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9 HN mentions · mentioned in 9 months, 2015–2022
1:06 · 103K views · Mar 1, 2014
Lily Tomlin's classic 1976 Saturday Night Live sketch as telephone operator Ernestine, mocking the monopolistic Bell phone company with the line 'We don't care. We don't have to.' It is a one-minute parody of arrogant corporate indifference.
Quoted as the go-to joke whenever a monopoly or big tech company ignores customers, from Verizon to Google to Apple.
9 comments from Hacker News
I was an employee for Level 3, coming from the Global Crossing acquisition, for around 17 years, choosing to leave early last year (and unlike most former Level 3/Global Crossing employees, this choice was not forced upon me). Internally (and by, internally, I mean within my team, not within management or anyone who makes decisions of this nature), we'd always seen CenturyLink as an interesting prospect for merger. The two companies' footprints and businesses appeared to compliment each other. It was generally dismissed out of hand because of the consumer side of CentryLink. Level 3 (and even less so with Global Crossing), focused on carriers and Fortune 50-100 businesses as their core and shied away from the more expensive, less profitable consumer facing pieces. A bit of history for those who weren't around in the 90s: When thinking CenturyLink, think Qwest (and commercials about the little motel in the desert with "Cable TV" replaced by media services delivering every television show and movie produced in the history of ever). They were one of the formerly local telecoms that expanded into long distance/fiber/internet after the 1996 telecom deregulation[0]. Level 3's business is Carrier and Enterprise with much of the Enterprise piece coming from the Global Crossing side of it because, at the time, we effectively couldn't compete with Level 3. We'd come in to bid a project at a price we could eek out a small profit on and would be undercut because they owned far more local
Very interesting read, particularly in where the service providers are expanding their network. It speaks a lot to the each company's priorities and confirms a bit of my personal thoughts on each of the companies. Verizon - I had Verizon service from 1996 through 2008 and the one thing you couldn't really complain about where I lived was reception. Billing issues and customer hostile behavior were the reason I ditched them [0] but there wasn't a moment I can recall grabbing my phone and not having a solid signal everywhere I traveled in the US. They were laser focused on providing a modern, reliable network. Quickly moving to increase capacity - they've always had a pretty solid focus on providing a solid network. AT&T - I have a personal hatred for this company after numerous problems with services other than mobile. Their attitude was best summed up by a Saturday Night Live skit[1], "We're the phone company. We don't care." I've never used their services if I had a choice (that was probably the single biggest reason I didn't purchase an iPhone, originally) because every time I've been forced to use one of their offerings, a variety of service related issues (not helped by their customer service department) has made them unavailable for long periods of time. It's disappointing to me that they seemed to think it would be a good idea to halt wireless expansion and redirect that money to the DirecTV acquisition. It seems that couldn't have come at a worse time considering the r
You could define a class called RingyDingyEnumerator! [LINK] Speaking of "old school", I love watching Joan Rivers shamelessly plug MCI, after which she audaciously asks Ernestine how old she is and grills her about her sexuality: [LINK] [LINK] > In 1970, AT&T offered Tomlin $500,000 to play her character Ernestine in a commercial, but she declined, saying it would compromise her artistic integrity. In 1976, she appeared on Saturday Night Live as Ernestine in a Ma Bell advertisement parody in which she proclaimed, "We don't care, we don't have to...we're the phone company." The character later made a guest appearance at The Superhighway Summit at UCLA on January 11, 1994, interrupting a speech being given on the information superhighway by then-Vice President Al Gore. She appeared as three of her minor characters in a 1998 ad campaign for Fidelity Investments that did not include Ernestine or Edith Ann. In 2003, she made two commercials as an "updated" Ernestine for WebEx. phone company sketch - we dont care - Tomlin this video Ernestine's House Call - Saturday Night Live [LINK] Ernestine the telephone operator calls General Motors [LINK] Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the Telephone Operator [LINK]
In part, because of the existence proof of doing it that way. No, it's not as simple as saying that AT&T was bad. They established highly reliable landline service. I also hear that Bell Labs did a couple of interesting things in its history. :-) (AT&T wasn't nationalized but it was a regulated monopoly.) However, you also weren't allowed to so much as provide your own telephone until AT&T was forced to allow it by the government. And phone service, especially outside of a small local area, was shockingly expensive for a very long time. (Yes, some of this is because of technology but AT&T also had little incentive and little interest in cutting rates absent competition.) For the short video version, cue Lily Tomlin: We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company. this video
Distributed revision control users whining about centralized repository lacking features. Ummm ... anybody getting the irony here? And, from a GitHub business perspective, why do I hear Lily Tomlin: "We don't care. We don't have to." Everybody anointed GitHub as "the chosen one" over strenuous objections from some of us that creating another monopoly for open source projects is a bad idea . Pardon me for enjoying some Schadenfreude now that GitHub leveraged the open-source adoption into corporate contracts and now doesn't have to give two shits about open source folks. Lily Tomlin's Phone Company Sketch: this video