A Friend in High Places
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yet Another True Story of Telecommunications Fun

Once upon a time there was a most unusal phone phreak and it was a phone phreak
who didn't realize it.  Her name was Joanne.  She had a very remarkable
position in that she was a telephone operator in an extremely small, rural,
Midwestern community.  A friend of mine, who was a D.J., got a job in this
small town.  One night he had a few drinks after he got off work.  He called
this operator up and started talking to her for a while.  She didn't hang up.
In fact, she was quite cordial, quite nice, quite friendly.  She said, "Would
you like to call Dial-a-Record (in Australia)?  Or Dial-the-Time in London?  Or
any other dial-it services?  If there are any phone calls you'd like me to
place for free, just let me know."

So Joanne proceeded to place a lot of long-distance calls for the guy for free.
He introduced me to her and said you can call Joanne for free by dialing a
certain out-of-service number.  She'd say, "What number did you dial, please?"
And then she would quickly forward it to the other intercept operator in the
nearby city where she would tell the operator what number was dialed an then
they'd put on the standard out-of-service or number changed recording.  I'd
say, "Hey Joanne, it's me, call me back!"  And she would.  And I'd talk to her
all night long because I was a security guard at the time.  We'd place
long-distance calls, conference calls like you wouldn't believe.  One day she
said that the switchboard was going to get phased out - a new TSPS switchboard
was being installed in the large community and was going to serve all of the
small communities in a four or five state area.

But Joanne continued to be a phone phreak and to this day she's working as a
secretary for a senator in Washington D.C.  She still does some pretty
remarkable things, even though she's not an operator.

You might want to call up your local operator, provided you live in a small
town, and just say hi sometime.  I've done it on occasion and operators are
usually fairly friendly, but far from phone phreaks.  You might want to try
this with directory assistance (they double as operators in smaller locales).

Who knows, you might find another Joanne someplace.  One never knows