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As director of the esteemed Butterball Turkey Talk-Line, she hears it all — the bizarre ideas (no, you shouldn’t defrost your turkey in a dishwasher); the poignant moments (the widower cooking Thanksgiving for his family for the first time after the death of his wife); the terror (in-laws arriving in an hour, turkey still frozen). Johnson has been “talking turkey” since 2001, as they like to say at the company. So, why are so many Americans (and Canadians!) so terrified of cooking turkey? Is it really that hard? Short answer: No, it’s actually pretty straightforward. Like many things in life, it’s the expectation that causes the anxiety. Our national holiday stuffs Norman Rockwell visions and pumpkin spice into the heated pressure cooker of modern American family dynamics. With such volatile ingredients, the holidays can easily overheat. So, how do you bring down the boiling point? A reassuring voice — an actual human, no AI! — can make all the difference, Johnson said. “I have an acronym that I call PUG: Patience, Understanding and Grace,” said Johnson, who chatted via Zoom from her home in Illinois in late September as she was gearing up for the Talk-Line staff’s extensive training sessions. “Because you really don’t know, maybe someone is abrupt on the other line; we don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. We never want to take anything personally. Our job is to provide them nutritional advice and food safety, but also that counseling aspect — put yourself in their shoes, help calm them down. That reassuring voice might change the whole day for them.” Each year, thousands of people call the Talk-Line, which is staffed by more than 50 food science and nutrition professionals. Everyone on the job is a turkey expert. At minimum, they hold bachelor’s degrees, though most have master’s, and two have doctorates, all in dietetics, food science, nutrition or related culinary fields. Some are retired professors; others have full-time jobs and take time off to operate the seasonal hotline, which is open from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24. Talk-Line staffers range in age from the mid-20s up to 81 years old. “The average tenure is 16 years,” Johnson said. In addition

to professional credentials, there’s another prerequisite for the job: empathy. “It’s something I look for in every single interview (for a Talk-Line position).” That’s been the bedrock of the hotline all the way back to its founding. In 1981, the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line was born with the goal of de-stressing the holiday and advertising the brand. That year, six home economists — all female, armed with culinary knowledge stored in an old-school Rolodex — served 11,000 callers. Since then, the Talk-Line has fielded nearly three million calls, and the team includes “eight or nine men,” Johnson said. Nowadays, home cooks looking for advice can reach the hotline by text, email and chat as well as the old-fashioned way (dialing a number). The phone remains the heart of the operation. “There’s something special about that connection over the line,” Johnson said. “We get that often — callers are surprised they’re not reaching a recording; it’s truly someone live on the phone.” By 2023, it sure seems like YouTube would have killed the Talk-Line. But a video is cold comfort compared to the soft Midwestern lilt of the Naperville, Ill.- based team. Callers, too, range in age and tempera ment. “We might get a first-time cook, and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re young in age,” Johnson said. “They might

be handed that task of preparing their first Thanksgiving meal in their 50s, 60s. Maybe their mom’s always done it, and now she’s no longer here. “We do get a lot of phone calls from [people shopping at] the grocery store,” she continued. “They ask us what kind of turkey to purchase. Fresh, frozen? They’re calling the day before Thanksgiving. They don’t realize it takes X number of days to defrost a turkey. OK, not to worry, you can purchase a fresh turkey.” Johnson can relate to the calls from the busy moms, kids cutting up in the background. When Johnson started at the Talk-Line, she was right out of graduate school. “I started when I was 22, 23 years old. I didn’t have any kids at that time. Now I have four kiddos,” she said. “My oldest is off to college, my youngest is in the sixth grade. My kids have grown up with it.” All staffers are required to attend kitchen, phone, chat and email trainings in October. Most of the Talk-Line staffers still work in person on the fifth floor of their office in Naperville. But since the pandemic, a few have gone remote. “It’s a dedicated team,” Johnson said. “They give up their Thanksgiving every year.” Shifts can last from eight to 10 hours. The average length of a call is three-and-a-half minutes, though there’s no time limit. “The fun

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