Herman and Dorothy - Back in Business
When the brothers arrived we talked about everything but the answering service and our negotiations. We talked about the antique busi- ness they were hoping to get into and about all sorts of other topics having nothing to do with the specifics of the business. By the time the lunch was over the deal was back on. Short- ly after Herman and I were the new owners of Ding-A-Ling Answering Service. It took a couple of difficult years but we were back in busi- ness. You never know what a friendly lunch will produce. DING-A-LING Our new little business was located in the rear of a dress shop on Oakland Park Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. Besides Herman and I, a dozen or so employees answered phones and took messages there. The operator took the message by hand using a pen and small paper pad. And most of the time you got your message. Our operators tried to teach Herman and I to answer the phones professionally but we were hopeless. Herman likes to say, “You don’t have to be a pilot to run an airline.” The old switchboard with its jacks and plugs still sits in the lobby of the company Ding-a-Ling became, Global Response. The switchboard seems like a relic from a century ago amid all the banks of computers
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