Working: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Gin

My first real job, one in which I got paid cash in a small brown envelope with my hours handwritten on top, was at the Union Square Theatre in Pittsfield in 1961.  At the time there were three movie theaters on North Street, one on Tyler Street and my theatre, the Union Square, was just off of North Street.   The heyday of movies during and after the war years had subsided.  TV was beginning to compete for family entertainment.  Still the theaters managed to show two movies a week, a big draw feature for Thursday through Saturday nights and a new but lesser film for Sunday through Wednesday.  I suppose there were a few art house theaters that showed older classic films, but at the time I was a teenager, movies had a limited run, playing for a few days and then disappearing. 

I didn't seek out the job because I liked movies; I just wanted a job.  I had been thinking about getting a job for the summer, one that would be more consistent than babysitting.   It was April.   I was a junior in high school.  I talked to all my friends and neighbors about my interest in working.

I had considered the various stores and shops on North Street as an option, but Pittsfield High had a whole program, part of the of the commercial track, focused on retail sales preparing non-college bound students for those kinds of jobs. They even had training on cash registers, writing up sales slips, and cashing out.  A kind of bookkeeping course but tailored to retail.   The stores were not interested in part-time non-skilled staff like me. They wanted permanent employees with skills.

One of my school friends, Sheila, already had a summer job waiting for her at a snack bar near where she lived in the south part of Pittsfield. Located along Pittsfield-Lenox road, The Penguin catered to the summer crowds.   It seemed like a good fit for what I wanted, a temporary job.  They were closed during the off- season.   No such thing as a permanent job at The Penguin. 

My dad drove me to talk to the manager.   I was excited.  It seemed like a fun job, taking orders at a window, relaying the burger orders to the cooks and making ice cream cones. Somehow because I associated the place with fun summery activities, I just assumed it would be fun to work there.  I had a romantic notion that all my friends would come for ice cream and I'd be popular.  I didn't for a minute wonder about getting to work and back.  I just assumed my father would drive me.  The fact it was a twenty-minute drive one way didn't even enter into the conversation.

During the interview, however, it was determined I was too young.  I had entered school at a younger age than most of my friends. I had just turned 16 in March of my junior year.  You had to be 17 in order to work past 9 at night, even in the summer when there was no school. They could hire me for shifts that ended earlier, but the manager told me he didn't like to keep track of stuff like that. He wanted to just assume all his workers could work any shift. So no Penguin snack bar job for me.

Shortly after losing out on my ice cream server option, I related my sad story to a neighbor, Sandy. She lived next door and was a year older.  We weren't really friends and didn't see each other that much because I went to Pittsfield High and she to St Joseph's, the Catholic High School. Our school friends and daily life didn't intersect.  However she was friendly. As I was telling her of my failure in getting hired, she told me she thought she knew where I could get a job.  She went into her house for a few minutes and came back with the news.  "Go to the Union Square Theater tomorrow at 4 and ask to see Mr. Cooney. Tell him Sandy sent you to be the new ticket seller."

Well it turned out I couldn't be a ticket seller, because I went to Pittsfield High.  All the ticket sellers were from St Joe's.  But it wasn't discrimination on the basis of religion.  It was because St Joe's dismissed for the end of the day at 2:15; Pittsfield High not until 3:00.   The St Joe's girls could start at 2:30. Still all was not lost. Mr. Cooney moved one of the other girls from the candy counter to become a ticket seller to enable me to take over her position at the candy counter.

There were about six of us girls, and yes we were all girls, who managed the candy counter and ticket window.   The theatre was owned and operated by the three Cooney brothers. Once I got familiar with the situation, I realized that not only was I the only worker from Pittsfield High, I was the only one that wasn't a cheerleader at St Joe's!  Evidently the first time My Cooney hired someone she was a St Joseph cheerleader and the Union Square jobs stayed within that group.  Each time a student had to leave for college or a job that made more money, she would ask her friends in the cheerleading squad who wanted the job.   That name would be recommended to Mr. Cooney.  Mr. Cooney was happy to follow their advice as it saved him the time and expense to advertise the position.  I was lucky that my neighbor Sandy was a St Joe's cheerleader who was willing to break the tradition for me.

I was okay not being a ticket seller even though those that had the job made it seem like it was a higher-level position than manning the candy counter. The pay was actually the same.  I think the sense of prestige came from sitting on a stool in the ticket booth looking into the outer lobby of the theatre.  However, a fringe benefit of selling candy was that the view from the counter included the movie screen. The inside of the theatre was simple; a stage with the screen in the front, rows of auditorium seating, a few unused box seats along the side walls, and stairs to the balcony along the right hand side of the back wall.   The candy counter was also along the back wall just under the balcony and next to the entrance doors from the outside lobby area.

My workspace was not actually designed as a candy selling area; it was originally a back room, maybe a storeroom that had been appropriated for this purpose.  The whole arrangement seemed like an odd design.  To enter either the candy counter or the ticket booth, there was a door off the lobby entrance.  The door led to a corridor. Turn right you entered the ticket booth that had a glass window and slot through which the ticket seller could collect money, give change and slide through tickets. If you turned left, you walked through a small office on the other side of which was the candy counter. Because of the awkward position of the candy counter, if the door behind it was closed, the candy seller was basically cut off.  The only way to leave the counter then would be to jump over it into the auditorium!  Mostly the doors were left open, so at least we could get around.

From my position behind the candy counter, I looked straight into the auditorium right at the screen.  The view was there but it was not unobstructed. There were two poles holding up the balcony.  One pole was in a direct line of my view of the screen.  It is amazing how quickly the human brain learns to reinterpret the signals it receives.  Once I started watching a movie, my brain adjusted, filling in the missing part of the picture where the pole was.  I became unaware of the pole. Once in a while someone I knew would show up. They would jolt me to reality by asking, "How can you stand that pole right in your way?"   Once they called attention to it, my mind would bring the pole into focus and for a few minutes I'd see that my view was compromised, but eventually that pole would disappear again.

The candy counter itself was a glass topped set of shelves displaying the goodies for sale.  It was open on my side of the counter.  What was for sale was limited. Our inventory was not like the concession stands in the current megaplexes. We sold regular-sized candy, the same kind you would buy at a local corner store.  The era of super sized candy for movies had not hit yet.  We had the usual five- cent bars:  Hersey bar, Hershey bar with almonds, Snickers, Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, and Payday.  There was also boxed candy: Jujubes, Good and Plenty and chocolate covered raisins.  For the adult viewers we had a few of the ten-cent bars: Almond Joy and Mounds.  We also sold rolls of lifesavers, Reeds root beer, cinnamon, and butterscotch hard candy.  No gum!  Mr. Cooney was adamant about that.  In the days before I worked there they did sell gum.  Too much of it ended up under seats and on floors.  Gum was henceforth banned from the concession area.

We did have a popcorn machine, the traditional shiny red kind with a pan to hold melted butter in the top that was to drip down onto the popping corn.  The big secret was that our popcorn popper didn't really pop any corn.  We received large plastic bags of already cooked popcorn that we poured into the machine before the theatre opened.  Under the bottom of the container that held the popcorn for view was a drawer type tray that must have held electrical heating equipment at some point.   It now held a hair dryer that we turned on so the popcorn would be warm to give the impression it was freshly popped.  The butter pan at the top was just a holdover from the time the machine was really able to produce real buttered popped corn.

After several weeks of working the afternoon shift on weekends I was allowed an evening shift, 6 to 9.  We were never paid for set up or close down time but it was expected we would be ready for customers at 6 sharp and would leave the place cleaned and stocked for the next day after counting out the night's proceeds at 9. We only got paid from 6 to 9, so the jobs we needed to do before and after were not compensated.   

Each evening I'd get $3.75 in coins from the ticket seller window so I had money for making change. Once I made a few sales I'd return the $3.75 to her so my count of coins and bills would be what the candy counter took in.  There were a few nights in winter when the draw of whatever movie we were showing wasn't big enough to lure customers from their warm homes. Those nights I wouldn't be able to return the start-up funds back to the front until I had closed at nine.  One of the other Cooney brothers was the ticket taker whose post at the front door kept him by the candy counter.   One slow night I said to him, "I haven't made enough sales to return that $3.75 yet." His reply,”Well, that's show business."  I thought that was funny.  To me show business was glamor, New York, Broadway, not a sleepy little theatre on a side street in Pittsfield.

