"Veritable Annihilation"

In Paris, placing a telephone call is often a deeply traumatic experience. Parisian operators (les telephonistes) are not the sweet-voiced type that U.S. subscribers have come to expect. Les telephonistes harangue callers with invective, cut them off constantly, allow ringing signals to keep blasting even after parties are connected, often forget entirely about completing a call or calling back. Long-suffering Paris subscribers were taking dubious consolation last week in the news that the terrible-tempered telephone girls are probably in worse shape than the targets of their abuse. After 24 months of studying some 120 operators on and off their jobs, French psychiatrists found all to be suffering from nervous fatigue. Their diagnosis: telephone neurosis.

Dr. Louis le Guillant, director of the Center for Treatment and Social Readaptation at Villejuif, near Paris, reported in Presse Medicale that fully a third of the operators have feelings of "profound lassitude" or "veritable annihilation" at the end of a day. Some are so shaken that they take subways in the wrong direction or wander aimlessly in front of speeding autos. Many walk home, to settle their seething tempers before facing families. Few can concentrate on any intellectual activity. Reading is difficult. More than half cannot sleep restfully, and 38% suffer from full-scale insomnia. Other effects: depression and thoughts of suicide, hypersensitivity to noise, palpitations, stomach troubles, nightmares, buzzing in the ears.

At work, les telephonistes are apt to bolt hysterically from their switchboard positions, burst into tears, faint or have dizzy spells. Pop-offs are not always directed at subscribers. Many operators talk back sharply to the supervisors. The prodding produces fierce competition among the operators to handle the most calls and show the best record. Incoming calls may produce heated arguments among half a dozen operators, several plugging in at once.

Dr. le Guillant and assistants dutifully took note of all this, as well as of the complaint that operators must ask permission of their supervisors to go to the toilet, with the "round trip" restricted to five minutes. They found essentially the same symptoms in all telephonistes, regardless of their living conditions or other background factors. Concluded the doctors: "It's their work which seems to be essentially responsible."

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