Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel (8 page)

I give a little laugh. “Do you want to hear a potato joke?”

“Of course, how can I refuse?”

“It’s pretty dumb, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I bite back a smile. “Okay, here goes. Why did the potato go to the beach?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Why?”

“It wanted to get baked!”

He rewards me with a smile. “I’ve got one too.
What does a British potato say when it thinks something is
fantastic?”

I take a stab at it. “It’s smashing?”

“Close. It’s
mashing
,” he corrects and we crack up.

Spuds rule! Although I’d never tell a potato joke to a native Idahoan for fear of being potato jacked.

Twenty-five minutes go by really fast. When we notice the time, we scarf down the rest of our lard laden Mexican meals and scurry into a lift that obediently pings open.

Perfect timing.

It zips up to the third floor, the door slides open and we step out. I’m just about to round a corner when Mika taps me lightly on my arm.

At once, I feel goose bumps rise.

He gazes steadily into my eyes. “I really appreciate you doing this for me. I forgot to say thank you.”

“Sure, no problem,” I mutter.

He turns and starts for his cubicle. Abruptly, he stops and does a double take. “You look a little different today.”

I toss my hair this way and that way, as if I were starring in a Garnier Fructis commercial.

Mika continues staring at me, and a slow grin breaks over his face. “You’re wearing your hair down. It looks…nice.”

My cheeks feel hot and I’m positive they’re crimson.

I tuck a stray hair behind my ear and stare after Mika as he strides off.

Ahh
. I’m floating on cloud nine.

A gigantic, poufy cloud shaped like a big, fat, Idaho Russet Potato.

Ping! Sounds the lift and my cloud disperses.

The doors swish open. Kars and Ingeborg spill out of the lift and galumph toward me.

“Where’d you guys go?” I ask.

“We went out back by the duck pond for a fag break,” Kars wheezes, looking out of breath.

I shoot her an incredulous look. “But you don’t smoke.”

Kars gives a culpable shrug. “Well
Ingeborg
smokes and I just started. My mom says all the supervisors, managers and team-leads smoke. So it’s a good way for me to do some networking. You know, instead of golfing, I’m smoking to build up my contacts.”

I blink, completely perplexed by this.

Kars rests one hand on my shoulder. “
Look
,” she says, very Obama-like, “It’s my plan to get off the bleepin’ phones. Everyone in upper management smokes; if I want to become a supervisor or team-lead someday so I can get off the phones, what better way than to light up with the worst of them?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “So you’re smoking in order to climb the corporate ladder?”

“Exactly!” says Kars, seemingly proud of herself. “Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

I am astounded by her convoluted logic and I am so tempted to smack her silly head. “Kars, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Smoking to get a promotion?”

“Hey, it sure beats sleeping my way to the top,” she quips.

“Um, ever heard of this thing called
hard work
?” I ask with a tinge of sarcasm.

“Doesn’t work,” she scoffs. “Just ask my mom. She’s a diligent worker—been that way her entire life, and she’s
still
stuck on the phones.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Ingeborg glancing at her
watch every two seconds. I
ask the dreaded question. “Is it time
Ingeborg
? To get back on the phones?”

She fervently nods her head.

We split up and scamper back to our respective Hell Holes.

Hours later, it’s finally time to leave.

I am dog tired, so past the point of exhaustion that I can barely speak. I am so drained by the rigors of this job that my whole body aches. Gosh. It feels as if I’ve been doing construction work all day, like my body has been flung on the freeway, and run over a hundred times. By Hummers.

Listlessly, I grab my things and drag my feet up. I’m about to bolt when I see Hillary marching to my desk.

Frozen to the spot, I watch her advance on me with a mixture of suspicion and apprehension.

She stops in front of me and crosses her gorilla arms. “Do you want to work overtime?” she demands huffily. “Service
levels are atrocious and we need people to stay back and help out.”

I blink.

Err...does an inmate wish to lengthen her prison sentence?

Smiling kindly at her, I shake my head determinedly and decline the offer. Thanks but
no thanks
.

Five

T
hank GAWD it’s Friday night.

I’m so drained that the only thing I can muster the strength to do is flip on the TV.
The Vampire Diaries
comes on.

Sheesh!
Not another vampire show. After
Twilight
and
True Blood
, I’m all vampired out.

I chuck the remote to Kars and she switches the channel to E!.

Yay! Our beloved
Chelsea Lately
is on. It is hands down the best talk show on TV and Chelsea Handler is a Goddess amongst Goddesses; our Queen Bee.

As you can probably tell, I am a huge fan, and so is Kars.

W
atching Chelsea is a blast. She’s funny, witty and we learn so much from her.
Just by tuning in to her show, we have vastly expanded our
vocabulary. For instance, we incorporate words like
shadoobie, coslopus
and
pickachu
into our daily conversations.

In Chelsea-land,
shadoobie
= poo;
Pickachu
and
coslopus
= va jay jay.

So it’s work appropriate and very versatile.

The other day, Hillary the Giant Not Ready Nazi was walking around with her barn door wide open. Kars yelled, “
The
Führer’s
pickachu
is peeking out!”

To which I replied, “
Holy Shadoobie!
Her
coslopus
is a jungle.”

And no one caught on to a word we were saying.