When I came home that night I told my parents what he had said, expecting them to also find this amusing.  Instead my father told me the Union Square Theatre had a long and interesting history as part of show business.  It had been a legitimate theater at one point, and Mr. Cooney senior, the father of the three sons I worked for, had owned and operated it then.  Mr. John Cooney, the man who had hired me, had taken over management of the theatre from his father who operated the theatre from its opening in 1903.  At that time, stage acts were booked as openings acts for the movies. The elder Mr. Cooney not only booked New York based vaudeville acts for the theater, he also made arrangements for high quality music to accompany the silent features.

My so-called funny story led me to understand the theatre from a different point of view.  It also made me think about the Cooney family.  John, the oldest son, was now the manager of the theater.  He had an office smack dab in between the window where the ticket seller sat and the back room that led to the area behind the candy counter I shared with the popcorn machine.  Mr. Cooney was a presence. All of us were a bit scared of him.  While he was somewhat short, he had a loud voice.  It always seemed as if he were yelling even if he was not upset.   

He was also very careful with money.  Shortly after I had begun working there, he was at his desk watching me as I sold a box of popcorn.  After the customer left, he stood up to tell me I had filled the box wrong.  I looked at him quizzically.  I wondered how many ways there were to put popcorn into a box.  How could I be doing it wrong?  He demonstrated. "Take the box and unfold it.  No need to squeeze it open.  Just keep it flat.  Then add just enough popcorn to reach the top."   I realized what he objected to was my squeezing the box on the sides so it would hold more popcorn.

Still, it was rare that he interacted with any of us. Usually he would sit at his desk for an hour and then walk across the street to the Eagles' Lodge for the rest of the night.  Once he left, we had more freedom.  The ticket seller and I could walk back and forth to chat, keeping an eye on our stations in case we were needed. Sometimes I'd sit out in front and do homework so she could watch the movie for a while.  After all, the ticket selling only took place for a limited time.  Once the movie started, that work petered out.   We did believe, without any evidence one way or the other, that Mr. Cooney could tell if the ticket booth was empty if he looked out a window from the lodge across the street, so we always tried to have someone in there.

One night I was sitting in the ticket booth so my co-worker could watch the movie when Mr. Cooney surprised us by walking back into his office.  I had been reading a book and hadn't noticed him crossing the street.  My heart pumped faster waiting for him to start to yell at us.  "Would he fire us?' I wondered.  He came in, nodded in each of our directions, sat at his desk to pick up whatever it was he had forgotten and left fifteen minutes later.  I realized he paid so little attention to us that he actually didn't realize we had switched!

Even after this scare, we still took chances after he went to the lodge each night.  There was a soda fountain at the corner of North and Union. One of the ticket sellers was obsessed with the fountain cherry coke.  She always craved one.  So I would go and sit in the ticket window while she scooted up the street to get her drink.  In a way it was ridiculous.  Once the movie had started, the ticket seller really had little to do.  A bit of accounting to add up the cash and compare it with the number of tickets sold. Any interaction with customers would be at the candy counter.  Still we felt it important the ticket booth look like it was covered at all times. The ticket- taker brother, Joe, would cover for me, telling any customers who were waiting I'd be back in a minute.   We never worried Joe would tell on us.  While he seemed as cowed by his older brother as we were, he was always on our side.

Even though you might think it would be easy to help yourself to a candy bar or pack of lifesavers, Mr. Cooney kept a close eye on the inventory.  Each evening we were to list what was sold to tally it with was still in the case.  We were able to eat (steal) some of the popcorn since it was not possible to account for every kernel.  I, as timid as I was, would still take handfuls of it.  I had some qualms at first, but other workers would justify their popcorn snack by pointing out we never got paid for the before 6 and after 9 time we needed to set up and cash out. Convinced by their argument, I too became corrupted.

Joe identified himself as an usher as well as ticket taker. The usher part of his title was a leftover from the days when ushers really did seat you.  Mostly he stood at the door that marked the entrance to the theatre.  He tore the tickets in half, saving his piece in a small box that his older brother would total up at some point to tally with the ticket teller's total.   Joe's station was next to the candy counter as you entered the auditorium.  He often chatted with whomever was working the candy counter.  Joe also had a good reputation with the local cops.  He would let them in the theatre on a cold night to warm up before continuing their beats. Once or twice a cop would go upstairs to sleep in the mostly unused balcony.

The third brother, whose name I don't recall, was the janitor for the theatre.   He would sweep the auditorium between shows and cleaned up at the end of each night.  Each brother seemed fine with this distribution of tasks for running the theatre.  I thought it odd that one would seem to be the boss of the others, but whatever family dynamics were in play were long settled by the time I came onto the scene.

Speaking of scenes, I did see some memorable ones as I worked. Movie scenes. The Union Square Theatre didn't have a contract with any of the major studios.  We showed United Artists or independent films.  The films were shown continuously.  Once the start time was set, say 1 PM on weekdays and 11 AM on weekends, the same program just played over and over.  The start times for afternoon and evening showings would be posted so people could arrive at the beginning of the main feature. There would be a cartoon or travelogue and previews linked to the main film allowing people to be seated in time for the start of the feature. Depending on when they entered they could watch the previews and short subjects before or after the main movie.

Mostly I worked 6 to 9 a few nights a week and afternoons on the weekends.  The only change in this routine happened during the school vacation weeks.  Mr. Cooney thought he might make some money by opening during the day to reach out to the cooped-up school kids during February vacation week.  February in Pittsfield could be pretty dreary.  Fathers were at work in GE so no family vacations going on.  The weather could be cold and gloomy, so mostly kids were inside.  Mr. Cooney decided to do something different: have one movie during the afternoon to attract the kids and a different film, at night for adults.

So there it was, February school vacation of 1962.  Mr. Cooney asked if I could work in the afternoon, 12 to 4 each day.  I thought great, an easy way to earn some money.  Just sell candy, and watch the movie each day.   Mr. Cooney had predicted right.  Lots of mothers sent their kids out for a movie for the afternoon. His special film for the afternoons was, wait for it, The Three Stooges meet Hercules.  The Stooges from Ithaca, New York are mistakenly sent back in time to ancient Ithaca when it was ruled by an evil King, Odious.  Moe, remember he's the smart one, figures they can make money by shilling Curly as "Hercules" and charge admission to those who want to view his amazing feats. 

Then the plot kicks in. The real Hercules shows up to challenge them.  Spoiler alert. The Stooges and Hercules become friends working together to remove the evil King Odious from power. Imagine watching this once.  Now imagine watching it two times a day for five days.  Now imagine watching it with a passel of little kids still stuffed in their damp-smelling outdoor coats standing two and three deep at my counter asking for a box of Jujubes. When you take their money, you find in your hand a bunch of dirty coins sticky with the residue left from a previous purchase.  Ugh.  I earned every bit of my pay that week.

Some rainy summer nights were also full of clamoring kids. These were the kids staying at the many overnight camps in the Lee/Lenox area just south of Pittsfield.  I associated these summer camps with rich kids. We local kids stereotyped them as rich snobs who were away from home to learn to play tennis or ride horses. There was little interaction between them and us locals to either dispel or reinforce these naive notions. If there were a rainy few days in a row, the camp counselors would look to the city to offer a change of pace entertainment.  We would be told to expect a busload of campers when we arrived at work on a particular evening.

This was stressful for me.  The camp operators would have made arrangements with Mr. Cooney for a large group, so the ticket seller basically had little to do.  However, from my perspective, this situation was a nightmare. The campers walked off the bus into the theatre stopping as soon as they spotted the candy counter.  The whole bus load of them were suddenly all jostling for my attention.  "Hey, I was here first."  "I'm next."  "Give me Necco Wafers!"  "I'll have that," one kid said pointing somewhere in the middle of the case.  "What?  That's ten cents?   I only have five!"  "What do you mean you don't have any gum?"

Besides making change and filling up popcorn boxes, I am supposed to be writing down on my tally sheet each candy I am selling.  Once in a while a ticket seller would step in and help, but often she would not.  I would just muddle through until the campers ran out of their candy money.

One night, it was different.  One counselor seated all his charges and had them write on a piece of paper what they wanted.  Then he brought the paper up to me and said, "Fill this when you have a chance.  I'll check back in a bit."  It was a miracle. I was in love with that counselor for those few minutes.  I wished he had suggested this to all of the counselors, but unfortunately that was the exception and not the norm.

