Operators Are Standing By

• Song
• Lyrics
• Interpretations
• Credits
• Guitar Tab
• Bass Tab
• Chronology

Illustration from the Long Tall Weekend liner notes

An advertisement for the Hello CD of the Month Club featuring the chorus from "Operators Are Standing By", 1994

---

song name	Operators Are Standing By
artist	They Might Be Giants
releases	Dial-A-Song, tmbg.com (1998), Long Tall Weekend
year	1998
first played	October 23, 1999 (1 known performance)
run time	1:24
sung by	John Flansburgh

---

Trivia/Info

• From the Summer 1999 Info Club newsletter: "Sung by Flansburgh with Linnell at the mighty Hammond B3 electric organ, this meditation on the torments of office work carries on in the grumbling tradition of 'Minimum Wage'."
• It is unknown when the studio version of this song was first recorded, although it is known to have been recorded somewhere from 1994 to 1997:
  • An acoustic demo of the song sung by John Flansburgh was known to have appeared on Dial-A-Song as early as 1994^[1], roughly dating the song's conception to around this time. The song's chorus also appeared in a Hello CD of the Month Club advertisement featured in the October 26, 1994 issue of the Village Voice.
  • Bassist Graham Maby and drummer Brian Doherty are both credited for their performances on the studio recording. Both musicians spent time performing with They Might Be Giants between 1994 to 1997, although Doherty had joined the band a year earlier in 1993.
  • Flansburgh does not entirely recall which studio the song was recorded in, although he mentioned on Tumblr in 2023 that it could have either been at Coyote Studio or Kampo Studios^[2]. Coyote Studio was notable for being one of the studios where Factory Showroom was recorded^[3], while Kampo was one of the recording locations for Here Come The ABCs^[4].
• Before the release of Long Tall Weekend, the studio recording of this song was first shared to the tmbg.com Dial-A-Song Online page on November 4, 1998 under the title of "Operators".
• The Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and only one boundary, with the mathematical property of being "unorientable". Flansburgh refers to it again in the songs "Homunculus" and "Omnicorn".

Song Themes

Addiction, Compulsion, Aversion To Work, Backwards, Clothes, Coffee, Occupations, Telecommunication

Videos

Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. Operators Are Standing By is currently ranked #616 out of 1039. (75 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.06)

Other Links for “Operators Are Standing By” Site Format Price Link iTunes AAC 99¢