Yeah this might be one I’ve mentioned before but don’t stop me that’s one of my favorites.
My first assignment as a shiny new second lieutenant in the United States Air Force was at Tinker Air Force Base in 1982. The offices still had old black rotary dial phones with push buttons for individual Lines. We had separate phone numbers for individual sections and some individual people, if you got a call for somebody else on your line, then transfer consisted of punching the hold button and yelling at the other guy across the room ”SSgt Schmutz line 6”.
The base switchboard was ancient, and was finally upgraded in 1983. We still had the same old black phones but now we had a cool new function called *call forwarding.*
The branch chief was a prior service major who was a pretty good egg and liked a little bit of fun. So first day that the new switchboard was turned on we all (about a dozen of us) got together while the branch chief was out of the office and agreed to forward all our phones to the phone on his desk. And then we called all our buddies and ask them to wait five minutes and then start calling for us.
He comes back in and the fun begins.
*Ring*”hello this is Major Beaufort, Yes Lieutenant Alamo is in just one moment please”, Then he yells out into the office bay “hey Alamo pick up the phone”.
*Ring* “Hello this is Major Beaufort, yes Sergeant Scmutz is in one moment please”, “hey Schmutz pick up it’s for you”
this goes on nonstop for a minute or two, and pretty soon we hear him cursing every time the phone rings.
Finally he jumps up and comes out of his office yelling “what the hell is going on here?! I know you sneaky bastards have something to do with it, somebody tell me what’s going on!”
Of course we were laughing too hard to try to keep a straight face so we fessed up and he ordered us to unscrew the phones and threatened everybody with death or worse.
Good times, good times.
My first assignment as a shiny new second lieutenant in the United States Air Force was at Tinker Air Force Base in 1982. The offices still had old black rotary dial phones with push buttons for individual Lines. We had separate phone numbers for individual sections and some individual people, if you got a call for somebody else on your line, then transfer consisted of punching the hold button and yelling at the other guy across the room ”SSgt Schmutz line 6”.
The base switchboard was ancient, and was finally upgraded in 1983. We still had the same old black phones but now we had a cool new function called *call forwarding.*
The branch chief was a prior service major who was a pretty good egg and liked a little bit of fun. So first day that the new switchboard was turned on we all (about a dozen of us) got together while the branch chief was out of the office and agreed to forward all our phones to the phone on his desk. And then we called all our buddies and ask them to wait five minutes and then start calling for us.
He comes back in and the fun begins.
*Ring*”hello this is Major Beaufort, Yes Lieutenant Alamo is in just one moment please”, Then he yells out into the office bay “hey Alamo pick up the phone”.
*Ring* “Hello this is Major Beaufort, yes Sergeant Scmutz is in one moment please”, “hey Schmutz pick up it’s for you”
this goes on nonstop for a minute or two, and pretty soon we hear him cursing every time the phone rings.
Finally he jumps up and comes out of his office yelling “what the hell is going on here?! I know you sneaky bastards have something to do with it, somebody tell me what’s going on!”
Of course we were laughing too hard to try to keep a straight face so we fessed up and he ordered us to unscrew the phones and threatened everybody with death or worse.
Good times, good times.
