Talk:Switchboard operator

an opinion
"Furthermore, not all women were selected for the position of a switchboard operator. The majority of females that received this position were classified as young, attractive, and single to portray the appropriate image as "a weaver of speech" that society held of switchboard operators. Media portraying the workers through sexualized images of "All American Girls" was a popular media tactic deployed by telephone industry advertisers and public relations. These images and portrayal of women decreased and helped mend the gap between private and public sphere life; however, at the same time, degraded women in the process; whereas men were easily accepted into both spheres. Therefore, for advertisement reasons and acceptance of women into the public sphere, switchboard operators were perceived and constructed to be "innocent and efficient, desirable yet unattainable, businesslike but adept as soothing the harried and demanding captain of industry of the public sphere as well as the stereotypically portrayed petty and demanding matron of the private sphere." (214). Although the telephone provided opportunity and, some would argue liberation, into the work force, there were restrictions that disabled women to be themselves. For instance, their script was very strict and encouraged only a few statements that could be exchanged between operator and customer.[5]"

Sorry but this sounds like one person's opinion or "take" on women's role as operators and it is. Something as big as this paragraph that takes up this much room in the article should have more than one reference. Otherwise, it's just an opinion voiced by one writer on the subject. You can either agree or disagree but it's not fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.51.145.197 (talk) 07:39, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Manual Exchanges still in use?
Can anyone find any sources to confirm that there are indeed manual exchanges still used with crank handle phones and/or require you to call the operator in order to be connected to a number? I was reading on the page for the pitcairn islands that they still use manual telephones, but cant find any sources. Nzoomed (talk) 11:23, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

External link
Suggesting the addition of the following history of telephone operators under External Links. (I am an editor with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, which published the article in its magazine, Econ Focus.)

RichmondFedEditor (talk) 21:20, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
 * “Goodbye, Operator: Automated telephone switching eventually displaced the women at the switchboards. But they kept their jobs for decades after the technology arrived” Econ Focus, Fourth Quarter 2019
 * Marking as answered as the user has been blocked for advertisements and a shaired username. &thinsp;Darth&thinsp; Flappy   '&laquo;Talk&raquo;'  19:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, the source is actually not bad at all and should be considered on its own merits. See also --Викидим (talk) 09:44, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Formatting gibberish
The introduction contains a bunch of visible formatting code about bold text which is clearly not encoded properly. I apologize that I don't have the expertise to fix this. 67.219.94.105 (talk) 18:18, 10 February 2021 (UTC) Rex Beans

a messy situation
I was looking at an article that had a Wikilink to "telephone company", but for which the the displayed text was "telephone operator". I thought that to be kind of strange, unless there was a separate section for the role of a person acting as a "telephone operator".

Telephone operator is in fact a disambiguation page, and I saw there was a separate article for "switchboard operator". I thought that perhaps "telephone operator" was being used as a reference to a "telephone operating company", but that was not the case.

The telephone operator page at one point did have a description of the person whom you might have called to reach "Operator 25", to dial Enterprise and Zenith calls, as well as for emergency calls, prior to the advent of 911.

While some versions of the telephone operator article may make a reference to switchboard operator, there's nothing to be found about other roles for a telephone operator aside from physically connecting a call via a switchboard. Here is the telephone operator article at its best, as of 18 March 2011.

Presumably, the pertinent information about a live-person telephone operator should have been migrated to switchboard operator, but of course, switchboard operator is really a subset of that, so that doesn't quite match up. Much or most of these other roles for a telephone operator is at operator assistance, though that article, in its current state, has a wikilink from "operator" to "switchboard operator", so the mishmash that Wikipedia editors have made of this makes me feel like I'm in a mirror maze. Fabrickator (talk) 05:45, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Just to make it clear, I'm advocating the use of operator assistance as the preferred wikilink for a telephone operator, unless the wikilink is really intended to be restricted to a switchboard operator. Fabrickator (talk) 12:37, 7 September 2023 (UTC)