The Quiet Ones

by Glenn Diaz

  Brock’s session, the last for the day, was “Strategies on Differentiation.” Freshly inside the dim venue—Karen walking toward the stage, camera in hand; the economist ambling to his front-row seat—they heard Brock apologize in passing for going overtime.

  “Just one final thing,” he said.

  Brock pressed the tiny remote to move to what he said was his final slide. To conclude, he said, he prepared a short demonstration to drive home his points. In an industry with literally hundreds of players and governed by a complex gamut of political, technological, and cultural factors, how could one stand out? “If you’re already a major player, how do you maintain it? If you’re a newcomer, how do you even begin to try to get a slice of the pie?”

  He pressed the remote again, and the embedded audio file played, a faint static immediately filling the quiet hall.

  “Hi! Thank you for calling UTelCo Consumer Services. Karen Hill speaking. How can I make your day better?”

  The entire hall hushed to hear the exchange. They recognized it. It was the heart of the enterprise, the industry’s nightly raison d’être.

  Karen froze. In the call, the customer explained to her that his phone was cut off for some reason. He was waiting for an important business call that morning that didn’t come. He picked up the phone at around noon, and there was no dial tone. “You just lost me a potential contract worth tens of thousands of dollars, miss,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m normally a very cool guy, but this is just terribly, terribly frustrating.”

  Some in the venue held their breaths, no doubt transported back to the months and years when they themselves manned the phones, before the flawless attendance and commendable customer service marks gave them the chance to escape. What they escaped, mostly, was this: the need to absorb all manner of consternation that went through the hotlines.

  “OK, this is a tough one,” recorded Karen told the caller. “Whew.” She laughed. “But don’t worry, Mr. Harding, we’ll work through it OK if you stay with me, OK?”

  Instead of a response, there was a loud sigh on the line, and Karen laughed. “You don’t seem convinced.” She chuckled. “Just give me a moment.”

  “Fine,” the man said.

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Karen said.

  Some hoots issued from the tables at the back. Many heaved a sigh of relief; one of the good ones, they thought.

  “Let’s see here,” Karen went on. The line went silent for a second before her vaguely melodic scat humming filled the hall, just a tad louder than the sound of typing and clicking.

  There was sporadic laughter from the crowd.

  From where she stood near the stage, Karen saw the economist looking at her.

  “While I’m trying to find out what happened, may I ask what it is that you do?”

  “I’m in the tire business,” the man said.

  “Doesn’t that get tiring sometimes?” Karen asked.

  When the caller laughed, everyone in the hall knew that the call had been won.

  “Found the problem,” Karen said shortly. The caller’s bank had made a routine security modification to his auto-debit setup, which somehow disabled his payments to UTelCo. Because he was on auto-debit, he had opted out of receiving his bills, and his line was disconnected that morning after three months of non-payment. To fix the situation, Karen looked for the bank’s customer service number and put a bank representative on the line, who made the necessary changes. Once the past due payments were settled, Karen then got technical support on the line, who instantly retrieved all the missed calls from that morning. For the trouble, even if it was no fault of the company, she said she was giving him a $19.95 rebate, which he would see reflected on his next billing statement.

  “Is there anything else?” recorded Karen asked.

  “Yes,” the caller said. “Who are you? You’re amazing.”

  She laughed. “Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday, Mr. Harding.” Then the line went dead.

  Applause broke out in the venue. She remained frozen where she stood, the cheering like incoherent bombs bursting in all directions.

  “What you heard, folks, was clearly a veteran,” Brock said onstage.

  Karen remembered that she was taking calls when the country anxiously welcomed the new millennium, when the crowd at EDSA started to march toward Malacañang to oust Joseph Estrada, when the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped those tourists in Palawan. She was taking calls when her father, a postman, delivered his last parcel, when her mother did not wake up from sleep, when her last boyfriend “happened to sleep” with a common friend because Karen was always unavailable.

