Bobby O’Grady shares colourful memories of genuine callers, scammers and outright chancers from when he worked on the telephone exchange …

 

I was employed as a night telephonist in the seventies when exchanges were staffed during the day mostly by female staff, while men did all nights.

It was no secret that the day staff worked under a very strict regime while it was more relaxed working in the evenings as mostly business calls were made during the day and evening calls were generally social calls.

All operators got three months official training, on a very outdated system, like how to deal with callers from a public coin box. If a caller lost their money due to it getting stuck in the coin box, the instruction was not to connect them but advise them to write to the GPO for a refund.

Given that so many phone boxes were vandalised and not working properly, the rules applied regardless. Calls were expensive, money was scarce and most families had members abroad.

This crazy system came from a training room where all coin boxes looked and worked perfectly. Many operators used their discretion and put the caller through but, if big brother, officially known as Observations, was listening in you would be disciplined.
The rules were very strict regarding the duration of calls. All coin box calls were of three minutes duration unless further time was requested. So at 2.7 minutes, the official rule was to inform the caller and tell them to put in more money.

Calling from a phone box to a hospital enquiring about a family member could be a wait of at least three minutes before anyone returned with information. But the operator’s job was to request more money for extra time, no discretion officially allowed.

Telephonists had to sign an urgent sheet if taking toilet, meal, or on /off duty breaks. If more than eight minutes late reporting for work you had to write to the chief to be excused. On first day’s training we were taught on a blackboard how to write a sick note!

There were some tricky characters ringing the operators in those days. Nowadays they would be known as scammers.

One fellow rang the exchange several times daily from a coin box saying he lost his money and always calling clergy with stories that he just started a new job and needed money until he got paid.

His scam ended when he got the same operators several times and they reported him.

Students were also smart when they returned abroad from a trip home. On arrival to the USA or wherever, by arrangement with their parents, they were to ring them and reverse the charges, which the parent would not accept, but the call confirmed their family member had arrived back safe. Another dodge was people who stayed in rented accommodation arranging to be beside the phone and accept charges as if they were the owner.

They would be well gone when the bill arrived!

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