Los Gatos Weekly-Times

GTE learns that fat is beautiful

By Bob Aldrich

GTE may not make too many big mistakes, but when the telephone company does, it can be a whopper.

To its credit, the company that serves Los Gatos frankly admits as much. But it would also like customers to note that last year's bummer is being assuaged with the new 1996-97 telephone directory, issued this month.

"We realized soon after the 1995 directory was out that we had made a bad mistake in eliminating a lot of listings that Los Gatos people preferred to have in the white pages," said Robin Tole, area manager of customer operations.

The result last year was a directory that seemed to have lost a good deal of weight. Happily, the new directory is back to its more pulchritudinous shape, fat and sassy.

"We had thought that Los Gatos people didn't care about a lot of things that were in San Jose," Tole said. "We soon realized we were wrong. But by the time the directory was already out, there wasn't much we could do about it. It was too late to reprint.

"We learned our lesson."

The slimmer and trimmer phone book of last year may have been easier to lift, but its skimpy white pages had many Los Gatos residents fuming, as they thumbed through them trying to find some business office, shop, restaurant or specialty service located outside of town.

Complaints descended on the phone company like a February rainstorm, giving GTE executives something like the feeling you get when the phone rings in the middle of the night and somebody wants to know if "Macushla" is there.

"Yes, we had a great many complaints," Tole said. "But now we're correcting it, and we hope the reaction will be a positive one."

While most Los Gatos GTE customers seem willing to forgive and forget, a few were still burning, adding the Skinny Phone Book Scandal to their other accumulated gripes.

As Abraham Lincoln figured, it's tough to please all of the people all of the time.

Perfection in business, like love, means never having to say you're sorry.