The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 9
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The girl with commercial ambition who has no knowledge of stenography, typewriting or bookkeeping, nor the time and funds to acquire it, should consider telephone operating. If she has adaptability, keen powers of observation, persistency, and the wisdom of secrecy concerning her employer's affairs, she will advance to a position of trust as rapidly by way of the telephone switchboard as by the stenographer's desk. Scores of women who have no knowledge of stenography or typewriting now hold positions of responsibility and draw good salaries. Other girls may do the same. The first important means toward this end is to secure a hearing and prove one's worth. The switchboard provides a business door easy to open, and one which may lead eventually to the innermost shrine.
In every city hundreds of girls preside over branch exchanges for the beggarly salary of five dollars a week. They are the same girls who, armed with a smattering of stenography or bookkeeping, would be working for a petty lawyer or in a eashier's cage of a small shop for the same sum, five dollars a week. Always it is the girl, and not the work, that determines the wages. And the same girl who would become private secretary if she had a knowledge of stenography may become a department manager or the trusted aide to the senior partner through her cleverness and tact at the switchboard. Capability will manifest itself just as quickly in handling jacks and plugs as in taking dictation. In fact, considering the enormous output of "business colleges," half-trained, almost unlettered stenographers, I honestly believe that the expert telephone operator has the better business opportunities.
Certainly I would urge the girl who has no trade, who suffers sudden financial reverses, and who is naturally intelligent and refined, to turn to telephoning rather than to stenography. If accepted as a learner in a large city exchange, she will not lose a day's time, but from the hour she begins to study she will be earning a small stipend at least.
The out-of-town girl whose knowledge of the work is limited to the system employed at the local exchange should not judge the opportunities offered by what she sees in her home city or village. There positions may be few, and obtainable only through influence. In the large cities these conditions do not exist. Good operators are in tremendous demand, and the telephone companies run almost regular advertisements for learners who are paid during their training.
The girl from a village or small city can have no conception of the business done by telephone companies in great commercial centers, nor the number of operators required. A few figures may be illuminating. On January 1, 1907, when the telephone had been in commercial use exactly thirty years, eight million telephone stations, the technical term which includes receiver and transmitter, had been installed all over the world. Of this number the United States could claim 68.5 per cent., or over five million stations. Since then the number of installations has increased at a phenomenal rate, corresponding with the manifold uses to which commerce has been able to put the telephone.
As a result statisticians declare that to-day it is more than probable that the United States could claim six million stations in use. In New York City alone 30,000 girls and women are employed to operate public and private exchanges, of which about 7,000 are in the service of the. New York Telephone Company. The others handle switchboards in business houses, department stores, hotels, apartment houses, any sort of an establishment where a switchboard is maintained to connect different departments or branches or employees. Chicago follows New York closely as a Mecca for telephone operators, and in any city of 100,000 population or more a girl is reasonably sure of securing an opening almost immediately.
But the reader must not think that any and every girl is suited to this work. The applicant for a position or for training in a school for operators must have natural intelligence and quickness in thought and action. The dull, slow girl who moves with exaggerated deliberation and who does not grasp an idea quickly will not, succeed. The applicant must speak distinctly and write a legible hand. She must have good health, good eyesight, good hearing and a fair education. In the larger cities, where telephone operating is taught by the local company, no girl who has not completed her grammar school grades will be considered as an applicant, while preference is given to the high school graduate or the girl who has had a year or two of high school training. This is because the additional training is apt to make a girl think more quickly and grasp instructions more readily.
Applicants between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three are given the preference also. The girl under seventeen lacks the physical strength and the mental poise to handle a switchboard, while the woman past twenty-three who has never had any sort of business training is not always adaptable. But in exceptional cases, where the applicant betrays alertness and capability during the course of her interview, the age limit does not bar her out.
The girl who thinks she is physically and nervously able to stand the work—for especially to the beginner, handling a switchboard is no easy matter—should ascertain by inquiry at the traffic department of the local company where to apply for work. She will be given the address of the school of instruction or the exchange where applications are received. Here she fills out a blank, giving name, address, education, previous employment if any, condition of her eyesight and hearing, and references.
When the latter have been investigated, the girl is summoned to the school and interviewed by the manager, generally a woman. Her hearing and eyesight are tested, and her enunciation and pronunciation are passed upon critically. Her general appearance of neatness and alertness has much to do with her acceptance or rejection. Only twelve per cent. of the applicants for positions succeed in passing this examination for admission to the operators' school connected with the New York Telephone Company.
Once the girl is accepted she enters the training-school for a period of one month, during which she is paid five dollars per week, and must spend in the classroom practically the same hours she will be employed when she becomes a graduated operator, or from nine o'clock to five.
This classroom contains a huge switchboard, accommodating twenty-five operators, at which girls secure practical training and experience. The branches taught theoretically, as well as practically, by lectures, consist of the use of the various parts of the operating equipment, the local telephone geography, the proper method of completing any call and the necessity of being courteous in all relations with the public. The location of the various exchanges all over the city and the general geography of the city are taught by the aid of huge maps. A girl must know the location of fire-alarm stations, engine houses, police stations, and hospitals. She must be prepared to handle every sort of emergency call, for many a burglar has been trapped, many a fire checked, many a panic averted, through the cool head and quick action of a telephone operator.
