Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel

by Lisa Lim

  “Look,” I point out, “It touts seven types of basil: Napolitano basil, Italian basil, Thai basil, Globe basil, French basil, Lemon basil and Red Rubin basil.”

  “Maddy, this is the best gift ever!” Kars hugs me tightly. After we peel apart, she turns to Ingeborg. “You go next.”

  Kars and I brainstormed on Ingeborg’s gift all weekend, and I’ll have to admit, what we came up with is simply brilliant.

  And I even chipped in on it.

  Ingeborg rips open the envelope. “A hundred dollar gift zertivicate to um, Glamour Shots?” She casts us a dubious glance.

  Kars rushes to explain, “It is from me and Maddy. We think you need to get some professional photos taken so you can hook up with a modeling agency. It can be a start to your portfolio!”

  “Ingeborg, you’re wasting your beauty here,” I admonish. “You should be gracing the covers of magazines.”

  Self-effacingly, Ingeborg waves off the compliment.

  I barrel on, “Now check this out. Your Glamour Shot session includes a personal consultation with a professional makeup artist and hair stylist to help you look your best for your portraits.”

  Gosh. I really am selling it. Guess I do have it in me to sell as long as I believe in what I’m selling.

  Kars prances about in a happy clamor. “Ingeborg, don’t forget us when you’re gracing the covers of Maxim. You could even be the face of Victoria’s Secret,” she says with glowing rapture.

  “Um, thanks girls.” Ingeborg smiles at us sweetly, then jerks her head at Mika. “Your zurn now.”

  “Here I go.” He slits open the envelope. “A gift card to iTunes! Thanks Ingeborg.” He smiles warmly, and Ingeborg smiles back, equally warmly.

  I am pleased to report that their relationship has weathered the transition to friendship pretty seamlessly. Mika has even become friends with Archibald aka Sean Connery.

  “I’m next,” I squeal with delight. After all that waiting, I am bursting with anticipation.

  Mika leans forward in his chair. “I think you’ll love it.”

  Without wasting another second, I tear into the paper with gusto. “Oh. It’s a CD. Bruce Springsteen’s Greatest Hits,” I say in a strangled voice, then catching myself, I quickly paste a smile on my face. “It’s awesome!” I add with false cheer.

  Mika’s green eyes are dancing. “I knew you’d love it. You have Springsteen on your ring tone and I assume you already have him on your iPod. But being that you’re an old fashioned sort of gal, I thought surely you’d appreciate him on CD.”

  I amp up the volume of my fake smile. “Thanks!” I say stiffly.

  Moments later, after all the wrapping paper has been stuffed into the trash can, I glance up at the display board. Ah, I am delighted to see that there are still no calls in queue. And for the rest of the night, not a single call comes through. Snow is falling outside and we are having a whale of a time inside, chatting, chilling, grooving to Christmas tunes, munching on microwave popcorn and guzzling more vodka. And I come to the satisfying realization that Christmas at a call center is not so bad after all.

  In fact, I feel so warm and fuzzy inside that I decide tonight is the night that I will tell Mika how I feel about him. I have a small hunch that he likes me. Over the past couple weeks, he’s been coming over to my place for ‘tutoring’ sessions, but all we do is read and make goo-goo eyes at each other from across the table. And he usually stays over for hours, until daylight bleeds into moonlight.

  My stomach tends to gurgle like clockwork at 7 p.m. sharp, which triggers a knee-jerk reaction from Mika. He’ll whip out his iPhone and place our orders—a Hawaiian pizza for him and me, and a Pesto pizza for Kars. And whenever we crave Chinese food, he’ll drive over to Panda Express and pick up three large orders of Orange Chicken and Kung Pao Chicken. After our takeout dinners, we usually lounge in front of the TV and watch a movie on Netflix.

  Last Saturday, we watched Burn After Reading, and I noticed for the very first time that Mika has a really strange laugh. It’s silent.

  Seriously. No sound comes out at all when he laughs. Zilch.

  His eyes will crinkle, the corners of his mouth will twitch, and his entire chest will quiver, but no sound whatsoever is emitted.

