Southwestern Bell

Yeah, well, I was calling about how much government pays for things.

My father-in-law used to work for Southwestern Bell, and he was a switchman, and then he became a supervisor and started buying switching equipment for the phone company.

He retired and worked for the government doing the same job, and he saw the government was paying a lot more than the phone company was for switching equipment.

So he called the manufacturer up and said, how come you're charging so much more to the government when you don't for the same equipment, you're short a lot less.

Oh.

That if you called 900 numbers, whether they be for good or for ill, and far be it from two young preteen boys to get into anything that was for ill, it came with a bill once a month and Southwestern Bell ratted us out.

I will never forget getting a telephone number from one of the kids on the playground.

And they said, listen to this.

Like a dog.

But you just said it, Matt.

Southwestern Bell outed me.

Hey, Dirk, what is this number that's been called 15 times? And, you know, looking back, this is my wonder years moment.

I

think it was Southwestern Bell.

Yeah, something like that.

I remember walking through Walmart, right? I was going to look at...

Am I a psychologist or am I a shell person? And I would be wealthy, wealthy, wealthy today had I chosen the...

shell person route but what I wanted was I was later in life too and I already knew I wanted IO psychology so Bell system broke up I went to Southwestern Bell Nancy Tippins my colleague my IO colleague she was at Exxon when I was at Shell Bell system broke up she went to Bell Atlantic I went to Southwestern and I can't remember where other people they went different places but the system got us Yeah, and that's where I really got.

Shell and Exxon were just great, very different cultures, just wonderful organizations to work for.

When I got to Southwestern Bell, Mary Teneper at AT&T, she was the only woman in IO psychology that I knew at the time, and she was great.

She was at AT&T, so she had been working with all the Baby Bells, assessment centers and everything they were known for.

She led everything.

He's lived in New Providence, New Jersey, Topeka, Wichita, St. Louis, and Houston.

His father is division marketing manager for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company.

That's the background of David Clyde.

Dick and I will both attest to the fact that he is a very mature young man at 18.

She met this guy.

He was an unlocated lineman for Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, so he's about as low on the totem pole or the telephone pole as it gets.

[laughs]

And that's literally what he did.

So in the book, uh, this was a campaign that, uh, A. Philip Randolph was helping to run.

It's, you say, "Anticipating this tactic's widespread use in the 1960s, St. Louis', uh, movement for the March on Washington led sit-ins at diners and public utility companies like Southwestern Bell Telephone Company that won agreements, that won agreements to hire Black workers.

On June 12th, 1943, 300 people joined a picket outside Bell.

After this didn't work, 200 Black customers were organized to pay their phone bills en masse on Saturday morning, the busiest time of the week, in unsorted pennies.