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On my 16th birthday, 1st July 1974, via an advert in the Daily Mirror I applied to become an International Telephone Operator at LFICC/E, otherwise known as Faraday Building. My training was at London Wall, where I learned how to fill in, and annotate the rear of, the machine-readable charging dockets, and memorised an international alphabet. |
| | EXIT | Induction | The Switchrooms | The Continental Exchange | Demand Working | Delay Working | Pay & Conditions | Ticket Cab | | |
| | GPO Trained | Mnemonic Alphabets | | |
INTERNATIONAL |
Most of the 6 weeks' training concerned the strict procedures and we were thoroughly drilled in everything. Every phrase used to subscribers and European operators was scripted, and these we learned by rote. Great emphasis was placed on clear diction, correct pronunciation and 'speaking at a speed the subscriber can understand'. Our key words were "correctness, discipline, efficiency and politeness". We were told "never give in to irritation". It was made clear to me that the vast majority of young women resigned upon marriage or first pregnancy, which left the field clear for ambitious girls. As I was only 16, I could easily become a Supervisor by the age of 21 and maybe one day I'd be a Divvi (divisional supervisor) and even a General (supervisor). |
I thought the long, high switchboards were fascinating combinations of art and technology; with all the little 'opals' lit up it was a beautiful and romantic sight. I simply loved the place: so full of history. I felt it a great privilege to sit at the massive, solid, polished - oak switchboard and to speak to operators all over Europe. For an unworldly, working-class 16 year old, it was an absolute thrill. The lovely old switchboard was very long. I think about 50 positions along each side. I can see it even now, 27 years later, if I close my eyes. At eye level I had a row of beautiful tiny round opals labelled Amsterdam, Ankara, Athens, Barcelona, Belgrade and Berlin and each ascending row of outgoing sockets went through the alphabet until at the very top we had Vienna, Warsaw, Zagreb, Zurich. I found the switchboard extremely romantic and I used to dream of all those wonderful, exotic places. I was short and had to stand up to plug into Zagreb! The whole set of sockets was repeated every third position: for example, if the operator to my left faced Amsterdam, Ankara and Athens, I would be facing Barcelona, Belgrade and Berlin, and the girl to my right Brussels, Budapest and Cannes. The next girl would be facing Amsterdam, Ankara, Athens. Thus, wherever one sat, every foreign exchange could be reached. There would be a line of about 6 sockets for each foreign exchange, each with a small light to indicate if it was vacant or engaged. There were huge clocks all the way down the board and on a huge whiteboard at one end of the room was always written any news we might need such as 'Czechoslovakia now in summer time + 2 hours'.
The Continental Exchange (CX)
Faraday had a French-speaking section (CX ling) who worked in different switchrooms from the English Section (CX non/ling). I held both RSA and CSE in French but lacked fluency, so joined the English section, dealing with Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, Germany, East Germany, Sweden, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Faeroe Islands, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Italy, Libya, Malta, Gibraltar, Portugal and Iceland. The French switchrooms dealt with France, Spain, Switzerland and the Soviet bloc. Eire, by the way, was treated as part of the UK and not as a foreign country. All the sockets and labels for the routes in the 'French' countries appeared on the board in the English switchrooms as well, although we never used them. The brass rings of these unused sockets were dull, whereas those of the sockets we used were all shiny. Many countries had two routes; for example, there was Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Istanbul and Ankara. We had to know which was the correct route-socket to use to dial each town.
One section of the switchboard was called 'INCOMING'. This is where we answered calls from foreign operators asking for assistance to obtain numbers in the UK. Each spoke her own (mangled) version of English, of course. I remember being asked for "Sluff" once - meaning Slough. They came through to us if they were getting an 'unobtainable' tone on a UK number, or to transfer the charge to the English side. Foreign operators called us all 'Miss London' and we called them 'Miss Athena', 'Mr. Lisbon', etc. While we waited for connections to go through lady operators used to ask us about the weather in London or discuss the Eurovision Song Contest and gentlemen operators, specifically, the Italian, Greek and Turkish ones, would chat us up.
Demand Working
The huge switchrooms were divided into sections. We worked a section for a week, then moved to another. The largest section was called 'Demand' - taking requests for calls to Europe from UK subscribers. There must have been over 100 operators on the 'Demand' section during the day. We dealt with the same companies over and over again - hardly a day went by without me hearing the voice of the PABX operator for Hawker Siddely in Stevenage, for example.