The Union Square was about a fifteen-minute walk for me from my house.  I would usually walk there at beginning of my shift, but often my father would pick me up at the end of the evening, so I wouldn't have to walk home in the dark.  The first time he came to get me it was a few minutes before nine.  As he came up to the ticket taker, looking around to find me, I said to Joe, "Oh, there's my father."   Joe turned to him, "Hi there, Jenny's father.  I'm Joe. Come on in where it's warm to wait."  Joe never learned my name.  Maybe he was hard of hearing or maybe the first time he heard it he thought it was Jenny and I didn't correct him.  Then it got to be so long into our time together I didn't see how to tell him he had my name wrong.  I was always Jenny to him. My father didn't seem to notice.   He began talking to Joe while I finished up. About the G.E.  About the stores leaving North Street.  About Pittsfield's history.  They chatted while I tallied, counted the change and closed up the counter.   I wonder now about the people who were watching the movie, if they were irritated by that talking.

As the two of them got to know each other, my father would sometimes show up even earlier intending to watch part of the movie, talk to Joe, and then take me home.  Joe would never let him buy a ticket. He'd just wave him in.   Until the one day the elder Mr. Cooney was still in his office.  I could see Joe was visibly disturbed.  On that day, Joe pointed to the ticket seller while nodding his head toward his brother in the office with the door open.  My father got it.  He paid for his ticket that night.

There were several movies I saw at the Union Square that I still recall.   Mostly I liked the "funny ones" as I would have called them.  One Two Three was a romantic comedy about a Coca Cola executive trying to establish Coke in Germany.  Making his life more complicated is his boss' daughter.  She's secretly married to a communist and ready to move to Russia, all hidden from her father.  The Coca Cola executive contrives to turn the son-in-law into a capitalist so he would be acceptable to her father. There's a humorous twist at the end. After all this is directed by Billy Wilder. They toast each other with drinks from a soda machine only to find out they are drinking Pepsi, not Coke.

A movie with a similar plot was A  Pocketful of Miracles.   Set at Christmas time in the New York City of the 1930s, this film featured a superstitious gangster who finds his daily routine of buying a lucky apple from Apple Annie in jeopardy.  It seems she has been pretending to be a rich dowager New York socialite while sending all her money to support her daughter in Europe. Now the daughter is engaged to the son of wealthy aristocrats and they want to come and visit the mother before the wedding.   The original story was written by Damon Runyon and features his famous heart-of-gold cast of crooks and gangsters. Suffice it to say that Dave the Dude (Glenn Ford) gets all his crooked friends to put on an eventually successful charade, but fraught with many pitfalls, for the visit.  I had not seen or really heard of the musical Guys and Dolls at that time, but was enchanted by the romantic notion of the friendly helpful neighborhood gangsters in the film.  One of my favorites was the character played by Peter Falk who actually received an Oscar nomination for his role. He lost to George Chakaris for West Side Story, a film I'll talk about in a moment.

Mr. Cooney was not at all happy with A Pocketful of Miracles.  On the second night of its run, I could hear him on the phone.   He was yelling louder than usual.  Still I got only snatches of his side of the conversation.  "I booked it for Christmas."  "This is terrible."   "I thought it was about miracles, not bums in New York."  " What are you going to do about it?"  He got up and shut the door to the candy counter.  Maybe he didn't want me to overhear.  Maybe he worried his voice would be heard in the theatre itself.   With that door closed, I realized I had no way out.  If I needed to use the restroom, I would have had to climb over the counter. 

He opened the door after only a few minutes.  He was off the phone.  Evidently Mr. Cooney had booked Pocketful of Miracles for the week before Christmas because he thought it was a religious film.  I guess his booking process was totally dependent on the title of the film and not on any of the other material the distributors might have sent.  His anger created no change that I could see. The movie played the rest of the week.

United Artists at the time was making a mix of movies, including some that became classics.  Judgment at Nuremberg was a far cry from either of the two comedies I have described so far.    Though it was gripping and intense, I didn't get to watch it from beginning to end.  Usually the movie was already on when I opened the candy counter.  I saw the end of it and then it began again but my shift was over during the middle of it.  I had to develop the habit of remembering where something left off to pick it up the next time I worked. This wasn't a problem with the light-hearted comedies, but with more serious films like Judgment at Nuremberg some of the dramatic power of the movie was lost on me with this piecemeal viewing.  I had no choice so it surprised me when someone in the audience would get up during a dramatic moment to get a Hershey bar.  "You're getting candy now!” I felt like screaming at them.

The biggest film event during the time I worked at the Union Square was the showing of West Side Story.  A whole different approach was instituted.  The movie was booked for three whole weeks.  There were no continuous shows.  With a specific start and stop time, the auditorium was emptied after every performance.  This was unusual.  It also meant I got to see this movie from beginning to end.  At least a dozen times!

I knew every song, each music cue, most of the dialogue, and would even try to mimic the dancing. (Only when I was alone as I knew I had no particular talent for that form of expression!)  No matter how many times I watched it, I would still well up on cue during the emotional scenes.   I would sense the excitement and happiness of Tony and Maria's first kiss, be upset at not being able to prevent the Jets from mistreating Anita at the candy store, feel the fear as the Jets regrouped in the garage trying to "stay cool” and share Maria's outrage as she declares she "too now has hate.”    Each time the movie ended I felt the world would be a better place if people would just see this movie.  I enjoyed it so much at times I felt inconvenienced when someone would come to my counter to buy a box of popcorn

Even though I worked at the Union Square until I went to college, West Side Story was such a highpoint that I always feel like it was the last film I saw there. Once September came, I turned in my notice.  I wondered which St Joseph cheerleader replaced me.

It's March of my freshman year at UMass.  I'm back home for spring vacation.  I'm not relaxing or catching up on movies. I'm looking for work again.  I am determined to use this time to nail down a summer job. I have decided to walk up and down North Street going into every store and business to fill out an application.  I have steeled myself against my natural tendency which would be to go to one or two stores, become discouraged, tell myself, "This isn't going to work." and go home.

I avoided shops for which I felt you needed special knowledge. No beauty salons, men's clothing stores, or shoe stores.   I figured I could be a clerk in most retail stores but that you needed to have additional training or skills for those other places.    I didn't consider restaurants because I wasn't eighteen yet. Places that served alcohol required you to be twenty-one.  All those were out. Already I had eliminated a number of businesses but I felt there were still many other options. It was going to be a full day!

I started with the retail stores.  The larger stores and chains like Grant's and Woolworth's had a real system for applications.  They'd give me a blank form with questions about past job experience and references.  After I returned it, they filed it in a completed applications file.  At first I felt good about their system but after a while I began to wonder if they ever looked at that completed applications file.    Part of the trouble was that it was March but I wouldn't be ready to work until May.  Some stores had positions available now but didn't seem to have a way to keep track of future options. 

Some of the smaller shops like Nugent's or Richman's Card Shop were more casual.  One person opened a drawer, ruffled around in it for a while, handed me a one-page sheet with questions like my name and address and nothing else. After I completed it, she put it back in the same drawer.  I didn't think I'd hear from them.

I tried the drug stores figuring I wasn't able to work behind the counter at the food or ice cream bar, but other parts of the store I could handle.  I don't know how it was I came to these conclusions about work I could or couldn't do, but each time I entered a store, I looked around to see what the employees were actually doing and somehow made this determination based on that.

Many places seemed to have no system for hiring employees at all. When I came in I asked the first worker I saw whom I could talk to about applying for work.   Sometimes they would look around the store as if this were a new question to them.  Others would tell me a name to ask for in some office area at the back.  Frequently, they would say, "We don't have any positions available right now."  I'd reply, "Well, I am looking for a job starting in May when I am back from college."  I'd hear, "Come back in May then."   That didn't seem promising.  Just walk in the first day I was home and see who had a position open?  I wanted something more settled than that.

After completing as many applications as I could at the retail stores, I assessed my options including going home. No. I told myself.  I needed to expand my search.   I stood on North Street across from England Brothers and literally looked around.  Movie theaters?  I already tried that.  Not enough hours to make it worthwhile.  Restaurants.  No.  My age was a problem.  Hmm.  Banks?  Insurance Companies?   I see a bunch of them.  I tried one or two but was discouraged when the application asked how many words per minute I could type. They seemed to be focused on secretarial skills.  In high school in the college prep track, there had been no room in my schedule for a typing class. I knew I was well below a beginner. I decided against any further banks and insurance companies.

