By the early 1990s, live phone sex was already quite popular using credit card payment billing via illegitimate businesses, as we describe in our previous blog. In the UK, 0898 numbers were still in existence and by now, some businesses running 0898 numbers had managed to work out systems to allow users to get live phone sex.
Unlike many of the credit card-based companies, where the phone sex workers processed calls from home, these businesses were usually office based. This is because at the time, there were certain “centres” around the country where 0898 equipment could be run on specific groups of routed phonelines, to cater for multiple calls. Notably, some of these areas were near Cambridge, on the South Coast and in Manchester.
For this reason, the 0898 promoters used to be clustered in certain areas, and you could even find several 0898 competitors on the same industrial estate. The relationships of these same-industry companies were often not overly friendly, and each company did their own thing.
The live phone sex offices were frequently based on site at the offices of each company and were known as “chat rooms.” The phone sex industry was about to make another leap towards the future.
These live chat rooms were often run by women. This was because at this time, this type of chatline job was little known. Men interviewing women and telling them that the job might involve talking dirty was a difficult one. Many women were initially suspicious and initially thought that this might be a cover for darker sexual activity, porn movies or trafficking. So, often the chat room arms of companies were run by women, or had a female “boss” fronts person running the chat line teams.
In fact, often the companies ran a “clean” chatline and an adult chat line in tandem. At this time, most of the adult phone companies restricted what they talked about in terms of sexual subjects and language, due to the fact that the chat was run via 0898 numbers.
To staff the chat rooms, ads would be placed in newspapers, often offering reasonable rates of hourly pay that were comparable with supermarket cashier work. Girls would be interviewed, taken on and be given shifts as chatline operators. The girls would often do a normal working week of 40 hours and turn up at the chatline office, log onto the phone lines and await calls.
Often operators would start off on the clean chat lines and then be promoted up to the adult lines. Obviously, some girls had no idea where to start with phone sex, and so they were given training. The trainers were often recruited from chatline girls who were good at phone sex themselves. They often remained part time on the phone lines as they were too much on asset to lose, and then trained new girls for some extra money, when they arrived.
To give you some idea of a good phone sex operator and a mediocre one, a “good” operator could hold someone on the line for 20 minutes, while a “not so good” operator would have a punter on for an average of 2.5 minutes. These latter phone sex operators would rush into phone sex straight away, build no rapport, have no regular callers and often be disinterested in their jobs because of their lack of success.
Compared to this, the “good” operators would be in high demand, and were extremely competent. Like their predecessors based at home doing illegal credit card chat, these top phone sex workers would learn to “chat up” their callers and make them feel wanted and comfortable, be open to discussing most fetishes, learn the art of talking dirty, (according to whatever rules were presented to them) down to a T and be actually pretty darn hot at what they did.
Soon companies were offering incentives and bonuses to top operators who could keep the punters interested on the phone and calling them back. In the background, software engineers (at this time working in DOS) would create programmes for the chat line bosses to monitor the chat line staff, listen into their calls, see their average call times and more. The live chat line industry was now well on its way.
Life as a chat line operator wasn’t always easy going. For many open-minded girls, having the opportunity to become a live chat was a real coup. The job attracted many part time university students in need of extra money. But also, older women in their 40s, who had been looking after their families as a full-time job and whose children left the nest, were also ideal candidates. These older ladies were often reliable, delighted to have a job and meet other people and they put their heart and soul in their work. Consequently, they gave great phone sex to every customer and looked after their callers with genuine love and feeling. Many of these ladies were MILFs, or rediscovered their youth, identity and happiness through doing the work and transformed into MILFs through doing it!
The job of a chat line operator required very little experience, as long as you had a nice voice, a good telephone manner, were a hard worker and had a good attitude. It therefore came as a blessing to many girls with few qualifications, or those who did not want to work in a DIY store, stacking shelves, or at a supermarket checkout. It was possible to make quite a bit more money than in other more “ normal” jobs, with the bonuses that were often offered too.
Referral systems of girls that introduced their friends to become chat line operators too were also often set up. The girls who introduced a friend would often receive a bonus when the friend joined a s anew chat operator, a larger one if she stayed more than a month, and a further bonus after 3 months had passed.
Many women never admitted what they did as a job to their friends and family, but were happy enough to come in every day, 5 days a week and dirty chat their hearts away.
Yet, put 20 to 50 women in a room at the same time and there are bound to be problems at some point. Groups that dislike other groups, one woman who sleeps with another one’s boyfriend (sometimes this would happen without the boyfriend or the women having a clue that they worked together). Racism. Chat room supervisors and managers often had their hands full.
The chatlines were so popular that they frequently were open for business 24/7, 365 days of the year. The days were often cut into 3 or more shifts. One issue with night workers was girls falling asleep on the lines while awaiting calls. Yet some girls really took to this. Many chatline girls with children used to arrive once their children were in bed and were home to take their children to school in the morning. They would then sleep and be up again to fetch their children from school, do their dinners, put them to bed and get back on shift again.
In 1993, OFCOM announced that adult chatline services on 0898 numbers would only be available with restricted access. This was supposedly to stop minors from accessing the services. But adult phone sex services were frowned upon, so there may have been unknown political issues too.
Now, British and Dutch entrepreneurs were now about to change the face of phone sex again, to get around these regulations. And what happened would make a few tiny countries in the South Pacific and in the Dutch Antilles very rich indeed!
Plus, once the restrictions of the 0898 numbers were gone, callers were about to experience hardcore phone sex on direct dial numbers for the first time ever. For this was the birth of the international adult numbers, and a whole new ballgame for the punters to play….
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