And the Girls All Trying to Look Pretty
I’m one of those people who calls you right when you sit down to dinner.
That’s how my dad always used to term people who did what I’m now doing to make money over the summer: “Those people who call right as you’re sitting down to dinner.” He used to like to, as he put it, “mess with” them on the phone, to tell them that the lady of the house? Oh. Why, she just died, tragically, a month ago. Etcetera.

I had my first person tell me his wife has just died on my very first shift, last Thursday. Only I don’t think he was pulling one over on me. He just said it really quickly and quietly: “She’s deceased, now.” And I said “Oh! I’m sorry.” And we both hung up at the same time.

I’m working at this phone bank at the medical center a county away, which half the time when I’m driving up, puts that Billy Joel song in my head, “He works at Mister Cacciatore’s down on Sullivan Street/Across from the Medical Center,” which is also a song about working pointless jobs just to make money, so it always feels apropos, which makes it stick in my head even longer. Because, you know. I’m trading in my Chevy for a Cadallac-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.

I got another song stuck in my head last Thursday. We had just gotten through my first time leaving a voice message with someone.
“Thanks; have a good day,” I said and hit the “Release” button, and my trainer looked at me and said, “And that’s how we do it.” Right then, I totally heard “Taking Care of Business” kicking in, in the background of the Movie of Our Every-day Joe Drudgery that was being filmed right at that moment.
I hate that song. Well, no. When I was six, I thought it was the greatest. I just hate that now it’s a stand-in for any montage of “Is it Friday, yet?” culture. Not that this has destroyed its inherent anythingness. Just. Well. It’s just one of those songs.

We call people about medical studies at the center. Last Friday, I got a lady on the phone who right away was familiar with all the medical terminology I used. She ended my sentences for me, interrupting.

“Yes, yes. ‘—any liability.’ I know, I know! I’m a medical doctor. I deal with this stuff all day long. Listen. What I want to know is why you people are using Retinol in this study. Retinol’s a psychotropic. Why are you using a psychotropic drug in a study about acne??”
Uh, well, I didn’t actually think it’s a psychotropic, I muttered. But it was. She knew it was. Further, she wanted to know what we had against people with diabetes that we were testing a drug that had adverse effects on them and who was Betty and why was she calling day and night?
It took me a good three more minutes to get her off the phone. Round and round we went. She was making me angry even though I knew she was crazy and that this conversation had not one thing to do with me. Also a fact: This was the single most fascinating conversation I’ve had in my time so far at this job.


Any new job is the same as any new person you’re dating. Whether or not it’s even remotely something you’d want to pursue for the long term, it’s kind of compelling at the start, simply in its novelty. When that starts to wear is when you realize what you’re stuck with.


Today, across the way from me, another operator asked a man if he had a history of tumors. He didn’t understand her.
“Tumors!” she shouted. “Like, cancerous tumors!” Then she giggled.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s just one of those words that starts to sound funny if you say it too much.”


The coffee at the center is bad. Everyone warns you of this. It’s like talking about whether or not it is indeed Friday yet. But it’s not watery-bad. It’s burnt-bad, which far surpasses the weird lemony-tinged stuff you pay two dollars for at the main coffeeshop back in Beachtown. I really kind of like it.


I drink too much coffee at the center, because sitting still for five hours is absolutely the most tiring thing.


No matter how well you leave impersonal phone messages, you’ll sound like a dork when you get to the “thanks”-part at the end. How can you give a meaningful, hearty “thanks” to someone who hasn’t just done something for which you feel genuine gratitude? Who, moreover, is not a human at all, but a machine belonging to a person you’ve never met in your life? In the weird tinny reverb world of the answering machine message, it’s easy to sound perfectly confident as you say, “I’m calling in regards to a hospital study blah-dee-blah-dee-blah,” but once you get to that ending, that “thanks” will never sound more than perfectly lame.


Today, other operators who got to the center first took all the good headsets. There are headsets that fit perfectly and make you feel kind of like some sort of kitchy, snappy operator from America Past. When your headset feels good, you feel good. The one I was stuck with today was too loose and kept slipping, the mic ending up too low, or more often, too high: in danger of sticking me in the eye or slipping right into my mouth. I didn’t feel remotely kitchy or cool. Instead, I felt like that scene at the dance in Sixteen Candles, where Joan Cusack is trying to drink from the water fountain around her headgear. All day long, this was me.


Today, when I had two hours to go in my endless shift, some man I’ve never met came in for the start of his shift. I don’t get a good look at him when he sat at the cube next to mine.
But then he starts talking on the phone, and I admire his voice. Over the next minute and a half, I decide it’s not just an attractive voice; it’s perhaps The attractive voice. Out of sheer boredom, I spend the next five minutes concocting a small romantic intrigue for me and The Voice. We will go out this very evening. We will have smashing conversation which ends with our both admitting we’re very attracted…to the way the other sounds while speaking. And then— Then I overhear him chatting to another of the operators. Turns out he came straight here today from his other job…at another call center. He works two jobs. Both of them are at call centers. Both.


Every day I bring this book of Susan Orlean essays I’m reading, or reading in theory. As in: there’s a bookmarker in it, so I must be reading it, huh? Really, what I’m leafing through when we’re in those spells of waiting for potential study patients to call us back, is In Touch. Also Star. These magazines are all over the tables at the center and I can’t figure out why they appeal to me. I read them and I’m filled with muttering annoyance at the notion that I should even begin to care about the fashion influence Posh Spice holds over Katie Holmes and my god, have you seen this woman’s cheekbones? She is simply terrifying. A good way to startle the hell out of me would be to have me looking at these pictures of her in Star, and then to tap me on the shoulder and I’d turn around and for you to be her. Seriously, I might have a stroke.