Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel (35 page)

Brushing the dirt off my knees, I watch Ewan scurry about and in the blink of an eye, he scuttles off into the nearest shrub.

A sagebrush of course.

I look up and catch Mika gazing at me with affection.

“Thanks again.” On impulse, I throw my arms around him and embrace him in a burly bear hug.

He buries me in his arms and murmurs in hair, “Anytime.”

Cradled against his chest, I grin with contentment, allowing myself to be smothered by him.

Out of the woodwork, a bearded hiker tramples by the beaten path and we spring apart like guilty lovers. Then we resume our hike, pretending like the embrace had never happened.

Twenty Two

W
h
en I troop into work on Monday, Hillary is noticeably
absent from her spy tower.

I nudge Truong. “Where is our Lord and master?”

He snickers. “She took off on her broom an hour ago. They sent her to the California headquarters for some meetings.”

My heart leaps joyfully.
Yesssss
. No more side-by-sides with Hillary!

“Oh!” he exclaims and adds, “She also wanted me to tell you that she’ll be back in two days, and she’ll be doing side-by-sides with you for the next six weeks.”

The merriment instantly dies out of my face. And a premonition of death flashes before my eyes.

I take a moment to compose myself. That’s okay. I won’t let Hillary dampen my enthusiasm. Last I checked, all my monitors have been completed. A total of twelve calls are monitored by the Quality Assurance Assholes each month, and today, being the 31
^st
of July, they’ve all been reviewed and I’m covered.

YAY! None of my calls will be monitored today!

Beep!

“Thanks for calling Lightning Speed Communications, this is Maddy. How can I help?” I rattle off my usual greeting and feel my shoulders begin to relax.

No monitors. No Hillary. What more can a gal ask for?

“Hello, this is Blinky from the Billings department. I need to transfer a customer who needs help with his online access.”

“Is this Blinky Fiore?”

“The very one. Is this Madison? Maddy the Minx from my training class?”

“That’s me!” I squeal with delight. “I can’t believe it’s you Blinky! It’s been
so
long.”

Blinky was in my training class, and she had to leave rather abruptly during our third week of training, because her twins were born two months prematurely.

Everyone in class loved Blinky; she always had us in stitches and her spot on imitations of Glenn the Bland trainer brought the house down. She is also legendary for her hoots. It starts out as a mild giggle, then it crescendos into a high pitched hoot
slash
shriek of epic proportions. Belinda is actually her real name, but she prefers to be called Blinky, after the three-eyed orange fish from the Simpsons, mutated by a nearby nuclear plant.

Ordinarily, I would have to keep everything business-like and robot-like, but since I’m fully covered on my QA monitors, I can act like a normal person and interact with my long lost friend.

“Maddy!” she booms. “It’s so good to hear your voice again.”

“You too Blinky! How are your twins?”

“Homer and Marge are doing just great. Did you see the first batch of pictures I posted on Facebook?”

“Yes. They are so flippin’ cute. When will you post more
pics
?”

“Soon. I hauled them over to Kiddie Kandids today.”

“I can’t wait to see,” I gush.

Truong scoffs, “I can’t stand it when people post pics of their newly born naked rats on Facebook. I like my newsfeed to be a baby free zone.”
 

I roll my eyes at him. I simply adore baby pics!

My cubicle calendar features pictures of happy, cherubic babies posing in flower pots and wheelbarrows.

“How are things over there in customer service?” asks Blinky.

I laugh mirthlessly. “Not that great.”

“That’s too bad,” she tuts. “Whose team are you on?”

“Hillary’s Third Reich,” I groan morosely.

She hoots like a hyena. “Ah yes, I’ve heard that she’s the Not Ready Nazi. I have to ask you though, when she walks into a room, do you click your heels and clap your thighs together, and yell
HEIL
HILLARY?”

“No, but I’m still a P.O.W in this labor camp, and Hillary is still a fascist pig.”

Sometimes, I wish I was in a different department. Blinky is
so
lucky to be in Billings. After she returned from maternity leave, she managed to get transferred.

“Do you like it over there in Billings, Blinks?”

“It’s okay. At least my supervisor is nothing like yours. But it kind of sucks; we have to sell over here too.”

“You do?” I cry in astonishment. I was under the impression they didn’t have to sell. “Sell what?”

“Credit cards,” she moans peevishly. “Some of my callers have a hard time even paying their bills, and I’m still forced to sell them credit cards.”

I shake my head. “I guess there’s no escaping it.”

“No there isn’t,” she says with an aggrieved air, imprisoned too by this madness.

“Okay, I guess you better transfer the caller,” I say ruefully.

I could go on chatting with Blinky forever, but I don’t want the poor customer to be on hold for much longer.

She breathes out a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I guess I better.”

“It’s been great catching up with you, Blinky.”

“You too! And try to stay alive over there.”

“I’ll try,” I say half-heartedly.

“Next time Hillary is mean to you, say this:
Halt!
Lassen sie mich die unterlagen für ihren schnurrbart sehen.”

I stifle a laugh. “What does that mean?”

She hoots. “It means ‘
Halt! Let me see the documentation for your moustache’
.” Then she immediately brings the caller on the line, and her tone is all serious and business-like. “Sir, thank you so much for holding. I have Maddy on the line with us now. She’s a very good friend of mine, and she’ll be assisting you from here.”

“Bye-bye, Blinky,” I manage between sputters, laughing like a loon, trying hard to compose myself so I can assist the caller.

