Original art, mounted and framed, 13 ¼" x 12 ¼", $70.00 USD plus $15.00 shipping within the USA. (Massachusetts residents will be charged 6 ¼% sales tax.)
Image © 2007 E. J. Barnes. Published in The Recorder 7 September 2007.
Some years ago, the town of Greenfield, MA, bent over backward to accommodate Verizon, the growing "Baby Bell" of the Northeast, in their desire to open a call center within the town precincts — the town threw a job fair, subsidized the construction of Verizon's parking lot, and gave them property tax breaks. However, in the fall of 2007, Verizon announced that they would be closing the Greenfield call center and transfer whatever staff didn't take early retirement over to Gardner, MA, some 30 miles away. Verizon's argument was that the Greenfield center wasn't getting very many calls. The operators' union found this argument specious, as increased electronic switching over the last several years simply meant that directory-assistance and other information calls could be routed to wherever the operators were least busy; if the Greenfield office wasn't getting very many calls, it was because Verizon wasn't routing them very many. If the drop in calls is across the board due to use of Internet-based directories, why hasn't Verizon said so?