n
the "00" hole in that section, and if the "59" is given first she has
found it by the time the subscriber has finished calling the number.

The number should be pronounced slowly and distinctly.

When the operator repeats it the subscriber should acknowledge it, and
if she repeats it incorrectly, should stop her and give her the number
again. And he should always remember, however difficult it may be to
make her understand, that he is talking to a girl, a human being, and
that the chances are ten to one that the poor connection is not her
fault.

To recall the operator in case the wrong person is connected it is only
necessary to move the receiver hook slowly up and down. She may not be
able to attend to the recall at once but jiggling the hook angrily up
and down will not get her any sooner. In fact, the more furious the
subscriber becomes the less the girl knows about it, for the tiny signal
light fails to register except when the hook is moved slowly; or if the
switchboard is one where the operator is signalled by a little disk
which falls over a blank space the disk fails to move down but remains
quivering almost imperceptibly in its usual position.

After he has placed a call a man should wait at the telephone or near it
until the connection is made. Too many men have a way of giving their
secretaries a number to send through and then wandering off somewhere
out of sight so that when the person is finally connected he has to wait
several minutes while the secretary locates the man who started the
call. It is the acme of discourtesy to keep any one waiting in this
manner. It implies that your time is much more valuable than his, which
may be true, but it is hardly gracious to shout it in so brazen a
fashion.

It has been estimated that in New York City alone, more than a full
business year is lost over the telephone every day between sunrise and
sunset. There are 3,800,000 completed connections made every day. Out of
each hundred, six show a delay of a minute or more before the person
called answers. In each day this amounts to a delay of 228,000
connections. Two hundred and twenty-eight thousand minutes (and
sometimes the delay amounts to much more than a minute) is the
equivalent of 475 days of eight hours each, or as the gentleman who
compiled these interesting statistics has it, a business year and a
third with all the Sundays and holidays intact. In the course of a year
it amounts to more than all the b