Behind the voices of those smooth operators at the phone company

Kimberley McGee

Tuesday, Sept. 28, 1999 | 9:35 a.m.

Need help balancing the checkbook? Wonder who won Saturday's game? Or are you just lonely for some companionship or need help spelling a word?

Who can you call?

The telephone operator, it seems.

In a hushed, softly-lit room at the Sprint building at 125 Las Vegas Blvd. South, 50 telephone operators answer 9,000 calls a day -- anywhere from the mundane restaurant listing to the more bizarre requests, such as tourists who want the local pimp.

"When it comes to a telephone operator, people will ask us things that sometimes aren't related to a phone number -- they may just want to know what 10 plus 10 is," Treophia Smith, a Las Vegas Sprint operator since 1974, says. "They like the personal touch, and we do, too."

Most of the operators have answered local calls for more than 20 years and simply love helping people in the valley find a phone number, or the sum total of a bill, or any of the myriad other tasks an operator performs.

"If the outside world could hear the calls we get, they'd think it was awesome to be an operator," Deborah Jamerson, a Sprint operator for 20 years, says. "There's nothing boring at all."

They are listening

Giving the state, city and listing every single time a number is needed from information is part of the new automated system at Sprint and operators say that callers don't realize that their every word is recorded once they press "0."

Theresa Calvin, an operator since 1973, has caught a few customers off guard.

"A guy was cussing and didn't realize I was (on the line) and I said 'Operator. What listing?' and he was shocked, laughing, telling all his buddies, 'The operator heard me!' " Calvin says. "It breaks things up, you have to have humor."

Being ignored most of the time by the very people who need her doesn't phase Calvin or her colleagues, who say their job is varied and worthwhile.

"It's (an) accomplishment as far as looking up the number for a customer who doesn't really know what he wants," Calvin says. "I pat myself on the back and say 'I found it for him.' It is rewarding, they are really glad."

Gail Carter has been looking up phone numbers for Las Vegans since 1974 and says the job can get hectic. "You don't have time to clear your voice or even sneeze," Carter says.

The average time per call is 16.2 seconds, although this month it has jumped to 18.1 seconds, with 1,200 calls per hour beeping into one station. Ironically, there are no chirping or ringing phones at Sprint's operator services. Calls are patched through, one on top of another, as operators continually types in listings until a break occurs two hours and 45 minutes into a shift.

Within one 10-second span there are calls for an auto mechanic shop, a realtor, a lawyer's office, a building contractor, an animal hospital, a pager place and a nail shop -- all the necessities that make up the lives of Las Vegans. Each caller had their own style when placing their request -- some sing-songed the city and state, some sighed dramatically, some expressed their dissatisfaction in four-letter words until an operator came on the line.

"They are all kind of grumpy," Calvin says. "They've spent so many years talking to live operators, it's all that they've ever had (in Las Vegas)."

Some of the calls the operators take are serious. The harsh reality of domestic abuse briefly enters into the mix when Calvin receives a call from a woman who got a wrong number and heard the cries of a distraught young woman on the other end who said she needed help -- her husband was beating her. After a muffled thud, the ranting husband disconnected the line. The woman who mistakenly got the call then phones the operator to try and re-connect with the mysterious young woman, to no avail. Calvin can do nothing but sympathize.

"I hate that when you don't know what to do," Calvin says, shaking her head as she sends the call to her supervisor.

Immediately, another call beeps in Calvin's headset: A Spanish-speaking woman needs assistance and doesn't know how to ask for it. Calvin passes her headset over the chest-high cubicle to a bilingual operator at the next desk.

A few calls -- and seconds -- later a frantic grandmother has just received a collect call from a Mike in a Southern California prison but was disconnected before she could speak. She needs to get that call back. Again, Calvin can't retrieve the lost call, but sympathizes with the elderly woman and lets her talk about her grandson, Mike.

Calvin says that, when dealing with the prisons, there can be some problems, especially when it comes to pay phones.

"We had jail customers (say they) are trying to put quarters in (the pay phone) but they're not. They are banging on the phone, like we (don't) know you are not putting that quarter in," Calvin says.

The operators have to listen for the coins to be dropped before placing a call. Each coin gives a tone -- there's one tone for a nickel, two for a dime and three for a quarter.

Many customers, Calvin says, expect operators to also be mind readers when they don't know exactly what they are looking for. One bone of contention is if a number is unlisted.

"They get mad because they can't reach (a person)," Calvin says.

Wanda Price, manager of operator services and a Sprint employee since 1973, says that 50 percent of the telephone numbers in Las Vegas are unlisted. The national norm is about 15 percent, she says.

"Probably because of our unique demographics," Price says. "People here prize their privacy."

And they rely on the operator to help them when they are looking for the number of a business they know is somewhere in the city but they just can't remember.