On the 'Demand' section, we had to respond to incoming calls with 'International Service, which country please?' (Some operators said 'Irrational Service'). All our callers were in the home counties; (Londoners dialled 105 and were connected I think to Wood Street Exchange.) Our callers were connected to us via a local operator, who told us if it was a call box. We entered the details of the required call onto a docket, then recited the script: 'please replace your receiver; you will be recalled immediately.' We would then unplug from the incoming socket and ring them back by plugging into an outgoing line of sockets called 'Kingsway', or just 'K' which was for calling UK numbers. If it was a pay-on-answer type call box they had to put the money in and we heard 5 pips if they inserted 10p and one pip for 2p. If the caller wanted a ten minute call it seemed to take an age and we'd draw five-bar gates to keep count of all those 10p pieces going in! There was a different procedure for dealing with the old A & B prepayment callboxes but I have forgotten it! There were not many of those boxes left so I did not deal with many of them. We were also trained to take credit card payments.
Very often young tourists in call boxes were upset and sobbed to us in broken English that they were desperate to call home. Once I gave a distraught teenager a free 15-minute call to her mother in Rome because the Rome operator (about whom more later) would not organise a transfer-charge call. We all became adept at deciphering pidgin English. Countless times a foreigner would ask 'are you the International Call-Girl', to which of course we answered 'yes' for simplicity, for 'they knew not what they said.' Often they wanted their parents abroad to pay for the call. For Germany, Belgium or Sweden, we dialled the number and asked them to pay (because ordinary people in those countries were 'expected to speak English' - ho ho ho) but for all other countries we dialled the foreign operator and asked for her assistance with a 'collect call'. In training we were told to think of 'George Bernard Shaw' as an aide-de-memoire for Germany, Belgium, Sweden. I wonder how many 16-year-olds today have even heard of him.
Re-calling subscribers proved that they had not given us a false number to charge the call to. On re-calling them, we said 'International Service, I am connecting your call to ....' (whatever country they wanted), plugged the other jack into the nearest foreign city socket, and keyed in the area code and the number, always omitting the '0'. If the number was engaged we annotated the reverse of the docket 'D.E.' for 'distant engaged' and would disconnect the caller and repeat the process after ten minutes. We memorised about 100 annotations. After a couple of tries, or if there was no reply we sent the card off to the ticket cab, who sent it to the specialist section for that country, so another operator dealt with it. 'Demand' operators did not hold dockets on their consoles for more than ten minutes.
[Londoners dialled 105... Right click to download a copy of Operator Services numbers in 1975 os105.doc 34k]
Delay Working
Each country had its own section. Holland, Portugal and Germany might have two dedicated 'positions' (i.e. operators) and they dealt with 'problem' calls for that country: calls that had not been connected by the 'demand' operator - usually because there had been no reply. The dedicated operator would try again and again, at ten minute intervals if D.E. ('distant engaged') or one hour if D.N.R. ('distant no reply') retaining the docket in a holder on her board until the caller wanted to abandon the call. No matter how much time and effort was put in to such calls, no charge was ever made until it was connected. If section operators had insufficient dedicated work to keep them busy, they took 'Demand' calls. The sockets on the switchboard were no different at these dedicated sections.
The most interesting of the dedicated sections were Malta, Libya and Gibraltar, which were 100% manual. There were no 'on demand' calls to these countries at all. A demand operator would book calls onto a docket, plug into a 'delay socket' to hear a recorded message saying how many hours it would be before the call could be connected, tell the caller, ring off, and send the docket straight to the dedicated section. 'Malta' had only 2 or 3 cables so its 'dedicated' operator connected calls on a 'first come first served' basis, except government and military calls, which were all treated as top priority. Their dockets were always endorsed 'Govt urgent'. The dedicated operator would control every call from the UK to that country for the duration of her shift. If for example she connected Buckingham Palace or Number Ten nothing could stop her from pulling back her key and monitoring the call, should she feel like it. When World-Wide Family Favourites was on, the BBC took a line throughout the programme and two red plastic collars were placed over the keys so the operator did not unplug it in error. By pulling back the monitoring key we could listen to the programme.
I believe we had the only lines to Iceland in the whole of Europe, because operators from other European countries used to ask us to connect them to Icelandic numbers or the Reykjavik operator. We each took our turn on the roster to 'man' these dedicated boards. 'Mr. Tripoli' was a nightmare. You had to really 'butter him up' to get a call at all. We would have perhaps ten dockets - i.e. ten people waiting for calls - and 'Mr. Tripoli' would not answer our call, sometimes for hours and hours. We had to bite our lip and not moan at him, or he'd disappear again, but a polite enquiry as to the delay usually provoked the reply that he 'had to go and feed my camel'. Colleagues would sometimes boast that they had got a call out of him! The only other operators who gave us problems were in Rome. They were all men, and they were surly, unhelpful and lazy. When we asked for collect (transfer-charge) calls they would just say 'No, Meez London I cannot do thees for you today' and disconnect. It was terribly frustrating and we had to make up lies to tell our callers. Often the whiteboard announced 'Rome ops on strike' and seeing this we'd sigh and ask each other, with bitter irony: 'how will we notice the difference?' Athens operators were sarcastic and enigmatic, but they did connect us. Eventually.
