She's Sherrie

I voted in every election.  I have paid taxes most of my life. I have given money to the needy over the years. My family members have participated in every war since the Civil War.  I raised my children to become responsible and sensitive to others. I took care of my son and my mother when they were dying. Now I am retired, living on one small income. I am in reasonably good health, but I worry about how I will pay the co-pays and out of pocket expenses when I'm not.  I do not go to the doctor when I should. I see the middle-class people and poor, disabled, and elderly struggling every day.  I see people lined up at churches waiting for a small monthly amount of food from the food bank.  Not enough food for a month, but maybe a week. I see elderly, sickly people in front of me in the grocery line paying for whatever tiny amount of food they can get from their 16.00 food stamp allotment,  which seems to be the standard amount for a single person. I see people sl

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, the classroom.  The elephant's name is Sales.  The most difficult part of training is learning about all of the equipment.  Not just the official name and official color, but the USOC, the Universal Service Order Code.   Every item and color and style, shape, or size had a specific code recognized universally in any of the Bell System and AT&T systems. Before we could add any equipment to any customer request, we had to learn all the codes.  Remember, we had a form that we wrote everything on during a conversation.  We had to order it in technical language for time constraints and getting the order transmitted from our hands to the customer's home.  An old ugly yellow dial desk phone was an EXTYC, translation; a yellow extension rotary dial desk phone.  We had to remember all of the codes and the features and benefits of each item.  We practiced over and over, writing fake orders, on fake phone calls, with fake people. On

That picture of the phone over there to the left is a modern version of the phones on every desk in the business office.  A dinosaur even for that period.  Rotary dial.  Olive green.  Old as PA Bell.  I had touchtone phones in my apartment in 1965 in the Washington DC area.  Maybe Dallas was just a little slow to get the technology. Also, notice there is no headset attached to it.  We were on the phones eight hours a day, holding the phone on our necks crooked to one side to keep our hands free to write and file documents while we talked.  Only one person in the office had a headset.  That was Jane, a Liza Mannelli look-alike who had obtained special medical permission from The Surgeon General or Dr. Nick or Doctor Bell, some special doctor.  The rest of us had to suffer a few years until someone decided they could get more work out of us if we had headsets.  Oh, and maybe we wouldn't need so many green pills for our headaches and sore necks. I have already described how we