Follow four experts at the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line as they get ready for their biggest day.
Four experts with the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line. Clockwise from top left: Karen Wilcher, Charla Draper, Phyllis Kramer and Javier Reyes.CC Allen/The New York Times
Thanksgiving has many heroes, but the Butterball Turkey Talk-Line may be the largest gathering of them all in one office space.
Each year, from the start of November to Christmas Day, about 50 holiday veterans staff the phones, answering thousands of cooking questions — and reassuring anxious cooks facing all levels of kitchen concerns.
“It’s not just simple questions,” said Phyllis Kramer, a 20-plus-year expert. “Some of them are pretty serious questions that are about food safety.”
In October 2023, six weeks before the biggest call day — Thanksgiving — I led a camera crew into the hot line’s headquarters in Naperville, Ill., to see what had changed since 2019, when The New York Times wrote about it.
We went in knowing some basics: that, since 1981, the Butterball Talk-Line has been a hub of help, a place for people to call for any turkey questions and emergencies; that the experts use their professional culinary backgrounds to coach home cooks for four to seven hours a day. But we didn’t know about who these people are and why they give up their Thanksgiving — even though they’re compensated — and the weeks around it to help people problem-solve when web searches fail.
Following four of the experts over the course of a month, we observed people who, beyond being a beacon of hope for frantic cooks, experience a fullness of life by extending kindness to strangers.
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