Brokeass Mountain:

Frugal Living on the Front Range

Call Center Gig

―We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their

way.‖ This is the inscription on a small, foil-edged pane of
glass suspended on a string I found on a shelf of knick-knacks
and candle holders in the thrift store. Not that I‘m all that
religious per se (especially given the quote‘s dubious
attribution: ―Ancient Ritual Chant‖), but this was a well-timed
sentiment to subdue my mounting panic. Weeks of
unemployment had officially graduated to months. And for 99 cents, this token was the right price.
I bought the little glass affirmation and hung it in the window over the kitchen sink. That afternoon,
the phone rang. It was one of the temp agencies I‘d signed up with. Would I be able to take an
$8-an-hour gig starting tomorrow? It wasn‘t quite telemarketing, but it was almost as odious:
political pollstering, or, as I came to understand it, political pestering. As I hang up the phone, I‘m
reminded of another ancient ritual chant: ―‘God answers all prayers. Sometimes the answer is ‗no.‘‖

Democratic Senator Jean Carnahan of Missouri had taken over the Congressional seat left
vacant by her husband‘s untimely midterm demise. She was now being opposed by former
Republican Representative Jim Talent. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an article on a poll which
had Senator Carnahan leading by 48 percent to Jim Talent‘s 40 percent, with 10 percent of the sam-
pling of likely voters undecided. The margin of error was a whopping 4.5 percent, rendering the poll
statistically irrelevant. Still, it was a Congressional horserace and money was being furiously
thrown at political surveys as the election loomed just weeks away. We were never told who had
hired the out-of-state firm who contracted with the temp agency, so we had no way of confirming
who we represented to the registered voters on our call lists – Republican or Democrat. We had a
benign script to read. We were admonished not to engage in personal opinions or conversation.
And we had clear-cut instructions on our computer screens, which read: ―Please check one box
next to the name of the person in which you are speaking to.‖

Our training was led by three men. Levi, originally from New York, has had a string of
promising careers, and took at least three minutes to tell us how cold the water is in the drinking
fountains, so we‘d better be careful. His nails are chewed down to the nub, and one can‘t quite see
his eyes because they‘re so extremely horizontal, and I got the feeling that people were constantly
intervening on his behalf.

Like when his interminable training was finally hijacked by Paul, who is, by contrast, very
businesslike and knows that if we‘re not on the phones, we‘re not making them money. But when
Paul asks one of our fellow temps, a chuckleheaded guy named Steven, to stand up during training
―and take a bow for asking yet another stupid question, because there are no stupid questions‖ —
making us all groan with incredulity — I conclude that either his judgment is frayed from years of
this routine, or it‘s too early in the morning for any of us to appreciate his deadpan sense of humor,
which is a shame. Paul is eerily good-looking, owing to the roadmap of long, continuous scars on
his face, the probable legacy of going face-first through a car windshield, or some such horror.

Our third trainer, Don, has quite a face, too, but it‘s the result of years of acne, or maybe
even polio. It‘s like a USGS map – a topography of different hues and depths of purple.

None of these guys seems to communicate with one another, since they have completely
different answers to the same questions, and I honestly wonder if it isn‘t some kind of training tactic
in itself, to see which temps are the most flexible and which are most prone to stress. But they‘re
probably just cogs in the wheel, lost in an echo chamber of corporate bureaucracy, adrift in middle
management. Their jobs are likely no less a means to an end than ours are for us.

The dress code here is a mix of professional (new to temping), office-casual (my party
affiliation), and the bed-heads who threw on the cleanest cigarette-logo t-shirts they could find as
they slipped into their flip-flops while running out to their cars. I decide the next day to downgrade
my work wardrobe, especially since it‘s hard to find an unstained office chair with all its wheels and
two intact arm rests.

