benson@odi.com (08/10/89)
Mr. Reuben does not get the point, flame though he does. Operators are monitored. If they don't handle a certain rate of calls they get sat on, and can get fired. They have an electronic big brother breathing down their neck. As a result, they suffer health problems in droves. When a telecom afficionado causes them to spend 15 minutes trying to complete a call that won't go through just so the afficionado can overhear some routing codes, their "performance" suffers. The electronic big brother don't know anything about toll stations. It just counts and measures. If you have never worked in such a job, you come out sounding pretty crass (and, dare I say it, classist and elitist). These people are payed poorly and treated badly. Its no surprise that they seem harried and less than helpful. This applies to the remarks about how nice the temporary management information operator was. Believe me, if that person had to work under the same conditions as the striker they were replacing, they would play a different tune. [Moderator's Note: 'telecom affecionado' ?? Is that another name for a phone phreak? I will agree and disagree with Mr. Benson. Yes, the operators are kept on a tight leash and their output is monitored regularly, and gauged against the performance of other operators and historical standards. But, it is *overall* performance which counts, and not the call count being up or down in any specific time period. Telco management understands that different types of calls take varying amounts of time to handle. Mr. Benson is also correct that the pay is not that great. Illinois Bell only pays their operators about $1200 per month to start; however slavery was abolished in 1863, and people *do* choose to work or not, in occupations of their choice. I wish some of the operators were not robotrons; but then some of the Business Office people are just as inflexible. The system does need repair, or at least some tweaking. PT]