THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 TAG: 9610150001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: GEORGE HEBERT
LENGTH: 66 lines
The nation's big numbers game - the one we play with our telephones - just gets bigger and wackier.
Entirely aside from the push-button maze into which callers are thrown when they reach various commercial and government parties (which has had some of us fuming overtime in print and otherwise), the mental tests are getting tougher and tougher as we try to get some of our calls correctly dialed in the first place.
Complaints - including mine - about this last are not new either. But the long numbers (with long-distance providing the most and worst examples) are more mind-muddling than ever, especially if you're making a call while away from your home phone. The ballooning of the problem came to particular notice on a recent trip when I had to make calls from motels as well as from other phoning points distant from Norfolk.
Back when I was growing up, my family's phone number had only five digits (39501 - I remember it still) and that was lengthened somewhat over the numbers many people had assigned to them in earlier, simpler times.
To call long distance, you dialed zero and told an operator.
Anyone can understand, of course, why this situation had to change. More people with phones meant more numbers. But does this go on, wilder and wilder, forever?
Say that nowadays you want to make a long-distance call from a motel room. You'll have the least complicated procedure if you just use straight long distance that will show up as a charge on your room bill. You'll dial one number, probably a 9, to get an outside line, then dial a 1 and a 3-digit area code and the 7-digit calling number. That's 11 numbers altogether, a sequence you can almost remember without writing it down. But for some of us, even that's not a cinch, and any stepping outside those parameters is a quantum jump into a digital morass.
For instance, if you're in that motel room and want to use a phone/credit card that has a PIN number for personal identification, you may have to put together something like this: a number to get outside; a zero or an 11-digit package (plus an extra punched digit) that will guarantee service from a long-distance carrier); a 3-digit area code (you've got to watch the changes on these, as in the Hampton Roads region); the actual 7-digit number you're calling; then when you're partially hooked up, the 10-digit number (as in my case) of your credit card; finally, the 4-digit PIN. After that, you may get connected, if the line isn't busy.
That can add up to a total of 37 numbers. Thirty-seven for ONE phone call! A better (or worse) illustration is the way that sequence looks when written down. If we use 9s for digits, the string looks something like this: 9-9-999-9999999-9-999-9999999-999-999-9999-9999. It can come out about the same for calls from phone booths or other people's houses.
I mentioned seeing the numbers written down. Well, writing them down is something I've found to be a must; my memory doesn't work well enough for anything else. I'm sure I'm not alone. Trouble is, getting them all down on a notepad or on the back of an envelope doesn't put you home safe. You can get lost trying to read back and forth between the notes and the phone dial.
And I came across this maddening little beauty during a couple of my recent long-number calls. On each of these occasions, I was being slow and careful in consulting my jotted numbers as I dialed. Then during one sort of longish but necessary pause in my process, a mechanical voice broke in with something like this:
``The alloted time for dialing has expired.''
And I was ready to, myself. MEMO: Mr. Hebert, a former editor, lives in Norfolk. by CNB