  Brock tried to speak above the noise in the venue now. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “at the end of the day, there’s really no substitute for people. Talented, versatile, loyal people. That agent on the line, I’m so proud to say, is my girlfriend Karen Valdez.” He was silenced by the applause that returned. “An amazing human being—” Brock continued, as Karen took the first few steps in the now-arduous task of returning to her seat, the tiny steps quickly turning into a brisk sprint. “Where are you going, baby?” she heard Brock ask.

  Her recorded voice still rang in her ears. She looked around, half-expecting Philip’s impish grin and Alvin’s bored poker face to materialize in the dark. In this hermetic industry, their bond was a habit nourished by the sheer force of proximity and common shifts, in the amorphous nights at the call center when one night blurred hazily to the next, all while the rest of the city, our mothers and lovers and friends, slept.

  She turned around and saw the American onstage retrieving something from his coat pocket. It was a small black box, which he flipped open, to more applause, collective gushing, pandemonium.

  W hen Alvin found himself on the receiving end of the Guttural Lecture, he thought about Empathy. Not the emotional capacity per se, the symbolic pressing of palm against chest, the semi-sincere pursing of lips to mouth a word of comfort, but the recommended script under “Empathy” from page 5 of the UTelCo Manual : “I understand.”

  And so he said so: “I understand, sir.”

  But contrary to what the manual suggested, he didn’t tailor-fit the script to suit the customer’s concern, he didn’t rephrase his sentence to capture the need. What he did do, which wasn’t in the manual, was inject an unmistakably servile tone of apology in his voice; uttering a slow, dejected drawl that unwittingly communicated the abject, fictitious heartbreak he felt when this old geezer didn’t receive his bill for July and was, as a result, charged the $14.95 late fee.

  “This is just inexcusable, you know?” said Mr. Connelly. “I’m a hardworking man. I work very hard for every dollar I bring in to this house. Sure, I can just pay the fifteen bucks. What’s the big deal, right? Who has the time these days? What do I care? But you know what, it’s the principle of the thing. It’s not the money. It’s the prin -ci-ple. This great country is built on principle. Remember that.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  This exchange, made possible by three-inch-thick undersea fiber optic cables, was taking place between the thirty-second floor of a skyscraper in Makati and the kitchen of a two-bedroom brownstone in Elkhart, Indiana. The building had emerald green windows that glistened with a bronze-like patina when hit by moonlight. The kitchen was yellow-lit out of four pewter wall sconces that Mrs. Connelly had insisted on installing despite their uselessness in food preparation.

  “I grew up on those values, you know? I work at Thor Motor six days a week, ten hours a day, just so me and my wife can retire in peace,” here Mr. Connelly wheezed, which told Alvin his caller used to smoke and may have stopped some years ago in accordance to a pulmonologist’s orders, “I saw my phone bill and I thought, ‘Wait a second, why don’t I take a look at what these people are charging me for a change?’

  Alvin cleared his throat.

  “It’s a good thing I did, too. You know why? I’ll tell you why. ’Cause all these charges, they really add up. Let’s see here.”
And here , the rustling of paper zoomed at 2.88 terabit per second from Indiana to southern California, then across the half-lit Pacific Ocean to Taipei, then toward the South China Sea then a landing post in rural Nasugbu town in Batangas, before reaching Makati.

  “I understand your frustration, sir.”

  “Do you?”

  The conversation harked back to an ancient relationship, and intuitively, perhaps as a second, dormant nature, both players knew their roles. One heaved and the other appeased; one raised his voice and the other mumbled a scripted apology. English was, for Mr. Connelly, a language learned in coos from the cradle; for Alvin, through borrowed nursery rhymes and unnatural cursing.