I thought about the places my mother went to pay bills.  I had seen people behind those counters recording payments. That was work I could do. So off I went to the electric company, the telephone company, and the gas company.  At each place there were organized systems to deal with job applications.  I liked that. I ruled out city hall and the post office as I had a vague sense those were "government" jobs and not likely available to a random college student.  The day was exhausting, but I felt I had met the goal I set for myself.  I didn't give up.  Now all I needed to do was go home and to wait for all those phone calls so I could choose the best summer job for me.   There were no calls that week. I returned to college with nothing settled.  My mother assured me she'd let me know about any calls.  None came. In May I returned to Pittsfield with the same prospects I had in March. No summer employment.

I steeled myself to start making phone calls to the places where I had completed applications.  I delayed a few days telling myself, "I need a vacation."   Before I started this dreaded task, I got a call from a friend who told me she had just accepted a job at a local business, the Berkshire Coat Factory.  "They're still hiring.  Do you want to work there with me?"   I told her, "I don't know anything about making coats."  "I don't either,” she said.  “They need unskilled workers."  She was at the factory when she called, left me on the phone for a few minutes returning with the news that we both started the following Monday.   "Be there at 7:30."  Wow.  While I wondered what an "unskilled" worker would do at a coat factory, I was happy I didn't need to dial number after number only to hear, "We aren't hiring." or "Who are you again?" I could take a few more vacation days, certain of work starting Monday.

The coat factory was on Oak Street just off Lincoln, a twenty-minute walk from home.  I arrived at the right time, met Nancy and filled out some paperwork.  Then someone took her in one direction and someone else took me in another.  Nancy went onto the factory floor.  This was a long rectangular room with tables, sewing stations and pressing machines each "manned" by a woman.  Nancy's job was to oversee several tables to make sure they had all the supplies they needed.  That's all I saw of her job or her until lunch break.

Another supervisor took me up a ramp to an area one level above into what was called the finishing room.  This was not closed off.  You could look down onto the factory floor from the finishing room.  There were ramps on each side, one to get up, the other to get down. All along the ceiling were rails on which hung the partially sewn coats.  The rails went from the factory floor along the up ramp, around the finishing room, and then down the other ramp onto the floor again.   There was no power to move these. You pushed the coats along them. Sort of like railroad tracks with spurs that split off, the rails had side extensions that lead to various positions near the women who worked as finishers.

The supervisor told me my job was to rotate among a few positions.  The first station was where the coats came up from the floor.  Part of my job was to slide the partially finished coats up from the factory floor. The second was to determine which collar and set of buttons matched each coat and attach them with a safety pin for the finishers.  The codes for these were written in chalk right on the fabric.  Next I was to distribute the coats with their pieces attached to the finishers.  It was impressed on me that my job was to make sure each finisher always had a next project to work on so there'd be no waiting.  My final job was to move the completed coat down the ramp to one of three inspector stations. Again it was clear there was to be no gaps.  Whenever they were done inspecting one coat, there needed to be another immediately ready.

I began to wonder if I would end up like Lucy in that chocolate factory assembly line sketch. I could imagine watching myself running from one station to the other, safety pins in my mouth, collars flying around, coats piling up in one place, other places empty of coats. Happily nothing like that ever happened.

I did like it that I got to move around a lot. I was also aware that doing my job well meant each finisher and inspector would always be busy. At first I thought there must be a lot of pressure on the workers, not a moment to rest, with a new piece to work on as soon as I had pushed away the finished piece.  However, at lunch I heard another perspective. I learned about piecework.  These workers, all women, didn't have salaries.  They got paid for the number of pieces they completed.

We did have official breaks, one for coffee in the morning, at lunchtime when all work stopped, and a cigarette break in the afternoon.  While I don't recall much about the coffee or cigarette breaks, lunchtime was interesting.  One minute the factory was noisy.  The sewing machines were humming. The large iron presses were hissing. The next minute it was quiet.  The entire place shut down for an hour. Partially completed coats just hung on the rails.

During this hour, many of the workers on the floor and those in the finishing room congregated.   Several groups got together.  As Nancy and I sat in a corner eating from our bag lunches we watched the activity around us.  Not just people eating.  Scrabble boards appeared. Some had been folded up carefully, preserving the unfinished games from the previous lunch so they could continue where they had left off.  Several groups played cards, some whist and some cribbage.  These women put a lot of emotion into their play each day.  While they were friendly to us, we felt too much like outsiders to do more than watch. We did silently cheer on the people that we had worked closely with during the day.

The second day was just like the first except we were drawn into the lunchtime conversation a bit more.  Even as they paid attention to their games, the women were curious what college was like and a bit puzzled about why we, as girls, were even going to college instead of getting married.   In turn we were curious about their lives.  "How long have you worked here?"  "Do your fingers get tired at the sewing machines?"  One thing they shared with us that came as a revelation was the lack of permanence in the job.  One woman told us, "Once the quota for fall and winter coats has been met they close the factory for a month or two until it's time to start making the spring ones."  It had never occurred to us that their jobs would be less than permanent.  The concept of seasonal work was new to us.

It was in the afternoon of my second day at the coat factory when a supervisor came to me to say my mother was on the phone.  I was quite concerned.  My parents considered work important.  I couldn't imagine her calling me unless there was bad news.   I was shown a phone along one wall of the finishing room.   "Hello," I said to my mother with some trepidation.  She replied, "I didn't want to call you at work, but I didn't know what else to do.  The telephone company called and wants to give you a full-time summer job. I know you took the job at the coat factory but this sounds better.  What do you want to do?  They want you to come in on Thursday.  I told them I'll call them back with your answer."  I was glad the ladies had told us about the seasonal nature of this work as it helped assuage my guilt at quitting this job so quickly.  "Tell them I'll be there on Thursday," I told my mother.

Even though it was uncomfortable for me, as soon as I got off the phone I told my supervisor I had another job opportunity.  I emphasized I had applied for this job in March so it took precedence over the work I had here.   She grimaced and then said, "Can you at least work tomorrow morning?"  I agreed. The next day when I arrived, she introduced me to my replacement, another girl about my age.  Evidently unskilled workers weren't that hard to come by!  “Show her the three stations, how to keep all positions full.  This morning you'll work together and then in the afternoon she'll be able to do it on her own.” So with my whole two days of work experience behind me, I trained the new employee.   

As I walked home that noon, I thought about the women playing their card and scrabble games.  I didn't get to know much about their lives in that short time, but was struck by how they created a pleasant atmosphere for themselves within the structures of the job.   I also began to wonder what kind of work would be ahead of me at the telephone company.   I felt bad leaving my friend, Nancy, behind. After all she had found this job for me, but I felt even worse a few weeks later when she was laid off.  Just as we had been warned, when the winter coat quota was met the factory shut down for at least a month.  Nancy ended up working as a waitress at a diner that summer; the factory women returned to the rhythm of their lives.

The telephone company was an imposing building in downtown Pittsfield.  Not on North Street itself, but in an area between North and First Street.  Here was a pillared US Post Office and Federal Building, the Pittsfield Police and Fire Station, and adjacent to the fire station, the telephone company building.  I was told to enter at the front door where the commercial part of the company was housed and ask for a particular person who would come to bring me to the training room.   At this point I wasn't sure what I was being trained for, but was eager to find out.

I recall taking the elevator with my escort to the fourth floor and being ushered into a small room which had a table on which was a fat loose-leaf binder, a wall with a four-panel switchboard and five other people.  I was surprised to see one of my best friends from high school there. Sheila was the same person that had tried to get me a job at the Penguin the year before.  We hugged, grinning at the idea we would finally be working together.   I hadn't seen her since Christmas break as she went to the College of Saint Rose in New York, not UMass as I did.  Neither of us knew the other had applied for a job here.  Of the other four people, two were trainees like us and the other two were our teachers. Just then it dawned on me. We were going to be telephone operators!

Our teachers were experienced operators perhaps six to seven years older than we were, very friendly and supportive.  We were all being trained to be summer employees.  The teachers explained because Pittsfield was the hub of telephone activity for all of Berkshire County, the influx of tourists created additional business in the summer months. Once the telephone company had invested time training us as operators, they were expecting us to return every summer.  What good luck.  I wouldn't need to seek a new summer job every year.  I was all set.  I couldn't have been happier.  Then came the icing on the cake. One of the perks of the job was that employees could access the AT&T wide area calling system for an hour each week for free.  I'd be able to chat with my college roommate who lived at the other end of the state.

The training began with the binder.  In this book were all the protocols for answering and placing calls.  We learned quickly there was to be no deviation from the allowed phrases.  We were to memorize word for word how to respond to each situation.  For example, when placing a long- distance person-to-person call, you’d say, “Mr._______, please.  Long Distance is calling.”  When placing a collect call, you’d say, “_____is calling.  Will you accept the charges?”   The notebook contained the standard phrases that we were not to change, offer any other response, or say them in any other order.

