Telephone switchboard operators
A switchboard operator is basically a telecommunications professional whose main responsibility is answering and then directing incoming telephone calls for a company. In other words, they are actually responsible for operating telephone switchboards.
Back in the day, switchboard operators sat in front of a large panel with jacks for even hundreds of phone lines, plugging in and out the jacks in order to connect callers across the world/city. However, once the telephone service became automated, the need for telephone switchboard operators shrank.
Maybe you or your mother were a telephone switchboard operator, too, and sadly for some of us, the job of a switchboard operator only appears in movies.