"We used to do a lot of interpreting," Price says. "They'd say 'There was a place on a corner ... a check cashing place or something, somewhere.' "

Now it's all business as technology and demand try to outrun each other -- the more convenience technology gives, the faster customers want satisfaction.

In the early 1970s, 500 operators ran the Las Vegas switchboard and looked up numbers by hand, flipping through the phone book. By 1981 Sprint was going high-tech with its first computer and threw those dog-eared telephone books out the window. But, as the learning curve arched, customers didn't like the inconvenience of the changes.

"The automation brings stress to our job, but it's an adjustment for everybody," Smith says, adding that during the 25 years she's been on the job there have been quite a few changes, but none that have affected customers so directly as the new system requiring them to state the state and city. "Before we listened to their request ... Now, we have to listen to the complaint and then address what they want."

Automation of the phone line is not the first change, nor the last, she says.

"Some days you can come in and face it but then some days you just don't want to hear it," Smith says. "But when they get used to it, things will get better."

Until the next change.

In the meantime, Calvin says that if she hears big sighs in a recorded request she immediately patches into the call. "It's a lot less hassle because they get frustrated, they want to hear us," Calvin says.

When Charlotte Eves started answering calls in 1970 she served 25,000 residents, as well as countless tourists looking for restaurants or medical assistance. "Years ago we were able to cater to them on a more personal basis," Eves says. "Nowadays the technology and the demand is so fast we can't take the full time we could have before.

"We could never classify," she says, adding that no business or service could be chosen over another. "If they needed a doctor, we were a smaller area (years ago), so that we could give them two or three doctors that do that type of service." Today there are too many options to list them all.

It's competitive, and companies understand the power that operators have.

"We can't just give one company's name, like a taxi service, over and over," Eves says. "They'd get all the business."

So that one long-distance carrier such as AT&T or MCI is not favored over another, a list of carriers and codes are posted at each operator's station in random order. When a caller needs long distance service the operator starts at the top of the list, giving the caller the choice. If the caller is overwhelmed by all the choices and says, "I don't care" they are sent to a specific carrier and if they don't know their carrier (which probably has spent millions in advertising and direct mail to sway the caller) then the call is routed through the "I don't know" posted code.

"It's to keep it fair," Price says.

Of the 10 calls Calvin receives in under two minutes, three don't know, two know it's AT&T and the rest really don't care -- they just want to make a *&*$%@! call.

Simple words can flub up the most seasoned operator, especially businesses that try to be clever with their names by including A's or No. 1's in front of their listing, which customers leave off when asking. A board on the wall has a list of words that are easily misspelled or businesses with phonetic spellings, such as "Club Frixion" (Friction).

Tricks of the trade

"They can vent and we can't," Eves says.

Customers let the operators have it daily -- with obscene language and verbal abuse.

"I feel it is degrading that we have to listen to that and us as operators we would never talk to a customer like that," Eves says. "They probably get that at their job but they don't feel they have to watch their language when they are talking to us, it's really bizarre."

To get through each day, the operators have a few tricks up their sleeves when dealing with a rude or perverted customer.

"Certain people don't have the temperament," Lola Holmes, a Sprint operator for 29 years, says. "You have to be a specal person to be a telephone operator, you have to be understanding, be able to be courteous."

"You try not to take it personally," Judy Gallegos, a Sprint operator for 25 years, says. "People tend to be a lot more rude now than they used to be. We can't take it personally but sometimes you can't help it."

"There are some days I have to unplug and leave the room," Susan Bandeventer, a Sprint operator for 24 years,says. "And if they get too upset with you, you can send them to a supervisor. You feel like you've been beat down."

But then there are the rewards when a caller turns to an operator for personal assistance. "We get this lady all the time who wants us to figure her bills," Gallegos says.

There are also the inevitable crank calls. "We get little kids trying to make an obscene phone call, and you know they are children, you can say 'Just hang up the phone right now' or 'Is your mother home?' " Bandeventer says. "They try to make dates with you."

But some calls are not so innocent. "The first time, it catches you off guard -- (you ask) 'What did you just say?' " Bandeventer says.

"Or you can say, 'Speak louder, I still can't hear you,' or (if they cuss) 'Is that the first or last name?' " Holmes says. "You can't take things seriously or it will get really bad."

Sometimes there are the inquisitive callers who need an encyclopedia or the latest news. "Anytime anything major goes on in Las Vegas they call the operator," Gallegos says.

"They'll ask you who won the De La Hoya fight," Bandeventer says.

"Or how to cook a turkey, or who is in what showrooms," Holmes says.

They are family

The clocks on the wall tick off the minutes, hours and years for this close-knit group of people. When someone retires, a money tree is put up. If a co-worker or family member is seriously ill, a bake sale springs up or used books are sold to support the friend in need.

"We spend more time with each other than our families, it seems," Holmes says. "We look out for each other."

Adds Bandeventer: "We stay, mostly, because of each other."

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