Lending a friendly ear in business

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 13

Lending a friendly ear in business

AAP correspondent Sydney “I am prepared to listen to anyone talk on any subject for ?7 an hour,” said the advertisement in the Sydney newspaper public notices column. A cheery Ms Alwyn Ewen answered the telephone. “I do purely and simply what the advertisement says,” she said. “I go to peoples’ homes or meet them in a coffee shop or I talk to them over the phone." But in the first two months of running her business, Sydney Listeners, which she started three months ago. only two persons out of 12 sent her the $7. Now she makes sure they send the money to a post office box number and tells them to telephone her again two days after posting it. “I am not here to make a lot of money.” Ms Ewen said. “I really think it is a needed service.” She said she had four regulars a week, whom she k

visited at their homes, and five she spoke to over the telephone. She charged an extra ?3 for travelling expenses. Although she had had many inquiries, most callers did not get back to her. “I just listen,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t get a word in. I don’t need any training to be a listener. It’s me that worries about them but I do enjoy worrying.”

Ms Ewen said she did not give advice because she found that people solve their own problems by just talking about them. One man spoke about the habits of camels for an hour.

Another telephoned her and said he would pay her double if she listened to his wife, to whom he had been listening to for about 30 years. After catching two buses to his home, she discovered the woman spoke onlv Italian.

A woman, aged 70. spoke to her for about five weeks about how she had always wanted a facelift and then had one.

“She is out and all set to go now; she looks marvellous,” Ms Ewen said. “It is only because she was able to talk to somebody else that she did it.

“I know everybody has lost the human contact in the world today,” she said. "Look at Russia and the United States. The day they decide to listen to each other a nuclear war will be averted.” Ms Ewen said she received the unemployment benefit and saw the service as a way to build up a needed business. She had listeners ready to work for her in all parts of Sydney as soon as the business picked up.

Asked if people saw the advertisement as a signal for obscene telephone calls, she said she had had several calls from people wanting to talk about sex.

“If they want to talk about sex or their sex problems I do listen to them — but on the phone only,” she said.