Every day she is given drills in pronunciation and the correct method of modulating her voice. In a great exchange with scores of girls working at the switchboard, not a single voice is raised above what is commonly known as a whisper. The girl with the strident, harsh voice has no place in a telephone exchange, and will not be tolerated.
The student begins to operate a switchboard on the very first day. She dons a metal headpiece, holding the receiver directly ower her ears; while about her shoulders is fastened another metallic harness holding the transmitter into which she speaks. Her hands never touch either transmitter or receiver, but are busy with the plugs of the switchboard. Her first lesson at the board generally lasts an hour. Day by day her time is increased, as her assurance and strength grow. At first, delicate or nervous girls have been known to faint under the strain, but experience proves that this effect is due more to nervous strain and anxiety to succeed than to real physical exhaustion.
At the end of a month or perhaps five or six weeks, the girl moves from this very practical classroom into an exchange, where under a monitor or inspector she continues to receive instructions. These inspectors pace behind the operators, not only to advise and assist newcomers, but to keep the entire force alert and keyed up to its work.
In a city like New York or Chicago, the new operator is paid six dollars a week. At the end of a year, she should be an expert operator, drawing ten dollars per week. Then if she remains in the employ of the company, she is advanced gradually to the following positions: Senior operator, eleven dollars per week; chief supervisor, fourteen dollars a week; chief oper-, ator, twenty to twenty-five dollars per week.
In a telephone exchange the working day is about eight and a half hours, with two thirty-minute rest periods, morning and afternoon, or for night workers at about the same intervals apart. All over the country the telephone companies are famous for their welfare work, but particularly so in New York City. Here you will find a matron or welfare secretary at every exchange. The building always has its kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, supplied with reading matter, an emergency hospital, and a lockerroom with an individual locker for each operator. Hot tea and coffee are served to the operators free of charge at any hour of the day or night, and girls are permitted to bring their own luncheons to eat with the beverages served in the dining-rooms.
This is the bright side of the exchange picture. Its hard side shows the nervous strain under which girls must work, the ever-present necessity of concentration, and the extreme discourtesy, almost insults, which even good operators meet from a certain portion of the general public. Many operators complain of the small pay and the part which office politics play in securing promotion, but go where you will, you will find malcontents who are unworthy of promotion, who are earning all that their services are worth, and who cry "Favoritism" when others are promoted. On the whole, I believe—and scores of telephone operators have expressed the same opinion to me—that the lot of the telephone girl is far more comfortable than that of the average salesgirl or stenographer. Certainly it is more desirable for the girl of natural refinement and reserve who dreads personal contact with all sorts of men and women.
Naturally, the telephone company would like to hold its best operators in its own exchanges, but business diplomacy demands that it furnish private exchanges with experts when the request for such workers is made. Thus the traffic department always has on file a list of skilled operators who are willing to accept positions in private exchanges. Banks, brokerage concerns, publication houses, department stores, wholesale establishments, hotels, apartment houses and almost any frm with big interests, require capable operators and pay from fifteen dollars a week up for the service. The salary depends upon the girl. Unfortunately, there are girls in search of pin-money who accept small wages. There are incompetents willing to work for almost any price in the hopes that even though they fail at the switchboard they may meet their matrimonial fate. But there are also scores of openings which demand good work and pay good wages.
The girl who uses her knowledge of Laeohhie, operating as a stepping-stone to broader business experience must consider what line of business appeals to her most strongly. If she has wanted to be connected with a publishing firm, here is her entering-wedge. If she pleases the editor or the manager with her alert, quick service at the switchboard, he will lend willing ear to her application for the position of manuscript reader. If real estate has always held a fascination for her, as operator in a real-estate company's office or in an apartment house, she will be brought in contact with the class of men who are willing to give a good woman agent a hearing.
There is no use to deny the fact that the swichboard is far more apt to lead the way to matrimony than to business careers. The records of all telephone exchanges show that an amazingly large number of operators resign to marry, and this, their employers claim, is not due to the traditional charm of low-voiced mystery which clings to the "hello" girl, but because to be a good operator a girl must possess all those distinctly feminine characteristics which appeal—gentleness, patience and good a ale breeding. In many cities I have personally studied telephone operators, standing outside the exchanges as they came to work and departed. Their bearing, dress, conversation, all go to prove that an excellent standard of student-workers is demanded, and that the discipline of the switchboard, as well as the fine welfare work carried on in exchange buildings, has resulted in attracting and creating a singularly nice class of operators.
The girl in a small town who desires a position at the switchboard is less independent in making her application than is the city girl. Here acquaintance counts most heavily, and personal influence must be brought to bear on the superintendent or manager of an exchange which requires but half a dozen operators. Even with influence, however, a girl must possess the same qualifications her city cousin claims—a distinct speaking-voice, keen hearing and good eyesight. As the telephone service in a small place is generally more leisurely than in a big city, her temper will not be so sorely tried at the beginning of her career. As no school is provided for her training, she must start with practical work. Substituting for regular operators will form a large part of her training, and eight dollars per week is the maximum salary in a small exchange. In a New England town of three thousand inhabitants, where two operators are employed, the superintendent is a woman who receives but twelve dollars a week.
However, a girl who begins in the exchange of a small town and tires of its limitations, may eventually reach the goal of her ambitions—an exchange in a big city; for if she mention her desire to the superintendent he will recommend her to the manager of some exchange in the city where she would be.