This past week has pretty been rough, with my left eye getting progressively worse. It’s red, it’s sore, and it hurts like crazy. At first, I chalked it up to computer eye fatigue for the simple fact that my job requires me to stare at a monitor for eight hours a day. But by Thursday, my left eye is so severely inflamed and the pain is so unbearable, that I just
know
something is seriously wrong. I immediately make an appointment with an ophthalmologist and the receptionist at his clinic manages to squeeze me into a slot tomorrow.

The next morning, Kars gives me a ride to the eye doc’s office. My vision has become so impaired that I’m certain I’d cause a pile up on the freeway if I’m at the wheel.

We arrive at Okelberry Vision Center unharmed and intact.

In the waiting room, I find myself observing the folks around me (through my one good
eye), and I’m shocked. Aside from me and Karsynn, not a single person here is under sixty.

Kars nudges me. “
Psssst
. You’re here along with all the senior citizens suffering from age-related macular degeneration; they’re here for cataract surgery!” She snorts derisively. “Just like you!”

I shoot daggers her way, but it doesn’t really have the desired effect when pus is oozing out of one eye.

Flummoxed, Kars hands me a Kleenex. “Calm down, Maddy. I don’t want you going blind on me, ya hear?”

“Madison Lee?” The nurse looks up from her pad.

I stand up and trot into a dark den.

After I relay all my symptoms to Dr.
Okelberry
, he
performs a slit eye exam on my butchered orb. Minutes later, he diagnoses me with Ocular Herpes, also known as Herpes of the Eye.

“Herpes? I cannot have herpes!” Is the first thing that flies out of my mouth.

He offers me a kind smile. “It is nothing to worry about. Herpes simplex is a pretty common virus. It’s the same virus that causes the cold sores that you get in your mouth.”

“Oh,” I say with a puzzled frown. “But what causes it?”

“Stress can trigger it.” He regards me. “Now have you been stressed at all lately?”

Hillary has been doing side-by-sides with me for the past several weeks. On top of that, I have all these unattainable sales quotas I’m forced to meet. So, to answer his question, “Yes, I’ve been feeling considerably
over stressed
lately
.
”

Dr.
Okelberry
prescribes some antiviral eye drops to treat my infected eye and sends me on my way home. I spend my entire weekend holed up in my dungeon of a room, with the lights off and venetian blinds shut, willing the horrible Herpes to go away.

On Monday, I troop into work with an eye patch, much like Tom Cruise in
Valkyrie
. A word to the wise—wearing an eye patch is extremely uncomfortable. But I’ve no choice; I need to shield my Herpes eye from the glaring outdoor sunlight, as well as the garish indoor fluorescent lighting.

Truong’s chin drops at the sight of me. “What the balls?!?”

“I have Ocular Herpes,” I say, straining to see out of one eye.

There is a moment of silence as he blatantly stares at my eye patch. Then he throws his head back and roars with laughter. “Maddy, please don’t go around saying that you have Ocular Herpes. People will think that you got poked in the eye with your boyfriend’s snake.”

I roll my
one
good eye. “Shut up, Truong! I don’t even have a boyfriend. Plus I have
Ocular
herpes. And it’s
not
the same as the STD.”

“It
is
a STD if you got poked in the eye with Mika’s snake,” he taunts. “Oh my God, I cannot believe Mika gave you herpes.”

“Stop saying that!” I hiss and steal a quick glance at Mika, who thankfully appears to be preoccupied with a call.

Good
. I don’t want him seeing me like this.

Truong arches an eyebrow. “Speaking of snakes, do you think Mika has an anaconda or a rattlesnake in his trousers?”

I shake my head in utter amazement. Typical. This is classic Truong. He’ll veer the topic to penises, balls, and asses whenever the opportunity arises.

Hurriedly, I log in to my apps before The
Führer
cracks her whip.

While my Crystal Ball app is chugging along, Truong turns to me and asks, “What type of snake do you think I have?” He rearranges his scarf that’s loosely draped over his
Lacoste
shirt. “Flatter me,
Maddy
.”

Truong is
totally
asking for it. “Snake? You mean
worm
?”

His eyes widen like a hurt puppy. Stepping forward, he swats me in the face with his scarf, whipping it like Bruce Lee with a nunchuck.

“Stop it!” I protest, half laughing.

Eventually, Truong stops with a “Hi-Yah!” Then bizarrely, he begins quoting Bruce Lee, “Maddy, you need to empty your mind; be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle; you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my Maddy friend.”

I blink. On impulse, I reach for my bottle of Evian and chuck the contents in his face.

For several seconds, Truong fixes me with a murderous glare as water drips down his cheeks. Suddenly, he lunges forward—

Beep!
 

He freezes mid-air and I flash him a toothy grin.

“Thanks for calling Lightning Speed Communications. This is Maddy. How can I help?”

“Can you
speak up
young lady? I cannot hear a
word
you’re saying,” croaks the caller.

I crank up the volume. Way, way up to its highest setting.

“Thank you for calling. My name is Maddy, what can I do for you?” I say, this time an octave higher.

“I still can’t hear you,” the caller shrills with irritation.

“THANKS FOR CALLING. THIS IS MADDY. HOW CAN I HELP?” I practically yell.

“That’s a little better,” mutters the caller.

Sheesh
. And so for the rest of the call, I find myself screaming at the top of my lungs. Why oh why don’t these deaf people get some hearing aids so I don’t have to yell at them? I’m a mild mannered, soft spoken person, and it’s not my nature to yell. And, it’s starting to
get
to me. All this yelling is so darn exhausting.