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Show Jp feS? DONT HANG UP IF A MAN ANSW-ERS. ANSW-ERS. That might be the first inclination inclina-tion for those who are not used to a male telephone operator. Here Mario Flores, a student at SUSC handles calls at the Cedar City telephone office. of-fice. He is the first male operator in this area. Strange sounds puzzle phone users Some telephone customers are puzzled, others are amused and a few even dial '0' purposely just to hear a man's voice saying: say-ing: "Operator, may I help you." And it's true, Cedar City now has its first male telephone operator. He's Mario Flores, a student at SUSC. "I was looking for a job and my landlady, Helen Spendlove who works as a group chief operator for Mountain Bell, suggested sug-gested that I apply with the phone company," Mario explained. ex-plained. "Rather than be as-signed as-signed to an Installer's job, I was given special training to work as an operator." Wny a man? Exchange manager man-ager Dee Jensen, explained that It's part of the company's efforts ef-forts to break the traditions that have arbitrarily put women at the switchboards and men In outside maintenance positions. The program is known as "Af firmative Action Program" and is designed to open all telephone tele-phone jobs to equal opportunity. Mario comes from El Salvador Salva-dor and is studying German, French and Spanish at Southern South-ern Utah State College. I'll probably pro-bably be graduating in about a year or so, but until then I'm really enjoying my new work," he said. He added that many people who dial the operator and hear a man's voice, think that they have misdialed. "They hang-up and dial again. Other customers especially some ladies, are reluctant re-luctant to gve out their number num-ber to 'a strange man'." |