Is This My Girlfriend?

All of us have our stories of our days in Taiwan. Some can even be repeated. This is one of those.

Chris Snyder contributed the pictures for the 12/31/2011 post. By then the Taipei Military Telephone Exchange had moved from the Sugar Building across from Haggler's Row to the MAAG Compound where he worked from 1972-74.

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The military switchboard was staffed by two or more Chinese Nationals around the clock every day.  The switchboard was for official use only which was enforced during the day.  During the night shift, however, the locals would patch their friends' phone calls to other places in Taiwan. 

This was to avoid a long distance charge on the local system.  I had a WAC on my shift who was running the tech control one night.  She called me over and asked me to check out what she was doing. 

The switchboard circuits were 4 wire circuits.  She found a boyfriend talking to his girlfriend on one patch and another boy talking to his girl on another patch. 

Then, the WAC cross patched the couples.  I could not believe how long the wrong couples talked until they realized they were talking to a stranger! 

After they finally caught on, she pulled down the patches and reunited the two original couples.  That gave them even more to talk about!