Back before microchips and transistors, telephones required operators of a switchboard to plug cables into sockets.
Edith was the daytime operator in Macon Falls, and she liked to listen in on people’s conversations.
She’d tell her friends about what she’d heard.
Well, she called them her friends, but after she’d listened in on everyone in town, she didn’t have any friends.
When she was fired from the telephone exchange, nobody spoke up for her.
She got a job in the next town over, bagging groceries.
She applied for a job at the local phone exchange.
But she got no answer.