  In another era, there must have been that moment when blue eyes met brown eyes for the first time, too. From the sea, moments after weather-beaten sails were taken down from the main mast and the ships docked to a standstill, the pink-skinned occupants waded through turquoise water, their exposed legs submerged in foreign salinity, their lances and crossbows glinting under the morning sun, their feet weighed down by a gravity that would hold them for the next three centuries. And from land, brown feet must have strode along the sandy shore, fire-hardened bamboo stakes clutched in fists and poisoned arrows loaded and ready, carefully regarding the giant triangular outlines bobbing in the horizon, in their chest a profound, ominous suspicion that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Then: contact.

  Alvin listened intently to the rustling of paper.

  “Let me see here,” said Mr. Connelly.

  Philip, on Alvin’s right, opened a big bag of Lays. The sound of rustling foil sliced the 12-degree air with a sea-saltiness that registered audibly. Heads turned; eating was forbidden in stations; Alvin smiled at his friend’s little trespass. Philip reclined on his posture chair, which noisily released air, burdened by the extra weight. He tapped the rim of the contraband pack against Alvin’s backrest: “You want some?” The universal smell of junk food wafted in the air.

  Alvin shook his head no and closed his eyes. The light was too bright, too adamant for two o’clock in the morning. He would’ve put on his sunglasses if they weren’t also banned on the floor. Too many agents now went on autopilot; half-asleep, they sat up straight, one hand on the mouse, absently clicking.

  Mr. Connelly continued. “OK. Carrier Line Charge, Universal Connectivity Charge, Interstate Access Charge, 911 Service Fee. I don’t understand any of those. No, sir, I don’t. But when I got to the last line right here,” and here , more rustling, “A-ha! What do we have here? A late charge? That, I understand. But why? So I did a little back-pedaling, you know? Did a little mental review. Was I amiss with my bills last month? Did I miss anything? I couldn’t even remember so I picked up the phone, got through the run-around with all the buttons you press, then finally got to talk to a live person—a very nice one, by the way, where are you from? It’s hard to pin down your accent—and then I finally remembered. Wait a minute. I don’t think I got my bill last month! That’s right. Elaine, my eldest daughter, she works for Oprah, yes. She was in town from Chicago—” here , he hummed, “around two, three weeks ago? And I was very busy. I didn’t have time to check my bills, but I should’ve seen it if it came in the mail. Janice couldn’t have taken it. She can’t even remember to—”

  Alvin swiveled back and forth in his chair, making dizzy half-circles. From one end of the pendulum, he could see Philip’s corpulent body spilling from the chair’s rubber armrests, hunched in front of the computer, fingers digging inside the yellow bag of Lays on his lap. From the other, his supervisor Eric sat at the very end of the blue spine, also hunched, his bald head lined with a silver headset that, against the darkness of the Plexiglas window, looked like a halo. Across from him, Karen was, like always, checking her makeup on a compact mirror while arguing in the sweet voice she only used when talking to male customers.

  In between, a haze made hazier by Mr. Connelly’s droning grandpa voice, the lecture now on its thirty-fifth minute.

  “You. You’re quite young. How old are you, twenty-four, twenty-five? When I was your age, a gallon of gas was eighty cents, Rick Mears still raced in the Indianapolis 500, and Brenda Ann Spencer shot those elementary school kids from her window in San Diego. Remember that? Your folks will probably do.”

  Thirty-seven minutes now.

  “It was quite sick, what happened. I remember because it was Elaine’s second birthday. You know how old that Brenda Ann Spencer was at that time? Sixteen. Six-teen! She had been looking out when she saw the school kids in front of the school gate. Then she got a handgun and started shooting at ’em. Like ducks on Lake Michigan,” and here he laughed, almost amiably, “oh great Lake Mich.” He coughed. “You see I’d gone hunting during my day, and I understand how things can get attractive from afar. I do. Golden eyes, buffleheads, mallards. Oh boy. Just imagine. A big moose in the middle of that crosshair and you can do something to it from half a mile. Now that’s my definition of power.”

  Forty minutes.

