My Friend The Phone

The telephone is a vital part of our daily lives. We have “land lines”, cell phones and satellite phones. With each, we can punch in a number and talk to people anywhere in the world. It’s wonderful technology.

I can remember when we used to all have 4 digit phone numbers. Ours was 5391. If you wanted to call us, you would pick up the receiver of your heavy black AT&T phone and wait for an operator to answer. Then you would say, “5391 please”. The operator would actually say, “Thank you”, and would connect you to your party. If the party wasn’t at home, sometimes the operator would tell you and offer to take a message to forward to them later.

Oh there are wonderful stories about telephones and operators, but I won’t go into them here.

In the “land line” category we also have office phones. Office phones generally have several lines and capability to take a voice message or forward a call. With an office phone, you can have conference calls, put people on hold while they listen to music, or transfer a call to another employee.

I’ve been around office phones for a long time. As a former Personnel Manager or Office Manager, I have always had the responsibility for the switchboard operation. Along with that responsibility I always learned how to open and close the switchboard and actually operate it. I have operated the old pegboard switchboards where the operator answered the line and actually plugged you into the party’s line with a telephone jack.

I have operated telephone systems which were computer controlled where I could open a line to add a phone or restrict a phone from making outside or long distance calls. I’ve even operated systems that had the ability to track every number dialed by extension number. Sometimes employees knew we were tracking their calls and sometimes they didn’t .

The point of all this is I am not completely dumb and ignorant when it comes to office phones.

I started a new job in January. Today, about three and a half months later, I finally got my office phone working properly. At first the phone wouldn’t ring. It took a while and finally they got it to ring. I programmed my voice mail only to find that my phone was diverting calls back to the switchboard rather than into my voice mail.

Today, I came in the office and couldn’t make a phone call. I was told I needed to “re-activate” my phone or something of that sort by pushing a particular button. Well, I couldn’t find the damn button on my phone. Several people came in to help dumb old me, but they couldn’t find the button either. Finally we got the “expert” in and she couldn’t find the button either, so she called some technician who said he could handle it. After about ten minutes he called back and gave her a code to input into my phone. She did and, like magic, my phone allowed me to make outgoing calls.

Then, using my cell phone, I called my office phone to see if my voice mail was working. Every time I called , it would divert the call to the switchboard. So I called my office “expert” again. She said she would call the technicians and they would be able to fix the problem. About two hours later, she called and said the problem was fixed. I called my office phone again and heard a familiar voice answer and promise to return my call if I would leave a message.

Hot dog! Finally, my office phone works as it is supposed to do. And it only took three and a half months to make it operate correctly. At least I know I’m not as dumb as I thought.

We’ve come a long way since we used to call the operator to place a call. I guess we have anyway. On the other hand…….