Wow. Forty years have gone by already since high school, class of 1977. Well time did fly. I thought I was going to do this and that. Things don't always go as planned when you are 18 years old. I went to community college and worked at McDonald's.
Then quit McDonald's around early 1979 and worked at selling the Rainbow vacuum cleaner. I didn't even sell one. That is when I started working for the telephone company in the last part of 1979. My sister Joni was selling the Rainbow vacuum cleaner and did pretty good. Then she left it to go to the telephone company. It was my sister Joni who told me to come to the telephone company.
Turn over was good in those days so it was easy to get in to Pacific Telephone as an 411 operator. After passing the test I went to the interview with t-shirt, jeans and flip-flops. I asked the woman if there was a dress code. She looked at my flip-flops and said, "I am pretty sure you will have to wear shoes."
Well, when I got to work people were wearing all kinds of clothes including flip-flops. Heck, I even seen some people wear pajamas to work. That was weird. Pay wasn't so good in those days so in early part of 1981 I believe I quit the telephone company to work for the U.S. Post Office.
Well, that didn't last too long. I was let go after 2 months there. You see if they were going to get rid of anybody they would want to get rid of them before the third month I believe, cause at that time the union can help. I bruised a fender of one of their big vans. That was the end for me. It was a really hard job working for the Post Office as a carrier. It was a good thing that they fired me.
I talked to a friend that was working for the telephone company and she told me that they are opening up the west wing and that they are hiring. So I applied for the telephone company again. The telephone employment office didn't even know I left.
Sure I can get my job back they told me. I asked if I can get the same location I had before. I think they wanted to send me to Modesto, but they gave me my request and let be go back to Stockton.
In those days we were still on the big books looking up numbers. Taking on information for the 209 and 805 area codes. We were called Directory Assistance Operators.
Around 1982 we were to get computers and key on a weird keyboard. Believe it or not we were typing on a ABC keyboard. What is an ABC keyboard? Well instead of a keyboard that you would use on a typewriter we keyed on a board the followed the alphabet. ABC in line all the way to Z. Yes they had keyboards like that.
I knew how to type as I took typing in high school, but this ABC keyboard I had to adopt my own keying strategies. I used to key really hard. I would even break keyboards. The company would send them out to fix them and send them back to us.
I think we had to use the ABC type keyboards cause of a contract that had to do with paying more for employees that had to type on a regular keyboard. Somewhere in the 90's I guess the contract changed and we were using regular keyboards like the standard ones on all computers.
In my early days 411 was still free to call, so we would get calls other than them that just wanted a phone number. Sometimes nasty people that wanted to talk perverted on the phone to people who wanted to know how to cook a turkey. You have to remember in those days Google did not exist.
When the break up happened between AT&T and Pacific Telephone in 1984 that is when we started charging money for 411 calls. That is when all the turn over stopped. You see people stopped calling in as much when they started to get charged for 411. Sometimes 30 seconds would go by then a call would come in.
After awhile people started calling in again. Around 1997 we had to move offices cause it started to get really busy. We started to take in more area codes. You see about that time people had fax machines and computers. I would have two lines in my own house. One for the fax machine and the computer and the other line for regular phone calls.
People would have multiple lines to their residence. Man did it get busy. We even charged more money for 411 and we were still busy. About the time of 2007 before the Iphone came out we were still ok.
After the housing crash people had to save money so weighing it in the balance the cell phone won over the LAN lines. That was the beginning of the end for 411.
By late 2010 we were told that our office was going to close. That is when I decided to retire with the bonus that they offered. So since then I been retired.
Growing a backyard garden now and writing on Steemit.com and thinking of going to my high school reunion.
Well, I guess I will go. I went to everyone so far.
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Thank you, David.
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