“Sometimes you’re the windshield / sometimes you’re the bug …” (Mark Knopfler)
The salary was cuckoo-spit above minimum wage and the perks completely pointless for someone far too slack to drive a car. Even the 10% Burger King discount was pointless – for a vegetarian. But what a perfect benefit. That and the polyester blend uniform, reminiscent of whatever they call air hostesses these days.
Perfect
More perfection – the free vending machine with a wide range of cheap drinks and slightly too small plastic cups. Chairs on wheels and headsets … what more could anyone want? Stress? No thanks.
Day 1:
McWalking to the McJob, she gives herself a pep talk. Call centres are by nature stressful places and it’s going to take some skill to maintain a relaxed attitude. She strongly suspects that the secret is simply not to give a shit.
She announces herself to the flustered head office receptionist and takes a seat, ignoring the Financial Times and the receptionist’s jabbering. Another newbie arrives; a midget scouser with a Heidi hairstyle.
Perfect
This week’s intake is four women strong and coached by a very large, very cheerful woman, 12 years younger than our anti-heroine. During the obligatory nauseating introductions, she proudly claims to have sat in a bath full of baked beans last year for charity, in winter. The midget scouser says she moved here to live with her boyfriend who “cuts and paints cowhides in a tannery,” she’s going to study ancient history at university next year.
The trainer takes them for a walk round the car park and shows them different styles of car windows. Afterwards, it takes her six attempts to get through the brief insurance accreditation test. At every failure, she confuses the rest of the room by punching the air joyfully, hissing “yes!” She ignores much of the ensuing lecture and writes a poem instead.
under higher skies and clearer constellations,
so many trains and so few stations,
cheap words and cheaper conversations,
a thousand lonely situations.
at the bottom of a plastic coffee cup,
the dregs of life stare blankly up,
reflect a poet’s bitter eye –
you live a while, and then you die,
(and how you earn your daily bread,
won’t matter much when you are dead)
and most of how you fill your days,
seems blurry to a rearward gaze.
they say carpe diem, live in the now,
don’t forget to milk the holy cow,
those talkshow hosts and tv shrinks
advise people who can’t be arsed to think
The poem would have been longer, but they spend the rest of the afternoon listening in on real calls. She puts in a request later for a translator in the event of Welsh callers. No-one laughs.
As she walks home, she is accosted by a Greek midget who said he’d almost been crushed by a car. He appears inebriated and she wonders whether it’s national midget day.
The dog is glad to see her when she gets home.
Working Glass Hero
Day 2:
Next morning she works out why she was quite so tired the previous day – the surly great grandmother of periods has arrived and keeps prodding her ovaries with a vicious walking stick. The kind that convinces you that you reek like an abattoir, despite frequent showers, every hygiene product known to woman and liberal applications of Gucci perfume.
She gives thanks to Polly Esther Blend, the goddess of polyester, that her uniforms haven’t arrived yet and dresses for work; grey slacks by some forgettable chainstore, blue shirt by Soviet, handmade leather shoes … and boxer shorts by Man2Man. As she straps on her man’s Fossil watch, she thinks about the conversation overheard in the ‘rest area’ yesterday – about how lesbians are ugly and try to emulate the worst aspects of men. She’s been emulating fashionista-fags for years. The conversation took place under a notice board promising trade union support for any sort of discrimination.
Shrug.
She spends the morning in the training room, filling out interminably dull worksheets and rhyming intermittently.
thanks for phoning middle glass,
please hold while i lick your arse
we promise service that’s inspirational,
our team leaders are truly motivational
we invoiced einstein for a windscreen crack,
he scrawled the theory of relativity on the back
customer service is the name of the game,
we’ll lick anything you like, we have no shame
we never show any real reaction,
we’re just whores for your satisfaction
captive robots have no choice,
but to bill you and coo at the sound of your voice
we feel your pain before you’ve spoken,
is it a window or your heart that’s broken?
Lunch break chatter today is all about drinking, being drunk and when to get drunk again. She doesn’t drink, so she doesn’t care. Neither, frankly, does she give a toss about Princess Di’s alleged affair with JFK Jnr. JFK Snr, now that would’ve been interesting.
The call centre is busy, people seem to be constantly arriving and leaving, working out their shifts must be a nightmare. She reminds herself to stop thinking like that, to ignore the bigger picture. Having managed call centres in the past doesn’t mean you need to ever do it again. She fills in a form requesting a Saturday in July off so she can attend a gay pride march.
She walks part of the way home with the midget scouse, talking about local colloquialisms and the fact that the scouse wants to become a lecturer, while the tanner has ambitions to work in a foundry. The scouse says she doesn’t understand it at all.
She wonders of anyone really ever understands anything much.
She’s looking forward to getting through the initial training, completing her time/motion study and commencing some decent slacking. Seems as if it’s going to take a fair amount of effort.
Jargon du jour
