January 8, 2007
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just a silly gripe
I started working for Southern Bell in 1976, the year after I graduated from high school. In 1984 the government broke up the company, saying that we were a monopoly (we were) and after many, many meetings and lots of anxiety on the parts of both the company and the employees, it was decided which jobs would be covered by the newly coined “baby bells” and which would be AT&T. My job went with AT&T. I was a directory assistance operator for 800 numbers.
I cannot even describe the stress that we all went through during this process. I do understand the government’s point in a way, although there have been other monopolies that weren’t forced to diversify. And the consumers were even more confused. It was a tough year.
I left AT&T about 6 years ago. I was ‘bought out’ because we were overstaffed, which was caused by computers taking over my job….but that’s another story.
What makes me bring all this up now 23 years later? I’m just now starting to see ads that say AT&T and BellSouth are re-uniting. They will once again be one company. Since there are so many local and long distance providers now I suppose that it’s not the same as it was back then, but I can’t help but think about all the stuff we went through to break up the companies. How funny.
Comments (5)
I was wondering how you would feel about this development. I also noticed that the AT&T brand will be used, so after all these decades of first Southern Bell and then Bell South, the brand will apparently fade away into history…… going the way of Western Electric. Kinda sad, in a way.
I also refuse to use a totally computerized directory assistant. I say ‘operator’ every time I use it on a land line, but my Sprint PCS is different- after a computer gets me to say what city, an actual human takes it from there. And if it keeps people working, I won’t gripe about the buck and a quarter it costs me every time.
And boy, aren’t you glad you’re not still there for the festivities?!
Wow, Dad’s up just as late as I am!
lol…that’s where you get your love of the late night from, I guess, Holley! Yes, I’m very happy that I’m no longer there!
And DiDo, it’s very sad that it’s all going the way of Western Electric. If you remember, they became Lucent Technologies and you know what happened to them, don’t you?
Another big thing the divestiture did was to divide up the unions between all the spin-offs and that just about did away with any bargaining powers they ever had. Yeah, it’s all a sad thing and Yes, I’m very glad I’m no longer there…..but I do miss the pay & benefits! lol
About the dilution of union power: it’s a classic strategy. Divide and conquer. And no one can accuse me of bias towards anything union- look at that inept ACTWU I had “representing’ me and the other employees at Louisiana Plastics. They were not worth a nickel, much less the amount they took. Some unions are good, and some are worthless.
Western Electric: the bad part was, back then, you only rented your phones, but the good part was they serviced everything related to the phone, and they rarely crashed on you anyway. Nowadays, you own your phones, but you generally have to replace them every year or two.
I was a bit tickled to see that Holley was up late the other night, too! Must be in the blood.