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Operator

Wondery

Society & Culture, Exhibit C

4.4877 Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2021

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike Pardes has already had a colorful career before he ever hears about pay-per-call phone sex. He’s been on all sides of the transaction, so it makes sense that he would be the one to bring sexual fantasies to millions of landlines across the country. With one phone call from a lawyer, American TelNet is born.  

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Wundry Plus subscribers can binge all eight episodes of operator ad free.

0:05.0

Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery App or on Apple Podcasts.

0:09.3

A quick warning that this series contains adult language and content,

0:12.6

including some frank discussions of sex.

0:15.6

I got a call about 2 o'clock in a morning from one of the male supervisors and he says

0:25.6

there are a bunch of men with guns on the property and we don't know what to do.

0:33.0

Victoria had been working in American Telnet for several years.

0:36.0

She'd seen her share of emergencies,

0:38.0

so she didn't freak out right away.

0:41.0

And I said, okay, are they police? He says, I really don't know they're

0:44.1

playing clothes. I said, plain clothes suits or he goes, no jeans. He goes, they said

0:49.7

they were pleased, but they refused to show a badge.

0:57.1

Victoria's job was managing a big team of phone operators, all crammed into a nondescript warehouse

0:59.4

in North Miami Beach.

1:01.0

Hundreds of men and women, mostly women, sat in cubicles, headsets on, fielding

1:06.7

call after call, day and night.

1:09.7

And now men with guns, claiming to be the police police were trying to get into the warehouse.

1:16.0

We had electronic door access codes, every agent, every operator had their own code.

1:21.4

The men didn't have access,

1:23.4

and they weren't showing a search warrant.

1:25.4

Without a warrant, the operators weren't letting them in.

1:28.2

After a while, they stopped knocking.

...

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