Pay & Conditions
I worked in either switchroom 4a or 5-MAIN, both in the north building on the 4th and 5th floors. From there, without ascending stairs, the connecting bridge to the south building deposited us on the 7th floor locker room. One of the two subsidised canteens was on the 8th and the spacious and comfortable ladies' rest room was on the 9th. The views across the London skyline were breathtaking. I was told that the reason Faraday has a green roof was so that 'Jerry' would think it was a green open space and not bomb it in the 1939-45 War. Talking of bombs, we had a security pass and there were uniformed guards on every entrance, because of the I.R.A. which was at that time extremely active in London. I used to arrive from Blackfriars Station, through Wardrobe Court and show my pass at the Carter Lane entrance.
All the day staff was female and all the night and Sunday staff was male. Men received more pay per hour as well as enhancements for nights and Sundays. My first week's pay in 1974 was £12.44. Had I worked in the French section I would have received a £3 allowance. When the Equal Pay Act came into effect in 1975 I got a big rise to give us parity with men. By 1976 my pay was £34. We collected our pay in cash on Fridays from a booth on the fifth floor and I always went on a lunchtime shopping spree in Cheapside. I thought the pay scales curious: we were paid by age and not by years of service. This meant that when I was 18 I had two years' experience and was instructing trainees who, if they were older than 18, were earning more than me!
[See Rates of Pay]
The shifts for women were various, covering 8am to 6pm averaging 41 hours a week over 6 days. If we worked Saturday we got a day off in the week. We were an all-female switchroom during the day and when the young male engineers came to mend some equipment lots of blushing, flirting and banter went on. After the Sex Discrimination Act came into force in 1975, lots of women wanted to switch to night work, but no men joined us on day shifts.
I made lots and lots of friends at Faraday, partly because every week I had to sit between two different people, so one could not just keep sitting with one set of people; and partly because we had such a lot of meal breaks so a lot of time was spent chatting in the canteens and rest room. Women would 'sub' (substitute) each other at 70p per hour. For example a woman on 8-4 shift would 'sub' another from 4 till 6. The woman being 'subbed' would work from 10 till 4 instead of till 6. All day long, dockets would be handed from girl to girl all the way down the board with 'can anyone sub me tonight 4-6?' or 'I can sub anyone 4-6 tomorrow' etc written on them. I soon got into the routine of swapping all my shifts for 10 to 6 then getting a sub from 4-6. That way, I worked a five and a half hour day. I actually left at 3:30 for my 30 minute break and did not return, as my sub took my place at 4. We used to get 4 hours off for 'Maundy Time', 4 hours 'Christmas Shopping Time' and, oddly, once per week we could apply for 'Early Release' and go home 15 minutes early. I never understood why we got all these benefits; I was just told it was 'the Union'.
I have a phobia about lifts and used to ascend the 24 flights of stairs every day, and sometimes went down and up again during my lunch break. Our breaks were as follows: 30 mins morning tea, 65 minutes lunch and 30 minutes afternoon break. The union had negotiated the extra 5 minutes for lunch, that being the time it took to walk to and from the canteen! We could also leave the board whenever we wanted, by raising a hand and saying 'may I have a run-through?' then leave the board without waiting for a reply. I was told that 'years ago' when operators asked for a 'run-through' they had to await authorisation, but the UPW union had argued that this was undignified and akin to being treated as infants, so now we just had to say the words then go without actually getting permission. This was supposed to signify a toilet visit but in fact we went out for a cigarette, or to make a phone call, or to see a friend elsewhere in the exchange. A super(visor) sat behind every tenth operator. We ignored her unless someone phoned to complain then she would come to our board and plug her headset in alongside ours. If a friend came in and spoke to us briefly she did not mind, but chatter was not allowed. If it was quiet we would talk to the women next to us. We taught each other useful little phrases like 'May I speak to Mr ...'in German, French, Danish and Italian, and 'will you pay for the call?' in German.
