I worked as a long distance operator for three years third shift. They paid you like 12 percent more than normal if you pulled the graveyard shift, and I figured that the calls would thin out at three in the morning, right? Wrong! We were hooked up to pay phones in New Jersey, prisons, hotels, you name it. The prison calls were the most annoying. You had to be polite, even when you had this scenario every other call from midnight to four in the morning:
“Operator. How may I help y-“
“Fuck you”, a voice would whisper. Then the caller would disconnect.
“Operator. How may I-“
“Fuck you”, he would whisper again.
“Operator. How-“
Well, you get the idea. After a few weeks of this you get slightly callous, regarding the callers as 
“them”. Just like how cops or nurses get all jaded and less than cheerful. So you had to let off some steam every once in a while, but just flat-out flushing or disconnecting calls was too blatant a method, and would get you fired faster than a cat can lick its ass. You had to be slightly tactful in inventing ways to deal with the inevitable stress of dealing with the public repeatedly, and being subject to their abuse.
“them”. Just like how cops or nurses get all jaded and less than cheerful. So you had to let off some steam every once in a while, but just flat-out flushing or disconnecting calls was too blatant a method, and would get you fired faster than a cat can lick its ass. You had to be slightly tactful in inventing ways to deal with the inevitable stress of dealing with the public repeatedly, and being subject to their abuse.
Whenever a caller would reach us, by simply pressing the “scroll” key on the keyboard, the phone number where the caller was making the call from would show up on the screen. This is important to note, as the meat and potatoes of this story is right around the corner.
I would go in at about eight at night, and the phones were an endless barrage of calls, one right after the other. They were fast, and you had to be also. Most people were calling to make collect calls or were attempting to use their calling cards. Any instance where they would need operator assistance.
So one night, right after getting logged in to start my shift, I got in to the groove. The “ping-ping” would sound, telling you a caller was present, and the screen would then pop up with the info. After releasing a call, I heard the “ping-ping” and then this girl’s voice singing “so kiss me, and smile for me. Tell me that you’ll wait for me”- Jet Plane, right? She was waiting in a dorm room to place a collect call, but during the short moment of hearing the singing, I clicked over to see the number she was calling from, then I wrote it down, disconnected the call without saying a word, and proceeded to field a few more calls.
Several minutes had come and gone, and then I got a guy on line making a collect call. He gave me the number he wanted me to ring, but instead of entering it, I entered the dorm room phone number of the girl singing the Peter, Paul, and Mary tune. I tell the guy to hold, then I ring the dorm phone (he can’t hear the conversation between me and the dorm room girl). After about three rings the same girl picks up and says, “hello”. I immediately burst into, “I’m leav’in-On a jet plane, Don’t know wh_”.
“Who is this”? The girl was obviously freaked out, and without saying another word, I clicked back to the guy placing the collect call.
“I’m sorry sir. What was that number again”? So I then proceeded to call the correct number. The deed had been done, and in a blink of an eye, pretty much, I changed this girl’s life for a few weeks at least. I’m sure that she wrestled with that incident for a while. “Who could have heard me singing that song”, she might have thought. Then she would wonder who could have called her on the phone to sing the same song. It was a brilliant little piece of work that I saved for a rainy day for far in the future when I would begin to write my exciting memoirs.
I also built this obnoxiously huge button out of a chewing tobacco lid and a film canister that I attached to the escape button off the computer keyboard. I painted it with the German flag’s eagle and red, black, and gold stripes, with gigantic lettering that read “Der Knopf”. In English this translated into “The Button”. It was like the valve on an air compressor’s tank sort of. It was a way to let off some pressure as you could bang the thing with the side of your fist and it would give enough that no damage would occur to the keyboard.
I pulled third shift there for three years. It isn’t for the faint of heart – third shift. The rest of the world assumes you still do day time stuff and aren’t trying to catch up on sleep.