female subscriber complained that a man, whose identity was unknown to her made lewd propositions over the telephone. A police investigation was unable to resolve the matter. After the Victorian era ended, subscribers were as ornery as ever: The front cover of the 1921 alphabetical directory for the Chicago Telephone Company (predecessor to IBT) printed this admonition to subscribers: "Subscribers are requested to address our operators using the same courteous language they expect to hear in response. Our operators do not use profane language or curses, and do not wish to have it spoken to them." PAT]