Just outside the switchrooms were water dispensers with conical paper cups - to make damned sure we could not take them in the switchroom and place them on the console! No eating, drinking or smoking was permitted in the switchroom. Also outside the switchrooms, and in the rest room, and near the canteen, there were ten wallphones with privacy hoods, from which we could dial free to anywhere in the world. This was to prevent us from sneakily making private calls while at the switchboard. However, if any of our relatives needed to make an international call we just connected them on the board and did not docket it, of course. I don't think there is any way this could have been traced. I could not assist my Polish father in this way. Poland was in the French section and so I would have no business to be plugged into Warsaw. If we wanted to ring someone in the UK we'd plug a jack into one of the foreign sockets to make it look as though we were connecting a legitimate call, then stick its partner into Kingsway and dial away. After a while our ten free phones were reduced to UK calls only, as they were being used 24/7 for transatlantic and antipodean calls. I would love to have seen the bill!
As a 16 year old I found Faraday terribly exciting - I had all the countries of Europe at my fingertips, and I spoke daily to aristocrats, royals, politicians, diplomats and celebrities. I once asked Harold Wilson to hold the line, and I knew all the phone numbers of politicians and royalty. I will never in my life forget Christmas Day. The GPO provided a taxi both ways for my 8-12 noon shift. The cab was so late I arrived at 9.40, walked upstairs and went to my locker. By the time I arrived at my position it was just time for my 45-minute tea break - with a free breakfast provided in the canteen. On my return the Supervisor offered me as many Roses chocolates as I could eat - the only time I ever saw food in the switchroom. I did an hour's work then at 11:50 was given leave to go downstairs as my taxi was booked for 12 noon sharp. For this I received double time and a half -ie ten hours pay - for just 60 minutes 'work', plus free transport, free goodies, AND a day off in lieu. What a trade union! There was no demand work; all the calls had been pre-booked. I connected about 30 calls that day - probably did not even pay my wages and goodness knows what all those taxis must have cost.
Ticket Cab
Every few weeks the rota directed us to work on TC - 'Ticket Cab.' This took us away from the switchroom completely and into a room with women sitting around a sort of table which had vertical cubby-holes in it. TC was a clearing house for all the charging-dockets. If the top left-hand box was ticked, the call was completed and we placed it in the pigeonhole to go to the billing department. If the box was annotated GER it had to go to the dedicated Germany section; if MAL to Malta, etc. Some women were designated as 'runners' and they had to traverse the building with a trolley full of dockets, delivering them to the correct sections. If the top left hand box was blank, and no-one could work out what had happened to the call, the docket was returned to the operator whose initials were on it. Most women loved TC work because it was an opportunity for endless chat, as most of the docket-reading was automatic to an experienced operator. I much preferred 'life at the sharp end', connecting calls all over Europe, so I usually swapped shifts to divest myself of ticket cab work.
[See an International Docket]
GPO Trained
Unfortunately, I was medically retired with a frozen shoulder at the age of 19. When I recovered, I applied for work at several leading hotels in London's West End and was accepted by all of them. This is because I had that most coveted of qualifications: 'GPO training'. I chose the hotel with the best pay.
The conditions were terrible: behind the opulence of the public areas was shabby, even dirty staff accommodation. Lunch was only 30 minutes and there were no tea breaks; to my horror, people rested hot drinks on the console and munched on chocolate bars while working, speaking to guests with their mouths full! Their diction was appalling, and I cringed when I heard them recite phone numbers in a manner forbidden by the GPO. For example for 222 2226 they would say "triple 2, 2, double 2, six" instead of the correct "2, double-2, double-2, 2-6'. And when I heard a so-called 'operator' say "nought -one " instead of 'O1' for the London code, I realised I was degrading myself by working with such halfwits - and resigned.
[See the list of correct pronunciations]
I walked straight into a job at an even higher-class hotel. To my disgust, the women operators had to make the tea, sweep the floor and polish the switchboard while the male operators were excused this duty. In both hotels, there was no union, no promotion, no pension, and the 'training' consisted of half an hour in the switchroom. I missed the scripts and the rules and the attention to diction. I felt like someone handing out paper-cup coffee in a rowing boat having previously been a Silver Service waiter on the QEII. I missed the high standards, the strictness and the professionalism. I was pining for Faraday but could not return. I thought the next best thing would be to find work with a nationalised organisation with a unionised workforce and plenty of rules and regulations. The very thing appeared almost immediately:
British Rail needed an experienced switchboard operator for its Southern Region Headquarters at Waterloo: 'GPO training essential.' I was accepted immediately and was put to work on a modern 11-position board. However, after four weeks, I hated it. I realised that nothing would ever compare with my beloved Faraday, with its polished timber, twinkling opals and romantic, continental atmosphere, and I gave up switchboard work forever. |
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