A Story Well Told

The following was relayed to me by a coworker this afternoon. I’ve embellished somewhat in the name of clarity and my personal voice. All writers are propagandists and I’m no different in that regard. But the meat and potatoes of this story remain as they were, relayed to me in confidence and providing what I believe to be an accurate picture of life inside the American service industry.

“So,” (she said to me in the smoker’s ghetto outside our shared workplace) “I only worked at one call center before this one. This was in Texas. So I asked for the day off on July 3rd, like, two months in advance. My daughter’s first birthday, right?”

(Here I rolled my eyes in precognitive understanding, letting inertia carry my head with around with them. I knew where this would surely head.)

“Day rolls around and what do you know? They scheduled me to work that day. And up until this point I had, like, two occurrences* so I’m like, ‘Oh, what the fuck ever.’ ‘Cuz it’s either show up or lose your job, right? So I worked it. And all throughout the day I was miserable. My daughter’s first birthday, right?”

(Here I nodded, out of mutual respect if not surprise. It’s hard to be surprised by the vicious indifference of our employers. Look at me. Five years in this game and already I know the rules are always stacked against us.)

“So I get through it. Miserable, but I do. I think, Okay, not the end of the world, right? I just have to get Christmas off. My daughter’s first Christmas, right? You have to get that off. So I figure, it’s July. What the hell, right? I request the time off, it gets approved, Christmas rolls around and guess what?”

(I don’t have to guess. I can see it coming, as she could not, the way damsels in distress can see the train barreling down on them.)

“They. Fucking. Scheduled me.

“So I figure, It’s morning shift. In at six a.m., get off at four p.m, go home, have Christmas dinner. And then, on my last call, this woman asked me in this sticky-sweet, unknowning, way-too-fuckin’-happy voice, ‘Why are you working on Christmas, honey?’

“I felt my face start to twitch. Spasms, right? My left arm went numb, my chest started to hurt and I said, polite as you please, ‘Because stupid bitches like you can’t wait until tomorrow to call in with you’re fucking problems.

“Click

“I got up, walked over my supervisor, and said, ‘I quit.’ And I left. Fuckin’ security guard was all mad when I went into turn in my badge. I was like, ‘Suck my clit, bitch.’ And so I left.

“And that’s why I haven’t don customer service since then. I fuckin’ hate it, man.

(I nodded, completely agreeing. But as I crushed my cigarette against the ground I reminded her that we’re not, technically, customer service. We’re Entitlement to Customer Service.)

“Yeah,” (she said) “keep saying that. Eventually, you might believe it.”

As I rounded the obtuse corner that seperates the smoker’s ghetto from the rest of the building I smiled and shook my head. Never believe. Mouth, parrot, and regurgitate all you want. But never believe.

After all, once you do, it means they’ve already won. Beaten the fight out of you as surely as the slave drivers beat it out of my ancestors in cotton fields of Mississippi.

I keep meaning to research the origins of the term “wage slavery.” Its Wikipedia entry hides, as most do these days, behind a veneer of “fairness” and “balance” that all but assures negative aspects of this harsh, capricious world will never be called out as such. Can’t have the unwashed masses recognize their own state. That went out with the so-called Gilded Age, one hundred years ago.

Hell with it. Make of this story what you will. I’m too tired to care.