How come the phone company cannot figure out the “1”?  When I dial from my cell phone, I just enter the 10 digit phone number (Area Code and Number), and the call goes through.  When I dial from the land line, sometimes I have to dial 1 first and sometimes I don’t.  If the cellular phone companies can figure out how to put the call through without requiring me to dial 1, then how come the land line phone companies can’t?  Worse, they’re basically the same company anyway (e.g. Verizon and VerizonWireless).  To top it all off, when my call doesn’t go through from a land line, I get a recording telling me that the problem is that I didn’t Dial 1 first.  I wish that just once it would be a real live person, so I could say to her, “Well, if you know what the problem is, then why don’t you just put the call through? If you know what number I’m trying to call, why don’t you just connect me? If you can ‘figure out’ that I’m supposed to Dial 1 first, then just do it for me!” In reverse, when they say, “please hang up and do NOT dial 1 first”, I wonder why they don’t just put the call through, if they know who I’m trying to call and that I wasn’t supposed to Dial 1.  Mea culpa.  Chastise me.  But, put my call through.  Oh yeah, now how come the cellular phone companies can route my calls without requiring me to remember when I’m supposed to start with a 1?  We can put a man on the moon (how many decades ago was that?)…but our phone company still cannot figure out that instead of playing me a recording that says I needed a 1 they should just add the 1 for me….