You might be wondering? Person-to-person?  Long Distance?  Collect? What do those mean? In this day of smart phones that connect you to anyone no matter where they are, it is easy to forget or perhaps you never experienced what telephone calling was like previously.   Maybe your understanding of this kind of phone system is based on what you see in TV or movies.  Here is a bit of an introduction into what was involved in placing calls in the 50s and 60s.

In the rural exchanges like Sheffield or Richmond, telephones had no dial. To make a call, you’d pick up the phone and wait until an operator came on the line to connect you to your party. However, in Pittsfield by the summer of 1963, we were able to dial direct to any other number in our exchange.  That meant we could call anyone in the city.  The Pittsfield exchange was Hillside, abbreviated to HI.  Phone numbers were five digits preceded by the exchange.

My home number was 3-1319. With the exchange HI, this became HI 3-1319 or, replacing the first two letters of the exchange with their matching numerals from the telephone dial, 443-1319.  We could call anyone else in the Hillcrest exchange by dialing the last five digits.  Any other calls had to be placed through an operator.  The Pittsfield telephone company was the switchboard for many towns, Pittsfield, Dalton. Lenox, Less, Sheffield, Egremont, Becket, among them.  If someone in any of those towns picked up their phone and dialed "O", they could get me as their operator.

Most of the calls that came through during the nine to five time-block were from business people.  Long distance calls cost money.  You paid by the minute and the further away your party was the more the call cost. Often business people placed a call person-to-person so they wouldn't be charged until the specific person they wanted to speak came on the line.  Collect calls were ones in which the person receiving the call agreed to pay for instead of the person placing the call.  There were variations.  Like a person-to-person collect call.  You could also place a charge to a third-party call.  This meant you could call one person and charge that call to another person not on the line at all.   This was time consuming for an operator because first we had to contact the third party to ask if they would accept the charge for a call made by someone else to another number.  This was all new to me. I was used to simply dialing five numbers when I wanted to call a school friend.   So there was much to learn those first few days of training, not only the different kinds of calls but also how to record them and how to determine the proper charge.

Before we got anywhere near the practice switchboard, we were given instructions on how to fill out a "mark sense" card.  Every call we answered was to be recorded on a card roughly four by eight inches in size. The cards were pre-printed with separate fields for the number of the person calling, the number to be called, and places to mark any special services such as person-to-person, collect, or third party.  For the first two days of our training, we practiced filling out these cards as our teachers read the situations to us.  We also practiced the phrases we needed to memorize.   Calculating charges and understanding how the switchboard operated were for the next week.

They explained the cards were for billing. Once an operator had filled out the card, an optical scanner converted the information into punched cards.  We used special mechanical pencils called, appropriately enough, mark sense pencils.   One end was the correct kind of lead so the card reader would work properly; the other end had a small ball on top.  This ball was designed to fit easily and quickly into the telephone dial at each operating station.  They even gave us instruction on how to efficiently move the pencil between the dialing and writing position.  I still have this image of the four of us twirling a pencil from one position to another!

The training was two weeks, Thursday through Wednesday from 8 to 5 with an hour for lunch and weekends off.  Once we were real operators our schedules would be much more varied.  We didn't know enough at the time to be happy about the weekday and day time hours.

When we returned Monday, we were given a tour of the building so we could understand a bit of the mechanics of how the system worked.   We started on the ground floor where the cashiers were situated. This was the only part of the building open to the public.  People came in to pay their bills in person.  Also on that floor were offices that included clerks who supervised the billing process, mailing out bills and registering payments that came in through the mail or in person.

On the second floor were the offices for executives and telephone company representatives. This was the only place in the whole building where I ever saw men.  I wasn't sure what it was they did, but I did note the offices were larger and had nicer furniture than anything on the first floor.   In one corner of the second floor was a room we did not enter. We were told this was an operations monitoring office.  We would learn more about that during the week.  

The third floor housed all the switching machinery.  There were banks and banks of switches, lighting up and blinking off.  I didn't understand how the switches functioned but it was impressive seeing rows and rows of equipment all the way from the floor to the ceiling.  It was also surprising that as we walked up and down the rows we never saw any workers.  It gave me the impression this whole floor ran all by itself in some way. 

At one point, a teacher pointed to a switch that had just lit up. She pulled the switch back, plugged in her headset and held it out to us.  We could hear a conversation!  I felt a bit nervous, put my finger to my lips to show we should all be quiet.  She laughed a bit, shaking her head saying, "Don't worry, they can't hear us.  But we can hear them."  

Then we went back up to the fourth floor, this time not to our training room, but into a main room. On the door were the words Operating Room.  (My mother thought it was funny because to her that term conjured up a hospital.)  The Operating Room at the phone company was a large room open in the middle with switchboards along one wall.  There were positions for about thirty operators sitting in a row.  Along a facing wall the switchboards were replicated. While there were room for another ten to fifteen operators, this section was empty.   We could see the switchboards lighting up, the operators using cords to complete the calls, and hearing them respond into their headsets.  There were two women, also wearing headsets, walking around in back of the operators, their dangling cords ready to plug into any operator's station.  They were the floor supervisors.  It was a bit frightening to imagine that we could ever know enough to sit there and do this to the satisfaction of these floor supervisors.   Maybe the point of the tour was to get us to take the training seriously.  It sure did that for me.

We spent another day practicing the different kinds of calls, the phrases to use, and filling out the mark sense cards.  I felt comfortable handling this part of the work but apprehensive about what we hadn't covered, the mechanics of the switchboard, calculating charges for calls, and handling calls from pay phones. Every time one of our teachers mentioned pay phones the other would make a face. I would soon learn why.

We began to use the practice switchboard equipment.  Our teachers disappeared behind it.  They would read from the notebook to set up the kinds of calls we would eventually handle.  It was just one panel.  In the main operating room, the panels repeated themselves in groups of three so any operator no matter where she sat could reach all possible calls.  We had our headsets, our operator number and, as in the real room, a desk perpendicular to the panels with a clock to mark the start and stop time of each call, a telephone dial, and, under the clear glass, tables of information.  These included the exchanges for various towns in our area, the cost per minute of various kinds of calls, the numbers for the most used out-of-town information operators, and a reminder of the phrases for the most common types of calls.

For each operator position there were eight pairs of cords.  The ones nearest the switchboard picked up incoming calls, its partner in back would plug into a trunk allowing the operator to connect to the desired number.  Each pair of cords had a switch.  Pushed forward this connected the operator to the number placing the call, pushed back we could speak to the person we were connecting with.   When the switch was in the middle, the connection was made allowing the two parties to talk to each other.  Once the call was in progress, the switch had slightly different uses.  When pushed forward the operator could interrupt the call and speak to both parties.  When pushed back, the operator could listen in on the call without the parties knowing.  However, as was emphasized again and again, we were never to do this.

Our teachers played the role of those placing a call.  They had a script to follow, placing calls of increasing complexity until we each had experienced the full range of options. Person to person. Collect. The whole gamut. One took pleasure in using different voices, sort of play-acting the role of the person making the call. Sometimes she'd play a difficult customer if the call didn't go through correctly. I wondered how common a difficult customer scenario would be.  The other was more business-like.  We took turns being the operator, plugging in a cord when a light lit up, recording the information about the call, sliding the mark sense card under the clock in the proper position so it could be stamped with the time, placing the outgoing call, watching to make sure the parties were connected and finally ending the call by pulling out the cords when the light went out, remembering to slide the card under the clock again to capture the end time. 

There were a lot of motions associated with this activity and, like the words we were to say, we were also to learn the proper motions, the most efficient positions for our hands as we slide the mark sense cards under the clock or placing the cards into the slot by the cords while the call was in progress. I didn't want to make the beginners mistake of timing the wrong call.  The hardest thing was when you placed the card under the clock when the call was completed to be sure the card was in the same position so both time stamps could be easily read, one time over the other, allowing for an easy computation of the elapsed time.

It seemed simple enough to handle one call, but the teachers quickly moved us into handling three or four calls at a time.  Here you are mark sensing one call, when you notice another call is done.  You need to pull out those cords, slide the correct card under the clock all the while talking to the person on the current call.  Oh wait, three calls all ended at once.  Ouch.  What to do?  We all kept practicing until the motions for sliding the cards under the clock in the correct position became automatic and recalling the memorized language was routine.  That took most of the second week of training.  We went home for the weekend with the surprise announcement that when we came back Monday we would be doing some calls at the real switchboard.

