O/T Telephone Box

[phild]

Do you remember when telephone boxes looked like this inside? We all used em back in the day often a small queue would build up as you wait your turn. Just when you were next in line then the frustration and anger would begin when the person inside put more money in when the pips went.

[Q165]

I remember the older K6 red telephone box. It had the Bakelite phone, buttons A and B or something like that.

[Albionic68]

I used to ring the telephone exchange and tell them the phone box had eaten my money. They'd connect me to my chosen number for free 😊 .

[WBA1955]

They and bus shelters always had the delightful aroma of stale tobacco and p iss. Sometimes you would have a bonus of someone who had vomited over the handpiece.
Buses, telephone boxes, and pillar boxes were all red for a very simple reason...so that people could spot them easily.
Progress eh?

[Joy_Division]

Thought we were dead posh when we had a private line phone put in. No party line for us. Mom and Dad drummed it into me to remember the home number and if I ever needed them while I was out I was to find a telephone box and phone the operator and tell them I wanted Northern 9389 and reverse the charges. But I was not to let the mouthpiece touch my mouth because as my mom would say: You don't know who has used it before you.''

[mickd1961]

I remember hearing an empty phone box ringing whilst I was away at the seaside many moons ago........I picked up the phone to let them know they must’ve rung the wrong number and when they spoke it was someone I knew on the other end of the line👀

Possibly the spookiest thing that’s ever happened to me.

[westcountryvillain]

Brilliant

[TipperaryBaggie]

It was frustrating when at the time time when you were expecting an arranged call to the phone box, there was always someone in there and they kept putting money in everytime that you thought they were finishing.

[mickd1961]

I worked as a rep for a frozen food company in the 80’s and three times a day I had to phone my orders through to the office.

This generally meant a stint of around 20 minutes in the box.

My area was Wolverhampton and surrounds so you can imagine the trouble I had trying to find a working box.

The worst was when I was due to be ringing in and someone else was hogging the box, it was only me that was allowed to do that 🤣

I used to get a lot of threats and abuse from the queues of people waiting so it was always a relief to be around Codsall, Pattingham and Tettenhall where you could find a nice, quiet box and better class of lowlife.

When I worked for Dunlop we had a trick of not giving in all of our orders, we’d hold orders that had been placed for delivery later in the year.

Then, when it was a quieter time of the selling year we’d feed these orders in gradually when in truth we were doing nothing, the whole sales team were doing the same thing!

I had so many orders kept back that I decided to go down to Saundersfoot for a week with the wife and kids and I phoned my orders in from their daily.

One day I was speaking to the office when a couple of seagulls landed on the roof of the phone box and started squawking 🤣🤣

Hard to justify that when I was supposed to be in Stoke😩

[phild]

"My area was Wolverhampton and surrounds so you can imagine the trouble I had trying to find a working box"