  “Anyway, when the cops questioned her, know what she said? You remember? ‘I don’t like Mondays. I wanted to liven things up.’ Isn’t that just the craziest thing you’ve ever heard? Really, you just never know what goes on in people’s minds nowadays, do you? You really don’t. Oscar, amazing fella’, can change a flat in less than ninety seconds, he got married last week, then went off to Oahu for the honeymoon. Not supposed to be back until two weeks from Monday, OK? But there he was at the garage earlier. Unbelievable. You know what happened? You know? He found out his wife’s no longer a virgin.”

  Here, Alvin pounced. “I understand how you feel, Mr. Connelly. Once again, I’m sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

  Page 9 under “Apology.”

  “I will be taking note of everything so that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Page 10 under “Assurance.”

  “Now since you claim that you failed to receive a copy of your bill last month, I will give you a one-time credit of $14.95, which you will see on your next billing statement.”

  “I appreciate that. I am sure I didn’t get a bill last—”

  “Please stay on the line so I can give you a confirmation number as proof of this transaction.”

  “That would be—”

  “Thank you. Please hold.”

  “—great.”

  Relieved, Alvin quickly hit Hold Music onscreen. He stood up, and, careful not to mess the black telephone cord that connected his head to the phone on his desk, walked a couple of steps toward Philip’s seat. Alvin reached for the bag of chips, except there was only warm air inside and bone-white powdery bits that clung to the bag’s silver corners. He gave Philip a look of dire, dire accusation: “You ate everything?” Philip, who was in a call, looked up at Alvin, shook his head, and mouthed “Wala na, wala na, sorry.” Alvin took the bag and threw it in the small trash bin between their stations. He started throwing light karate punches on Philip’s broad left arm.

  In sunny Elkhart, Indiana, Mr. Connelly was growing impatient. It was daytime in that part of the world, and the sun did not have to be conjured by well-meaning fluorescents that now lit the antiseptic call center floor.

  Philip paid his reckless friend no heed. His forehead was wrinkled, his face crestfallen, staring at his screen as if the customer could see his face. “That’s not our fault, Miss Cooper,” he said. “We send our servicemen at the appointed time, and it’s not their job to wait for you while you’re getting your nails done—” he stopped and sighed; he’d been cut off.

  Alvin continued the playful fisticuff, aiming to distract Philip from what looked to be a difficult call. Just then, Brock happened to pass by the carpeted walkway. He stopped in his tracks and, forehead wrinkled, started coming toward Alvin’s station. Seeing the American’s aggressive gait, Alvin felt terror detonate in his chest and he quickly returned to his seat. Once seated, somehow he knew that his boss was standing right behind him. When the heft
y American cleared his throat, it sent a firm chill that entered Alvin’s covered ears and terminated in his gut, then beset by rioting butterflies.

  It was a loud reprimand, and Brock had not even opened his mouth. In between the plastic spines and the miles of invisible cable, everything, to Alvin, became deafeningly quiet.

  And here , in the rare contact between front-liner and executive, foot soldier and commander, the floor’s uncaring drone became, for Alvin, even more callous. When Brock walked away, it was only then when Alvin resumed breathing.

  He had barely recovered when he realized Mr. Connelly had hung up. According to his onscreen phone, the call had been over for nearly seven minutes, far, far longer than the thirty seconds agents were given to type some notes on the caller’s records.

  Page 21 under “Call Documentation.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Shit, shit, shit, shit.”

  Panicking, he hit Avail onscreen, and at once he heard a short beep. The last fuck and shit had barely escaped his lips when he recited, in an anxious rapid fire, a quick introduction of himself and a hopefully ardent-sounding desire to help this stranger on the other end of the line. “Thank you for calling UTelCo Consumer Services. My name is Alvin. How can I help you?”

  “What?” barked a tired-sounding voice.

  Alvin cleared his throat, wet his lips. “This is UTelCo, sir. How can I help you?”

  “I don’t, I can’t, I mean, I cannot understand you.”

  “Can I have your phone number starting with area code please?”

  “What? Is this, is this UTelCo?”