It‘s fairly obvious why some people resort to temp work, especially the aforementioned
Steven, who I‘m convinced has a closed-head injury, because he keeps asking stupid questions and
heartily enjoys the laughs he elicits, apparently not being able to distinguish whether people are
laughing with him or at him, but ultimately not caring. He also has some wicked-big dark
eyebrows, which lend him a certain comic appeal even without his unwitting jackassery. But he
works those phones like a pro, and that‘s enviable, like admiring someone who bungee-jumps off a
bridge with homemade equipment and lives to tell about it.
 Day One (post-training):
It‘s difficult to argue why little tasks take on such monumental tedium when all we‘re
essentially paid to do is sit on our asses in cubicles in front of computer screens wearing headsets,
but I am genuinely relieved that we don‘t actually have to dial the phone numbers ourselves. The
computer does it for us. But it presents an audio problem, a time-delay resulting in the first thing I
hear on the line is that exasperated, musical, three-syllable version of ―Hell-OH-oh?!‖

I had to endure endless admonishments from my list of registered voters about Missouri
being a no-call state, to which I was obligated to inform them, based on our training, that political
pollstering isn‘t, strictly speaking, telemarketing. We were saved by a legal technicality. But the
real point is that people don‘t want to be bothered by strangers calling them. And on that point, we
were instructed to play dumb, as if we couldn‘t understand how they could consider it an
imposition to be asked for something as important as their opinion. Every time someone bitched
me out about this, I wrote down a dollar sign on some scrap paper. I‘m not sure how many calls I
made my first day, but I ended it with 18 dollar signs.

Day Two:
A little kid answers the phone.
―Is Cory there?‖ I ask.
―No. Cory‘s in jail.‖
Well, is he going to make bail, or is he looking at hard time? I have to decide whether to
click ―Registered Voter Not Available‖ so the number gets recycled to the end of the list, or
―Wrong Number,‖ if Cory‘s already in the Big House.

Day Three:
On public television during pledge drives, all the volunteers sitting in the background
taking phone calls get to ring little hotel front-desk bells when they get a pledge. I think we should
have little bells like that, too. But we would ring them whenever somebody swears at us.

I really needed some kind of punctuation that I could share with my cubemates, an
instant signal that everyone would understand, when I asked for David White. Instead, I got David
White, Jr. I didn‘t understand that he was the son until he said, ―You know what my dad would
tell you if he was here? He‘d tell you to fuck off!‖ Ding-ding.

Day Four:
We are informed that we must work the weekends. Before I took this assignment, every
day felt like Saturday. Now it feels like Tuesday, every day. The extra incentive is that there may
be a bonus each week for the temp with the highest number of completed calls.

Day Five:
We are told that there may be a bonus, but it depends on the contracting firm instead of
the hiring firm.

Day Six:
We are told that there may be a bonus, but it may be awarded at the end of the contract
period.
 Day Seven:
We are informed that the contract may end early, so there may not be a bonus. The
daily tally on the grease board at the head of the room seems like a pointless and cruel joke
because no one recognizes any of the names of the ―call leaders.‖

Tuesday:
One old guy told me that I didn‘t want to know how he‘d actually vote. He chuckled
good-naturedly, so I pursued the questioning, since he didn‘t say he DIDN‘T want to answer, and
the whole point of the job was to amass the highest number of completed surveys, bonus or not.
I assured him that I DID want to know what he thought, at which point he told me, ―We gotta get
all those WOMEN out of that place.‖ I assumed he was referring to Congress, but he may have
meant our nation‘s capital in general. His chuckling grew louder as if he were goading me into
having some sort of political debate, or maybe he expected me to get hysterical or angry, me
being female and all.

But as we are prohibited from engaging in conversation or expressing any personal

opinions, I simply ignored his caveman commentary, especially since our phone calls are
randomly monitored by Levi, Paul and Don. We can tell when they‘re doing it because the call
will suddenly take on a reverb effect like we‘re talking in a warehouse using two tin cans
connected by a string. And, as it‘s unlikely that some of these oldsters can manage a speaker-
phone, which sounds the same, it‘s more likely that we‘re being monitored.

