The Lynden Telephone Upheaval
As the local exchange upgrades its equipment, a wave of bad connections and misdirected calls leads to fraying tempers and frustrated operators.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Don't swear at the telephone girls. They are pretty good girls and will generally work overshift in their efforts to accommodate you. We know it is pretty exasperating to call 14 times for the Lynden Department Store and finally get the Lynden State Bank or the Lynden Meat Market. The company is changing the old instruments for new ones. That means that old numbers are on new lines and a dozen other mixups that you and I can't understand, but it is not a good reason for being peevish. If we will be patient the girls will probably try to, and goodness knows they have more reason to get sore than we have. Why, the things that have been said over the phones to the girls during the past week have melted two-thirds of the rubber transmitters in Lynden.
“The things that have been said over the phones to the girls during the past week have melted two-thirds of the rubber transmitters in Lynden.”
Infrastructure upgrades often come with growing pains, and while we no longer have switchboard operators to swear at, the frustration of technological 'improvements' disrupting daily communication remains a timeless civic grievance.
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