"HELLO, GIRLS!" SECRET

Evening Star, Issue 20193, 5 June 1929, Page 6

"HELLO, GIRLS!" SECRET

TELEPHOHE MARRIAGES Though the Post Office would deny the impeachment, it is providing among j its telephone girls the most widespread matrimonial agency in the country (says the ‘Sunday Dispatch’) .■ No other class of business girl marries so quickly. Their average stay at the switchboard is only about five years, says Mr W. Pugh, the PostmasterSurveyor of Bristol. He cannot understand why they so readily find husbands while other charming girls remain on the shelf. The secret was revealed by an operator at a Yorkshire exchange.’ Reasons for the “ hello ” girl’s attractiveness are many. First of all she is healthy. She has to be to pass a rigid medical examination before appointment. Being healthy, she usually has a good complexion, and, despite the nervous strain of-the employment, her natural disposition is happy. Because she earns more money than typists and shopgirls she can make herself more attractive to the male eye by . the provision of pretty clothes. The Post Office helps her to marry young by tbc grant of a wedding dowry equivalent to a full year’s wages. Nor dees this list exhaust the phone girl’s advantages over her sisters in other occupations. It is a rule of the Post Office that operators shall not hold conversations with subscribers. According to official knowledge the rule is observed. Yet a phone girl to whom the ciuesticu was put confessed that in her sis years’ experience at a certain exchange more than half the girls there who married began their romances on the phone. The magic of the voice was the starting point. Having met her pleasant-spoken young man the rest is easy for the phone girl, because, in the words of Mr J. T. Whitelaw. district manager in Manchester of Post Office telephones, she knows how to manage men. “ Answering thousands of calls a day from young and old, from meek men and irascible men, she gets to know how to deal with them.” he said. “Soothing syrup seems to bo one of the best aids to marriage. Telephone operators and girl bank clerks have to cultivate it.