  When Kars caught on to his bizarre laugh, she had to put in her two cents. “Yo, Mika! Are you mute?” she teased, and taunted him with her evil Bwah Ha Ha Ha laugh.

  During the funniest parts of the movie, Mika looked like a fish gasping for air. I’ve become so fascinated by his silent laugh that I always opt for a comedy, just so I can watch him in action.

  Luckily, comedies are my favorite form of entertainment. No other emotion quite compares to laughter. Well, except love that is...which is what I’ve been feeling of late. Mika has quickly become one of my best friends, and sometimes, it even feels like he is my boyfriend.

  So why not tell him how I feel?

  While I sit and muse, a slew of radio commercials egg me on. Dodge: Grab Life by the Horns, The Army: Be All That You Can Be, Nike: Just Do It!

  Hmm, perhaps it’s a sign from up above.

  It must be.

  Like the three wise men who wisely followed the North Star the night baby Jesus was born, I shall follow these three radio ads tonight. Yes. I shall tell Mika today. On Christmas Day!

  Time just flies by when you’re having a blast, and before we know it, our shift is over.

  Mika, the only sober one around, insists on giving me and Kars a ride home; Ingeborg’s new flame, Sean Connery, will be picking her up.

  Before leaving the building, I quickly excuse myself and hop into the restroom to freshen up.

  When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I jump back in fright. My face looks like a squashed tomato, my hair is a matted mess, and my eyes are severely bloodshot. I look a sight!

  Hastily, I do what I can to salvage my appearance.

  I’m savagely trying to subdue my hair when Ingeborg breezes in, looking as fresh as the morning dew. Her eyes are bright and clear, her rose petal skin is glowing, and her silky hair cascades obediently down her shoulders. Seriously, she was drinking like a sailor all night. That girl can hold down her liquor like a true champ. In comparison, I’m a lightweight. A super featherweight. I can barely walk, let alone stand.

  Afterward, we burst through the exit doors and step out into the icy, cold night. Tittering and swaying, I throw my head back and gaze at the bright, moonlit sky.

  “Oh look, it’s still snowing!” I slur with childish delight. Arms outstretched, I stick my tongue out to catch a falling snowflake, just like in the movies.

  Dumb idea. Unsteady with drink, I stagger backward, lose my footing, and skid and slide around the ice.

  Mika latches onto my waist in the nick of time, hauling me upright, and keeping a tight grip on my arm. And he doesn’t let go.

  As we make our way to the parking lot, Ingeborg spots agent 007 by the street-light. “Babe!” she shrieks with joy. Surefooted, she flies down the icy path in stilettos and flings herself into his arms. Sean Connery nuzzles her with his Santa Claus beard.

  “Bye, Ingeborg! Bye, Arch!” we yell, uproariously drunk.

  Mika releases me and fumbles in his pocket for his car keys.

  I slosh about, attempting to walk without his aid. Unsteadily, I take one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other.

  Gak! I almost face plant.

  Mika’s strong arms encircle me from behind. Grabbing onto his shoulders for leverage, I brazenly press my body against his.

  He shoots me an odd look. “Um, you okay, Maddy?”

  “Mmmmm.” I squint at him sexily, laying on my womanly charms.

  His smile widens with amusement. “C’mon, Madison, let’s get you home.”

  Kars is soon beside us, giggling nonstop. Keeping a firm grip on my arm, Mika wrestles with the lock, yanks the door open and deposits me into the back seat. Kars clambers in after me.

  Languidly, I stretch o
ut while Kars arranges herself in a fetal position. Sometime later, we’re coasting down the highway and my head is throbbing like a busted subwoofer.

  Pressing my forehead against the windowpane, I watch the world outside whiz by. Ugh. I’m feeling woozy.

  I’m going to do this. I’m going to tell him.

  After what seems like an eternity, Mika’s car pulls up to our apartment complex. Kars inches out the back seat, mumbles good night and slams the door in my face. F@#%.

  Huffily, I crank the door open. Slowly and very steadily, I step out and position myself by the driver’s side. Mika rolls down the window. “Hi there,” I mutter, my eyes glassy and unfocused.

  He pins me with his gaze and I drown in his liquid green eyes.

  The vodka emboldens me. “I…err…need…to…um…tell you something—” I clap one hand over my mouth.