I imagine our teachers felt pressure to get us up to speed fast as we were being paid for this time but not really working from the point of view of the telephone company.

After six days of playing operator on the practice switchboard, that Friday morning we were led over to the unused side of the operating room. We sat paired up, two of us with one teacher in between.  We plugged in our headsets noticing there was an additional opening to allow our teacher to monitor what we were doing.  They could hear both us and the parties to whom we were talking. If an issue arose, with the flick of a switch, they could take over the call.

This was a rush.  I see a light. I plug in. “Good morning. How can I help you?” I  may be a tad excited. The person on the other end doesn't seem to be impressed.  He says in a rather bored manner, “Connect me to Albany xx-xxx.”  No big deal.  I check the table in front of me for the Albany exchange.  I ask, “What is your number please?” Then I record the number on the mark sense card, plug into an open trunk and dial.  I hear the phone ringing indicating a connection has been made. As soon as someone answers, I move my switch to the middle position, slide the card into the clock to establish the beginning time, and set the card in the slot next to the pair of cords for that call.

No challenge. Not person-to-person, not collect, not anything complicated.  I sat there feeling smug.  My teacher brings me back to reality. “Well, take another one.”  Oh.  I don't just sit here and wait until that call is done?  We spent most of that morning on the real switchboard honing our skills, getting better at the routines.  It could get tense. Several calls all ending at once, or waiting for the person to answer on a person-to-person call. It was easy to forget if the cord you were holding was to complete an open call you had just started or to disconnect a call you had completed.  You also needed to make sure the mark sense card went in the correct pile. We all made our share of mistakes that day, but I felt satisfied. Most of my calls went through fine.

Still it was a relief to be back in our training room for the afternoon.  Up next. Pay phones.  The switchboard was organized so all the pay phones were in certain rows.  This was important because we needed to collect money from the pay phones before placing the call. The start of the call was the same.  “What number do you want?  What number are you calling from?”  Those numbers were marked on the card before checking the table posted under the glass for the cost of a three-minute call.  “That will be 25 cents for the first three minutes.”

Now here is where it gets tricky.  You know how we could tell if the money was put in?  Each coin made a different sound.  Quarters, dimes, and nickels each had a distinct tone.  Quarters had a deep boom, dimes a high-pitched sound, and nickels kind of a dull thud.  We listened to hear each coin drop and then recorded that on the card.  Once the caller had deposited the coins we completed the call.  We also had to remember to go back once the call was started and actually hit a button to move the coins from the top of the slot into the box.  Until we did that, the coins were in a waiting area designed so we could return them if the call wasn't made. 

Then we needed to place a red clip on the cord indicating to check back in three minutes. The clock had a button that would time three minutes.  It popped up when it was time to check.  When the three minutes were up, we moved the switch forward to say, “Three minutes are up. Do you wish to continue the call?”  If they said no, we ended the call.  Otherwise we collected the money for another three minutes, moved the switch to the middle position and let them continue. At the end of that time, we asked, “Do you wish to continue the call?”  If they said yes, I’d have my scripted response. “Please stay on the line at the end for the additional charges.”  Then when the lights went out, you were to remove the connecting cord, slide the card under the clock to determine the time, calculate the cost, and ring back the pay phone to request the rest of the money.  It was a time-consuming process compared to the other kinds of calls.  Maybe that was the reason so many operators tried to avoid them.  They worried me too. What if the three minutes came due while I was waiting to complete a person to person call?   The afternoon continued as we practiced calculating the costs of various pay phone options, and worked to get the timing correct.

When we arrived Monday morning, I was surprised to see Sheila was the only trainee in the room.  Our teachers told us one of the other trainees had left the program and the fourth had been offered a position as a clerk in the office downstairs.  Sheila and I looked at each other in surprise.  This isn't unusual we were told.  “Often we only get two operators from each training group,” our instructor said.   We had been so involved in our own experience, we hadn't realized the other two had been having difficulty.  I wasn't sure how to feel about this.  Was I proud that I had made it through or worried that I was missing something that was going to prove difficult in the future.   

The final days of our training were spent on the actual switchboard.  Sheila and I each had our own positions now, still on the empty side of the room and still with a teacher plugged in next to us.  As I took more and more calls, I begin to feel more secure.  Sometimes I fell into a rhythm, managing four or five calls at a time. In the afternoon, we practiced calculating charges and reviewed anything tricky that had come up that morning. 

Wednesday was the last day of our two-week training period. We spent the morning in the Operating Room and the afternoon back in our familiar training room. Our teachers brought us cupcakes to celebrate. 

The final part of our training was to hear about the operators whose job it was to monitor calls to check they were handled correctly.  As it turns out this was what happens in that Operations Monitoring Office on the second floor. There was an amazing amount of secrecy about this office.  There were three operators who worked there.  No one ever knew when these operators were in the building.  Their exact hours varied. The company wanted us to assume the Operations Monitoring Office was always active.  The monitors never communicated directly with an operator, but rather sent their results to the floor supervisors.  What results you might ask?  They recorded every detail about the calls they listened in on; from the first second the call was placed to the moment the call ended.

Our teachers showed us an example of a call that had been analyzed.  They spread out a large sheet, about two square feet, of flimsy paper.  This had been preprinted with all the categories of any possible call.  The monitoring operators had filled in the details on the particular call.  Recorded was how many seconds before the call was picked up, every word the operator said, a comparison of the timing of the call based on the operator's mark sense card and the timing the monitors recorded as well as all details of costs that had been calculated.  Our teachers explained this was how the telephone company made sure their service was consistent. “Once you are working at the main switchboard, you will never know when they are monitoring your calls.  Every once in a while, the floor supervisor will take you off the switchboard to have a check in.  They will pull one of these sheets based on a call you made and go over the details to make sure you are following the protocols.”

  

The telephone company considered this quality control. As for me, I felt intimidated, a bit scared even, that a supervisor would listen in to my work secretly and then call me off the board to, what, criticize me?  Knowing about this did add some extra pressure to my first few weeks on the board. 

Our two weeks of training is complete. Tomorrow we’ll be out on the floor among the regular operators.  Our teachers tell us they’d also be returning to their regular positions. In spite of their knowledge, they were not floor supervisors.  Those positions went to operators who had been with the company for many years.  They reminded us of our schedules for the first week, wished us luck and that was that.  The next day when I returned, I would simply walk into the Operating Room, find an empty seat, plug in and be a regular operator!

It did take a while to become comfortable with my summer job but I did know enough to handle most things that came up.  That first summer it was mostly business calls or person-to-person during the day.  In the evening hours, the calls would take on a different feel.  There were lots of summer camps in the Lee, Lenox, and Stockbridge area. Remember my experience at the movie theatre?  At night when the businesses were closed, this was in the days when banks closed at three, most stores and businesses at five, we had a lot of pay phone calls.  Some of them were kids calling home or calling a girlfriend.  There were some operators that avoided pay phone calls whenever they could. Sheila and I were known as the ones who would take them.  The eager beaver types.  I generally liked the pay phone calls because they were less routine even if they did come with unique difficulties.

Sometimes when I announced the cost for the first three minutes, the caller put the money in so fast I couldn't tell what coins had been added.  The sounds came so close together, I couldn't decide if it was two dimes or three dimes.  In those circumstances, I waited until the coin noises stopped, then recording the correct total of dimes, nickels and quarters no matter what I thought I heard.  Sometimes a camp kid would place a collect call person-to-person to themselves just to let their parents know they had arrived.  The parents would refuse the charges by saying the person the camp kid was asking for wasn't there.  His folks knew it was him of course. They had figured out a way to beat the system.  I had just spent minutes working on this call without a completed call to show for it. 

Sheila and I had fun that summer competing with each other in a friendly manner to see who could handle the most calls.  The regular operators began to like having us in their midst since we would rush to pick up calls, even from pay phones.  We thought it was only fair since they were the ones the supervisors pestered about the number of completed calls.   We seemed to be immune from such hassles from the supervisors.  Maybe they figured we were only going to be there for a couple of months so who cares.

I also learned the usefulness of the passive voice.  I have an image of myself holding the cord for a call I had mistakenly disconnected while speaking in a tone of disbelief, of almost wonder, to the person who had placed the call at how this could have possibly happened. “I'm sorry sir, you were cut off.  I'll be glad to reconnect you.” I was working to convey how helpful I could be to complete the call without any kind of acknowledgment that I had actually caused the problem in the first place.

