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One phone for a whole
department? No big deal!
By TED SIELAFF
of TheColumnists.com
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Almost everywhere I
look, people are holding their left hand up to their ear. They
either have an ear ache in their left ear or they are using a
cell phone. I am not addicted to using these modern devices, and don’t have one, but maybe I should hold my left hand up to my ear and talk to myself. It would put me right in style. However, they have stimulated me to think about phones when I came to San Jose State in 1954–more than 50 years ago. Before coming to San Jose, I taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and they had only one phone for an entire floor of faculty. So, I wasn’t surprised by the phone situation at San Jose State. In 1954 the San Jose State Department of Business--with a faculty of 12--had one telephone line with two phones. One was on the desk of the department head and the other was on the desk of the department secretary. Both were in an office in Tower Hall that looked like a big broom closet. If any of the faculty wanted to make a call, we had to wait until the noon hour when the secretary was not on duty and then we could sit in her chair and dial up. She was good-natured and if you had an emergency, she would permit the use of her phone during business hours. I had an office in one of the metal barracks-style buildings. If I wanted to make a call, I had to walk to Tower Hall, go up a flight of stairs, walk down a long hall, go into the departmental office, and wait for my turn at the phone. Funny thing about it: I never felt this arrangement was terrible. I thought that was the way things should be. Making a long distance phone call was considered an extravagant expenditure of state money. In those days, long distance calls were expensive. Therefore, it was necessary to fill out a form each time you wished to make a long distance call and get the form signed by the department head. One question asked was: “Could you handle this problem with a letter rather than making a long distance phone call?” At first, I would write letters like they wanted us to do, but then a friend said: “Ted, say you need the information immediately and that will keep the business office happy.” When the public called San Jose State, they got a live operator who knew all about the people and the campus and would direct the call to where it should go. There was no canned voice that would come on and ask you a series of inane questions. Five or six cheerful women sat at a big switch board with wires that they would plug into holes in a bank of circuits. In many ways it was a wonderful system. So friendly. Today, try calling Microsoft, Intel, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, or any big company. You are likely to get a recorded message that requires you to push buttons and, eventually, you get somebody who lives in India or the Philippines. When you call, they will let you hold the line for half an hour because they are giants and you are just a little mouse. It makes me disgusted and appalled that the American public will let these big companies abuse their customers in this way. I think this is a public policy issue worthy of national debate and Congressional action. One of my sons, when he was growing up, was fascinated with the college’s phone system and sometimes I would take him to the switchboard room to watch what was happening. And, a few times he was allowed to answer the phone and plug in the circuits. That son is now Senior Systems Specialist handling all the phones nationally for Federated Department Stores (aka – Macys and Bloomingdales) and is deeply involved in the integration of phone systems with the merger of Mays Department Stores and Federated. It’s complicated. I sometime wonder if watching the San Jose State switchboard had anything to do with where he is today. Those are some of my memories of phones of yesteryear. |
©2006 by Ted Sielaff. The illustration is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted March 27, 2006.
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