After
Chelsea Lately
, we tune in to the
Ross Report
on Leno, then we hop over to the
Daily Show
with Jon Stewart. Later on we flip the channel to CBS to catch the
Late, Late Show
with Craig Ferguson. Love that guy and his bizarre humor. Not to mention, I find his Scottish lilt so incredibly wonky and sexy, even though half the time I’m not even sure I understand a word he’s saying. But let’s face it, Scottish accents are just plain sexy. Slap a Scottish accent on a green ogre and I’ll immediately find him irresistible, case in point—Shrek.

I have an odd propensity for anything Scottish. I’ve always dreamed of living in the Scottish Highlands, speaking nothing but Gaelic, and listening to the sweet, harmonious music of Celtic Thunder.

As much as we love our shows, all we ever do every night is vegetate in front of the tube. We used to have so much more spunk. We’d stay up until two in the morning, chatting about everything and nothing. I kind of miss all that. Since we’ve started working at the call center, we don’t talk anymore. And frankly, after talking on the phones nonstop for eight hours straight, we’re just
all talked-out
.

My throat is sore, my voice is hoarse, and the last thing I want to do is chit chat.

Midway through the
Late Late Show,
Kars is snoring loudly on the sofa. I throw an Afghan over her and tuck in the corners. It tends to get chilly down here in Janis’ basement.

Stifling a yawn, I call it a night. After all, I have a student to tutor tomorrow.

Early next morning, I find myself wandering aimlessly around Idaho State U. I root around my bag, retrieve the campus map and study it. Okay, I need to locate the Eli M. Oboler Library.

“Are you lost?” a familiar voice pipes in from behind me.

I spin around. “Mika!” I cry joyously.

His face is flushed from the wind and he is smiling.

I smile back. “Good thing you found me. I had no clue where I was going.”

“Is this your first time on the ISU campus?”

“Uh-huh.” I scan the area. “Where did you come from? You appeared out of nowhere.”

“You see that brick building over there?” He gestures toward it and I nod, squinting in the sunlight. “That’s my dorm.”

I am momentarily surprised. “I had no idea you lived in the dorms.”

Good. That means he and Ingeborg don’t bunk together.

He nudges me playfully. “You ready to be my tutor today?”
 

“Ready as I’ll ever be. Lead the way my friend.”

He walks at a brisk pace and I try to match his stride.

“So, which dorm does Ingeborg live in?” I ask casually.

“She lives with her parents; her family moved from Bulgaria about a year ago.”

With some hesitation, I ask, “Um…so how long have you two been dating?”

“About six months now,” he says, walking at a fast clip.

I formulate over a dozen questions in my snoopy head, but before I can broach them, we’ve arrived at our destination.

Like a true gentleman, Mika holds the door open and I breeze in. We find a quiet spot in the back of the library and he wastes no time. Unzipping his backpack, he retrieves a stack of papers and slides it across the table. “Here you go. That’s all of it.”

Sifting through the pages, it dawns on me why Mika finds his
ESL course so daunting. All his assignments cover the mechanics of grammar and writing: nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions,
interjections...Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

In order to become a good writer, one
must
be a good reader; they go hand in hand like ketchup and fries, like curry and naan, like macaroni and cheese.
It is by reading that the mind absorbs the nuances of the
language and how it is used.

My dad was a prolific author of numerous books and articles on architecture. To this day, I enjoy reading his work. He could turn a bland subject into a vivacious one by injecting his idiosyncratic humor, double entendres and playful puns.

Needless to say, he spurred my interest and fostered my love of writing. He made writing seem cool and consequently, I came to enjoy the thrill of crafting a story.

And he instilled the importance of reading in me from a very early age. Every weekend, he drove me over to the Book Stall on Chestnut Court and there, he let me go hare wild. It was such a thrill! I grabbed armfuls of books...Enid Blyton, E.B White and
Nancy Drew when I was younger; and when I was slightly
older, Agatha Christie. Detective Hercule Poirot taught me to become a better listener, to pay attention to what people aren’t directly saying. Crime novels aside, I got hooked on comics too, especially Betty and Veronica. That was my one guilty pleasure; I loved the entire Riverdale gang: Archie and Jughead, Big Ethel, Reggie, Midge, and even Moose.

My dad also immersed me in the works of Jane Austen, Emily
Brontë
and Charlotte
Brontë
. Oh how I adored
Anne of Green Gables
; and when I turned thirteen, he bought me my very first teeny bopper romance—
Sweet Valley High,
and I learned that a good storybook trumps any dry textbook.

After flipping through Mika’s assignments, I slam the stack of papers on the table with surprising force. “Enough of this!” I balk. Mika looks slightly taken aback, but I’ve garnered his full attention. “Look, I know your teacher thinks it’s important that you learn about verb conjugations and noun declensions, and they
are
important, but…” I pause to articulate my thoughts. “When I was a kid and I wanted to learn how to ride a bike, I just hopped right on my BMX and eventually I figured it out. Now what I did
not
do was hunker down and study the mechanics of putting a bike together. By plunging in and riding my bike, I was able to enjoy the wind in my hair, the sun in my face, the scent of freshly cut grass. It was
fun,
” I say with exuberance. Getting a bit carried away, I add, “I remember how much I loved zigzagging along the road on my pink BMX, avoiding potholes, popping wheelies.” I find myself smiling fondly at the memories.

So, where was I now? What was I trying to say?