Twice that summer, once for me and once for Sheila, we reached the ultimate.  All eight calls engaged.  This was such an amazing thing to happen.  Most calls were short and so while it was common for operators to have four or five calls going on at the same time, more than that was unusual.  Sheila and I were, of course, overeager.  We began to challenge each other. “Let’s see if we can get all eight calls going at the same time.” We even gave this situation a name, the eight-call sweep.  We would avidly look for calls and plug in as soon as we could.  Just as soon as one was set, we'd look for the next.  I remember getting to six pretty regularly, but before I could set up another one, someone would hang up and I'd be back to five or even four.  I was the first to complete the eight-call sweep. Surprisingly Sheila managed it about a week later. It was thrilling just legitimately sitting there doing nothing with all your cords tied up until a call ended. The full time operators must have thought we were nutty but to us it was fun.

I don't think either of us had a pay phone call with our eight-call sweep.  They took more of an operator's time than any other.  Sometimes you would ring back the pay phone to collect the money for the rest of the call only to have the person answering the pay phone tell you, “I don't know who made that call.”   I’d respond, and likely this was not in the protocol, “But the phone was disconnected just a few seconds ago.”  To me the person at the pay phone just sounded ridiculous. “I'll look around and see if I can find who made the call.”  A few moments of silence.  “No. No one here made any call.”  All that was left for me now was to disconnect the call. There was little I could do in these cases.

One evening, after the second three-minute interval was up, a pay phone call went on and on for an additional twenty minutes. When I rang back the caller told me I had connected him to the wrong number and he shouldn't have to pay.  I am surprised. “You spoke to someone for almost twenty-five minutes and it was a wrong number?”  His response was, “It took a while to realize it wasn't right.” Really!  I know the telephone company was a monopoly and some people felt okay getting a call for free now and again, but couldn't they come up with a better story?  Then again maybe they didn't need to.  I didn't get their money that day.

The kids at the camps were the worse.  They found all sorts of ways not to pay for phone calls.  One summer the telephone company monitors actually figured out one way these kids were cheating.  There was a pay phone that had registered many calls, but when the collectors came to take out the coins, the amount of coins was much smaller than expected.  This happened so often they actually put a hidden observer on the phone.  It turns out the camp kids had made molds to replicate quarters, dimes, and nickels, filled them with water and then froze them.  When these ice coins dropped into the slot, they apparently made the appropriate sound fooling the operator.  They were placing calls using something as simple as frozen water.   As I relate this story, I wonder if it were true or the equivalent of an urban legend that popped up in conversation among telephone company employees.  Wouldn't the water fill up the collection box?  Wouldn't it be visible when it came time to collect the coins?  Would the weight of a coin which triggered the proper sound be the same as the weight of a piece of ice?  Not sure it was true, but the story did make the rounds one summer. 

Now that I was a regular operator, my 9 to 5 weekday schedule for over.  Each week a new schedule would be posted on Wednesday for the week that started on Thursday. Not the next Thursday but the following day.  I’m thinking, “They don’t give you much notice.” There were lots of variations.  For Monday through Friday, the business day was emphasized. There were several day shifts, 7 to 4, 7:30 to 4:30, 8 to 5, 8:30 to 5:30, 9 to 6.  The 9 to 6 was the worst of these.  As the afternoon wore on and began to leave, whatever advantage you may have felt about coming in to work a bit later had evaporated. You’d see people leave at 4, at 5, and at 5:30.  Meanwhile your shift goes on. To make it worse, as stores and businesses closed, the number of calls dropped off giving you less to do.  That hour from 5 to 6 really dragged.   

There were also evening and overnight shifts.  One advantage of these is that they were less hours, a 5 to11 evening shift paid the same as an eight-hour day shift. There were also overnight shifts that stated at midnight, but I never worked past 11. The final type of shift was known as a split shift. These involved a few hours in the morning and a few hours at night, such as 8 to 11 and 6 to 9.

One thing that surprised me was how little control or knowledge of their schedules the regular operators had.  They received varied shifts and only found out about their schedules on the day before the telephone company work week began.  I wondered how the women (and they were all women) with families could plan their household errands, arrange for child care, etc. when they didn’t know their schedule in advance.  When I asked at the operators' lounge one break time, they seemed surprised to imagine anything different. On occasion a pair of operators would approach a supervisor about trading shifts on a particular day. While they spent time complaining about their schedules, they never tried to change the system. I could put up with most things because this was a summer job but I had a hard time imagining working under such conditions had this been a permanent position.

That first summer I actually enjoyed the varying schedule.  I recall one Sunday when my family was going to visit my grandparents in North Adams.  I had a split shift, 8:30 to 11:30 and 4 to 7.  I decided to stay uptown for my break.  First I ate lunch at Friendly's over by the Eagle Building, then spent the afternoon at the Berkshire Museum.  It seemed like a luxurious and grown-up thing to do. 

Another time that summer I had a split shift of 8 to 11 and 6 to 9. It was a weekday. I decided to take my younger sister bowling in the afternoon.  I walked up to the telephone company that morning, did the first part of my shift, and then walked back home arriving in time for lunch.  Then my sister and I took a bus part way and walked the rest to the bowling alley, spent the afternoon bowling, and walked home.  I didn't have time for a meal, so I made myself a sandwich, eating on my way back to the telephone company for the evening part of the shift.  My dad was nice enough to pick me up at 9 that night.  Even as a young and energetic college student, all that may have been a bit too much to cram into the day. I was beat!  I realized that was the problem with the split shift. It seemed like you had the whole afternoon free so it was easy to do too much, fill up that afternoon with activities.  Then, even though you were tired, you still had to go back to finish your shift.       

Operators entered the building at a side entrance, not the main door the public used which would be locked for many hours of the day we needed to arrive.  Next to the telephone building were both the main police and fire stations for the city.  Across the street was the federal building which housed the Post Office.  It was a busy area.  If I lived in Boston I might even have called it a "square." The alley we walked through to get to the operators' entrance was between the phone company and the fire department.  The side and back of the fire station had a long brick wall along two sides.  When the firemen had little to do, they would sit on the wall enjoying the sun, watching the world go by.  Well, according to some operators, not exactly the world.  The firemen were busy watching them go by.  The operators complained the fireman whistled at them or made comments on their looks or clothing.   Interestingly enough, the supervisors dismissed the operators' complaints.  “It doesn't mean anything. Just ignore them,” ww were told. They didn't actually say, "Boys will be boys.” but the message was clear.  However, within a week or so, the fireman, still sitting on the wall, were more social. "Hi. How are you today?"  "Nice day, isn't it?”  "Looking forward to the Fourth of July celebrations?"  I think someone did speak to the fire department, but for some reason they didn't want to tell the operators.

Being an operator for so many small towns was a challenge that first summer.  While the regular operators might avoid pay phones, I would try to avoid the rural exchange.   One Sunday morning there were only a few operators on when such a call came in.   I looked to my right and to my left. All the other operators were busy, so I had no choice.  I picked up the call.  “Operator, I am visiting in town.  Can you tell me what time the church service is?”  I looked at the exchange on the trunk.  Becket.  I didn't even know where Becket was.  I didn't think I had ever been there. I asked, “What is the name of the church you want?  I can connect you to that number.”  "I don't want the number. Just tell me when the service begins.”  I was getting a little flustered. “I don't have that information.” “Well, don't you live here?”  “No. I don’t.”  “What kind of telephone service is this?” she says.  I tried to explain to her patiently.  “I am sorry I can't help you. I can connect you to the number if you tell me the name of the church.”  I am hoping the telephone monitoring people aren't listening in.   I had run out of scripted responses.  I am just about to call over the supervisor when the phone goes dead.  She had hung up.  Sorry, lady. I am just a kid miles away with no idea where any churches in Becket are, never mind what time the services started.

When I returned the second summer, I had a few days of retraining with one of the supervisors. There wasn't too much new to learn.  I took to the board easily thanks to my experience from last summer.  The biggest change had to do with area codes. Instead of my having to call information operators for different regions of the country when I was placing a long distance call for someone, each region now had its own specific area number called an area code.  Western Massachusetts was 413. Eastern Massachusetts was 617.  I still remember Vermont.  The whole state was 802. It was sign of things to come, likely not boding well for the future employment of telephone operators.

