Word: switchboard
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...than 1000 valentines poured into the London office of burly Bachelor Sir Edward Boyle, 38, who as Financial Secretary to the British Treasury bosses his nation's civil-service telephone operators. Harking back to Sir Edward's longstanding promise to try and get them a raise, the switchboard girls wrote...
...long, he stays on the telephone, shouting at friend and foe, eating nothing but a small salad. His annual phone bill is roughly $20,000. A Swiss hotel once refused to put him up because on an earlier visit his calls had swamped their switchboard. To impress visitors, he shamelessly buzzes his secretary with orders to "Get me Dore," or "Get me Cole." Starting a typical deal, he will call up 20th Century-Fox and tell them he is asking $200,000 for a client's new novel, think it over. Then he calls Paramount and tells them that...
...Strike. Letters and packages that were "incorrectly" addressed, in most cases because they failed to specify postal zones, were returned to senders or dumped at the dead-letter office. Britons who tried to phone instead of writing were equally frustrated; the post office operates the telephone system, and its switchboard operators conscientiously handled only one call at a time, staying with it until the number answered "as per regs," instead of handling five or six simultaneously...
Concluding with, "Don't let your school work interfere with your education," the manifesto offers for further information the telephone number of the M.I.T. switchboard...
Next day, two Indian Canberras swooped down for a shot at Elisabethville's central post office, a Katangese strongpoint in the heart of town, just around the corner from the Leo II. The jets were after the post office's central switchboard and telegraph machines, soon reduced the machinery to molten ruins as Katangese operators fled for their lives...