My middle child is studying for his GMATs right now, and is worried that he won't be good enough to get into an MBA program.
I just called him up to gush about how OMG High-Functioning he is compared to the twenty-somethings I'm meeting.
I raised my kids in a business where a deliverable was required to be correct and on-time to be paid. We are FREAKS. I had no idea until the past few years.
If she's in her early 20s or younger, I could totally believe she didn't know about the 1. I program a 1 before all US numbers in my cell phone, but a lot of people don't, and when they were in Bahrain were unable to look them up on Whatsapp or to just call them from the +973 sim cards.
Instead of editing this a third time, I'll just re-write it. I asked a lot of people if they had ever heard of having to dial the country code while you were in the actual country you were calling from. General consensus was that most people had never heard of having to do that, except possibly in some long-distance call scenarios, but not all. My query sample ranges in age from early 20s to mid 60s. The exceptions were people with "old school" landlines and phone systems, or in one instance a friend who has to call her mother that way because her mother has a very old phone system, but she doesn't have to do it for anyone else. In short, that's not a thing most people would think to do these days because either their phone system or their cellphone takes care of it for them. I know last time I had a landline I did not have to dial a 1 before the area code, not even for long distance, but that was at least 10 years ago, probably more like 15.
If you were dialing INSIDE your local calling area you only had to dial 7 numbers. But as far as I know, I've always had to put a 1 in front of any "long distance" phone call, i.e., anytime I had to dial (xxx) I had to dial 1+(xxx).
This is true of every land line I've ever used.
We didn't refer to the 1+ as the "country code" (although it is) because people in the United States didn't know that's why they were dialing 1. But if you ask the question differently, "did you know you had to dial 1 in front of a number when calling long distance" they will tell you they did know that.
Again, ask the question differently. For me to call anyone, even the house next door, from either a land or cell I have to put in 10 numbers. My metro area comprises 3 different area codes, all "local". When I call what used to be called "long distance" on my cell, it's still 10 numbers, altho most likely because cellphones don't really recognize "long distance" numbers as a thing inside the US. So the concept of "long distance phone call" means something entirely different to someone who grew up with cell phones. Further, since a decent percentage of land lines these days are really VOIP, they do the same thing. You have to be on a really old system for that 1 to come into play for anything other than 1-800 or 1-888, etc.
LOL, yeah, old tech. I have a Verizon landline. It's basically the exact phone system that everyone between the ages of 30 and 100 grew up using.
So perhaps YOU knew that we needed to teach twenty-somethings to use desk telephones, but *I* didn't know that. This is literally the first person in 15 years of hiring staff that didn't know how to put a "1" in front of a long-distance number.
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I just called him up to gush about how OMG High-Functioning he is compared to the twenty-somethings I'm meeting.
I raised my kids in a business where a deliverable was required to be correct and on-time to be paid. We are FREAKS. I had no idea until the past few years.
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In short, that's not a thing most people would think to do these days because either their phone system or their cellphone takes care of it for them.
I know last time I had a landline I did not have to dial a 1 before the area code, not even for long distance, but that was at least 10 years ago, probably more like 15.
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This is true of every land line I've ever used.
We didn't refer to the 1+ as the "country code" (although it is) because people in the United States didn't know that's why they were dialing 1. But if you ask the question differently, "did you know you had to dial 1 in front of a number when calling long distance" they will tell you they did know that.
Reply
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So perhaps YOU knew that we needed to teach twenty-somethings to use desk telephones, but *I* didn't know that. This is literally the first person in 15 years of hiring staff that didn't know how to put a "1" in front of a long-distance number.
Reply
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