Anyway, this redneck geezer actually got to me – a brilliant strategy of turning the
tables and antagonizing the telemarketer. Sheer fucking genius, really, and him knowing there
was no way I could tell HIM to fuck off. Ding-ding.

Tuesday:
I couldn‘t believe how many people I caught at home today who had just returned from
funerals. It just occurred to me that maybe it was the same funeral – they were all living in the
same voting district. It didn‘t sound like some polite excuse, either; these people were genuinely
distressed. Those were the people I felt the worst about having bothered.

Next in line were the infirm, the people who sounded like they were suffering from
some grave malady, and grateful that someone, somewhere had remembered them, all laid up and
alone. The highlight of their day was probably a visit from the Medicare nurse or Meals-on-
Wheels. Now the phone rings in the middle of the day – could it be some faraway loved one who
stole a moment from their hustle-bustle life to call? No, it‘s just me, the cheerful stranger
quizzing them on an election they‘ll probably skip this year. I was genuinely sorry to have
caused them the disappointment, which was palpable in their unsteady voices, and their
perfunctory explanations of their illnesses and the effort it took them to get to the phone before it
stopped ringing.

Tuesday:
Favorite names on call list: Strider Boone, Gator Feely, Dean Martin, Hal Roach,
Wanda Woodfin, and Rexina McPhail.
Favorite explanation for voter‘s unavailability (after Cory‘s): ―He run off to Columbia
with some stripper doin‘ crack or I don‘t know what.‖
Favorite declaration of party loyalty: ―I‘m voting for the Republican. He wants us to
carry guns, and I‘m all for that.‖
 Being on day shift means lots of unanswered calls, and I noticed during a lull that
another regular temp wasn‘t here today. He was hard to miss because he looked like an actual
monster, probably the result of some rare genetic disorder. A tough-looking muscular kid, he
wore baggy black clothes and had an enormous light-bulb shaped head. He was completely bald
except for several long strands of brown hair running down the back. The effect was completed
by his sunken eyes, sans eyebrows, and protruding facial bones over which stretched his pale,
almost translucent skin. His turned-up nose made his otherwise foreboding features look cartoon-
ish. His expression was perpetually surly, which was understandable. I said hello to him on
break yesterday even though I was a little bugged that he was smoking outside the perimeter of
the designated smoking area, and his Kools were wafting my way A loner, no-rules kinda guy –
I can dig it. He said hello back, which made me glad – glad that he wasn‘t a brute or a
misanthrope, in spite of his startling features, which, frankly, would have entitled him.

Weren‘t we all disturbingly different, anyway? Cast-offs on the Island of Misfit Toys?
So disconnected we couldn‘t land regular jobs? The people who rode Greyhound? The down-
town denizens who knew the ins and outs of pawn shop wheedling, and the legal rates of interest
in at least a couple of states (California‘s being far superior, by the way, with their low 5 percent
quarterly interest, especially compared to Colorado‘s outrageous 10 percent minimum monthly?).

This job was a great equalizer, and that was the only reason I was grateful to have it, to
know my place in the cosmos even if the rest of the world rejected me, along with this grand
design in which there was no shame. Here, anyway, we were all broke and in-between. But the
job itself really did suck – there was no way around that fact. Being excessively cheerful (to
avoid hang-ups) while spewing scripted chatter during timed phone calls was more Steven‘s
style. We all have our limits, and someone has to be the first to bolt. Godspeed, Monster Boy.

Tuesday:
―Is this Heide Dolan?‖
―How‘m I doin’?”
―Heide DOLAN?‖

I don‘t know if it was just one futile phone call too many, or the lack of days off, but I
went home for lunch and never went back. I checked my voicemail and had one message. It was
an interview for a full-time job.

A couple of years later, I would ghost-write a book about how to motivate employees in
call centers, making my client fistfuls of money, even if I whored away the author credit. My
path, in hindsight, has convinced me that there are no coincidences. The cosmos, in fact, has
rules. We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.

© 2008 Kate Tarasenko / Crimea River