We're The Phone Company

We're The Phone Company

I saw this sketch on SNL one time. Lily Tomlin reprises Ernestine the telephone operator from her Laugh-In days (insert snorts as appropriate):

Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [plucks plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make.

We don't care.

Watch this - [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria.

You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it ? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string.

[loud, booming "Liquid Plummer" voice-over] We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.

(Text source: "Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years", 1994 Cader Company. I saw it on SNL and loved it!)