Re: What's This Telephone Related Item?

At the rate things are going pay phones will be gone eventually. One
> factor is everyone having a cell phone. Another factor is that local > calls are cheap people will let you use their business lines; years > ago that'd be too costly.

Businesses very commonly allowed customers and passersby to use business phones. Some even had telephones out on the counter or in some other convenient locations for customers to use, even though the telco tariffs prohibited this. Telephone calls were measured rate only in a small part of the United States, and there was little or no incremental cost for a customer to use the phone in the vast part of the U.S.A. that had flat rate service.

Years ago employees were forbidden from using employer lines for > personal calls, an edict strictly enforced. In those days large > workplaces often had payphones on every floor as well as banks in > the lobby. Today the lobbies of fancy businesses have house phones > offering free local calls.

The reason for prohibiting employees from using employer lines, then as now, is primarily because the loss of productivity when the employee carries out personal activites when he or she is supposed to be doing the employer's business.

Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com