All the surrounding towns were now serviced through area codes and direct dial.  Telephone operators were only needed to handle person-to-person and collect calls.  When I sat at the board for the first time that summer I saw a new information sheet for operators under the glass with the new area codes. Even places like Pittsfield, which still had the exchange system, had area codes so the switch would be easy once all the equipment was in place.

My friend Sheila didn't return to the telephone company.  She had a summer position at her college, some sort of internship.  I missed our friendly competitiveness. No more trying for an eight-call sweep without her to urge me on.  Instead I became more like a regular.  That first summer most of the regular operators didn't include us much in their chitchat.  At breaks they kept to themselves.  Sheila and I did the same. There was a different feel when I returned the second summer. I felt welcomed like an old friend.  At breaks we all whined about our schedules.  They told me to keep on with college and expressed fears about losing their jobs once the direct dialing system was complete.

The calls I took the second summer were much like those for the first but one stands out.  It was a Sunday night.  I answered a call as usual. “How can I help you?”  The man at the other end said, rather angrily, “I want to talk to that man. That man on TV.”  “Do you want a person-to-person call?” I asked routinely not yet aware of what was happening.  “Yes.  The president, Lyndon Johnson.”  While I was surprised, I stayed with the script, writing Lyndon Johnson in the correct place on the mark sense card for person-to-person calls.  “What number do you want?” I asked. “Whatever it is. The White House.” 

Now I am thinking, anyone that doesn't have the actual number isn't going to get through, but I kept going with the process.  I called Washington D.C. information asking for the number for the White House.  Not surprisingly they had one.  I filled out that number on my mark sense card and repeated my question to the party. “You wish to place a person-to-person call to President Johnson at this number?”  “YES!”  Now I could hear the anger in his voice.  I don't know what Johnson had said on TV that night, but clearly this person wanted to express his disagreement.  I could have passed this call off to the supervisor at this point, but I was intrigued.  I decided to stay with it even though it meant my pile of completed calls could be small.

I dialed the number. In my most serious voice I said the magical scripted words, “President Johnson please.  Long distance is calling.”  I emphasized long distance for good measure even though I am thinking, “What's the big deal. The president talks to people all over the world!”  The man at the White House switchboard was not at all surprised. There seemed to be a plan for such calls.  “Operator, what state is your party calling from?”  “Massachusetts,” I told him. “Will you party speak to ____?  He is in charge of New England connections.”  

Even though the originating caller must have heard this exchange, I did as I was supposed to and asked him, “Will you speak to  ______ instead of President Johnson?”  “No. I just saw him on TV news. I want to tell him he is wrong.” The White House operator heard this and offered a new thought. “Do you want to speak to someone about the broadcast?”   "Yes. Yes.  I do.   This is wrong,” exclaimed my caller. I then cut in. “Sir, will you speak to the person he is suggesting instead of President Johnson?”   “Yes.  As long as he tells him what I think.”  So I connected them and that was that.    Because I was curious I watched the timing.  He spoke to someone for almost twenty minutes before hanging up.  Still I did the right thing.  I didn't move my switch back to eavesdrop.

A few nights later the urge to listen in was greater.  This second summer I received more night shifts than I did previously. I don't know if that was because they had more trust in me or because the call volume during the day was so much less because of direct dial. So one night with about eight of us on duty, I had a call placed by Yvette Mimeaux.  In addition to the summer camps in Berkshire County, there were also several summer theaters that drew big named performers.  Yes, in those days she was a big name! 

After I completed the call, I turned to the operator next me saying, “Yvette Mimeaux is on trunk 6B.”   Suddenly word spread up and down the board.  About half of the operators plugged in to listen.  I looked around in surprise then decided, “What the heck. Why not.”  By the time I was ready to pull back my switch to listen in myself, the call had ended.  So much for me breaking the rules.  I asked the operator next to me who had started this whole excitement what the call was about.  “Oh.  It was boring,” she reported disgustedly.  I guess they were hoping for some sort of scandal.

One sad story also happened at night.  It was a pay phone.  As soon as I plugged in, the person on the other end starting talking directly to me.  Something about someone named Nancy.  I interrupted, asking,  “What number do you wish to call?”   “Oh, operator, I want Nancy.”  This time I noticed his speech was slurred.  “Is that the name of the party you wish to call?” I asked.  “Oh, yes.  Please, please.  Nancy.”  “Do you wish to place a person-to person call?” I asked staying on script.   “Yes.” was his asnswer.   By now I was wondering if he knew what he was agreeing to.  “Is this to be a collect call?” I asked. (Remember this was a pay phone.) “Oh, yes,” he said.

Each time he spoke he sounded sadder and more confused.  I asked again, “What number do you want to call?”  He said something I couldn't make out.  “Sir, are you placing a telephone call?”  “Oh no.  I just wanted to hear your voice again.”  I sat up, surprised.  “Sir, we haven't spoken before.”   A long pause. “Yes. You are right. You are much nicer than that other operator.”   This took me aback. Then I remembered the protocol. “If you are not placing a call, you need to hang up the phone.”  “Ok,” he said sounding resigned.  Imagining the pay phone was located in a bar, I resolved to avoid pay phone calls for the next couple of hours.

That second summer I was more aware of the dynamics between the operators and the supervisors.  Most supervisors were fine, but some were petty.  They would stand beside you to see if you swirled your pencil to the dial correctly or touched your shoulder to correct your posture in your seat.  Sometimes they would pull an operator off the board for additional training like calculating costs for pay phone calls or review the analysis of a monitored call pointing out discrepancies between what the operator did and standard procedure.  This was humiliating to the experienced operators because it was so public.  The desk they sat at for the training or the call review was in the operating room off to one side.  Everyone knew who was being judged or retrained.  Other supervisors were more relaxed.   As long as you had a stack of completed calls in your box, they left you alone.

In 1965, I was surprised I was invited back for a third summer. Not because of my work record but because by then Pittsfield itself was on direct dial.  Many operators lost their jobs to this automation.  It was better for the callers but not better for the operators.  Since we were only needed on specialty calls, the demand was much less.  I was able to work three summers.  I doubt I would have been offered a fourth summer.

As I reflect on my summer jobs, I think about how my experiences were typical of the job market of the time.  Movie theaters went from individual theaters like the Union Square to the multiplexes.  While they still needed people to sell tickets and concessions, two or three people could handle the work for six or seven auditoriums.  I sold candy and popcorn.  Now you can buy hot dogs, nachos, even pizza.  And beer and wine at some places!   

The coat factory work, whether you were skilled or unskilled, whether you were paid on a piecework basis or salaried, was seasonal for the years it existed.  The coat factory is long gone now but the building still is there on Oak Street in Pittsfield.  I was glad I had the chance, even if only for a few days, to experience that factory atmosphere.  While my father worked in a factory, the GE, for his working life, what he actually did every day was a mystery to me.  I recall some of the names of the places he worked like screw machine but had no idea what was made there.  I knew his job title at one point was expediter.  That sounds like the title of an adventure movie to me.  Coming soon to a megaplex near you, Tom Cruise as "The Expediter!" 

I do recall how excited my father was when he told my mother, “I got into ordinance.”  To them this meant better pay, a chance for overtime, a step up in the family finances.  For several years I thought “ordinance” was the name of a special building at the GE.  I was shocked when I found out it had to with weapons.  My father expedited materials for guidance systems for missiles. As a family we seemed leery about the government’s bombing capacity. I remember family discussions about whether it was right for America to have bombed Hiroshima.  Still "the GE" as we all called it, served as a stabilizing financial force for my family.  My father had retired before it began the slow process of shutting down, section after section.

My work at the telephone company offered the experience of seeing how company improvements led to job losses.  That first summer it was bustling and busy, the second summer was quieter. By the time I returned for the third summer, the number of full-time operators was less than a quarter of what it had been. That trend continued as callers transitioned to answering machines and cell phones which required no operators at all.   Jobs that at one time seemed permanent, you would have them until you retired, have shorter and shorter half-lives ultimately disappearing entirely.  Those small brown pay envelopes with your name and the number of hours you worked that week, hand-written, with cash inside, have been replaced by a wireless money transfer directly into your bank account. Another consequence.  There are very few pay phones. I don’t miss them.

Another lost job in my imagination is that sweet lady I picture with that pile of brown envelopes in front of her and a record of the hours of each worker tallied up.  She tucks cash and coin in each envelope ensuring each worker will have money for the coming week. She’s long retired of course wearing a coat made in Vietnam, using her smart phone for her banking and occasionally seeing a movie at the multiplex splurging every once in a while on a tub of popcorn.