  Aiii Yi Yi! I can feel the bile rising in my throat. Spinning around, I stumble to the nearest shrub and bend over.

  Dammit! It’s a fancily decorated shrub, strung with hundreds and hundreds of multicolored Christmas lights. They glisten in the night, like twinkling fairies. But it’s too late. My stomach heaves and I upchuck all over the festive bush.

  “Ugh,” I groan, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  Reeking of vodka and vomit, I stagger toward my apartment complex. The automatic glass doors swish open and whoosh shut behind me. I squint over my shoulder, blinking in the headlights.

  Mika’s Impala backs up the driveway, bumping along the icy, snow-filled road. Then it dawns on me. Egad! Mika saw me retching all over the festive shrub.

  I swear I’m never drinking vodka again.

  Or as Ingeborg calls it—vadka. No more vadka for me.

  That will be my New Year’s Resolution.

  HICCUP.

  Sixteen

  The day after Christmas, I’m back at work, suffering from a permanent hangover. The calls have been trickling in; it’s been so slow that management was offering VTO—voluntary time off.

  As tempting as it was to take VTO, I decided to stay.

  I splurged over Christmas, drinking the Crewlade (those darn J.Crew catalogs reeled me in with their guava colored cardigans) and going a little overboard at Anthropologie, so I need to stay at work to offset the damages made to my Visa.

  Plus, why not stay at work when there’s no work to do, right? It’s like getting paid to browse the internet, chit chat and do absolutely nothing.

  As I look around, I see that we’re all lumped together by the common bonds of disinterest and ennui. I pull up Outlook and begin banging out a mindless email.

  To: Truong.Nguyen@lsc.com, Karsynn.Higginbotham@lsc.com, Mika.Harket@lsc.com, Ingeborg.Draganov@lsc.com

  From: Madison.Lee@lsc.com

  Subject: Word of the Day

  Word of the Day: ca·pa·cious

  Function: adjective

  Etymology: Latin capac, capax capacious, from Latin capere

  Meaning: Capable of containing a large quantity; spacious or roomy

  — ca·pa·cious·ly adverb

  — ca·pa·cious·ness noun

  Example: I need a capacious handbag to haul all of my crap.

  And then I click Send.

  ‘Capacious’ is a fancy schmancy word I come across all the time. Journalists and famous writers love tossing it around, and I always get such a kick out of it.

  Within minutes, I receive a flurry of emails in my Inbox.

  To: Truong.Nguyen@lsc.com, Karsynn.Higginbotham@lsc.com, Madison.Lee@lsc.com, Ingeborg.Draganov@lsc.com

  From: Mika.Harket@lsc.com

  Subject: RE: Word of the Day

  My cubicle is NOT capacious

  To: Truong.Nguyen@lsc.com, Ingeborg.Draganov@lsc.com, Madison.Lee@lsc.com, Mika.Harket@lsc.com

  From: Karsynn.Higginbotham@lsc.com

  Subject: RE: Word of the Day

  Do these pants make my backside look capacious?

  To: Madison.Lee@lsc.com, Karsynn.Higginbotham@lsc.com, Mika.Harket@lsc.com, Ingeborg.Draganov@lsc.com

  From: Truong.Nguyen@lsc.com

  Subject: RE: Word of the Day

  I marvel at the vast capaciousness of Tyra Banks’ forehead

  Beep!

  “Thanks for calling Lightning Speed Communications. This is Maddy. How can I help?”

  “My name is Amy Heinz, and I can’t connect to the internet.”

  Her voice is low and raspy, like too much testosterone is pumping through her veins.

  “Um, Mister, sorry, err Miss Heinz, I can help. But I’ll need to verify you first.” As we’re going through the whole authentication rigmarole, I jab the MUTE key. “Truong!” I cry. “This woman I’m talking to, a Miss Heinz, I swear she’s a man.”

  “Must be a woman smoker.”

  Releasing the MUTE button, I proceed with troubleshooting. I ask the caller to check if the light on the modem is turned on, still very much unsure if I am speaking to a man or woman.

  Perhaps I am speaking to a transgender. And if indeed I am, do I address a transgender as a he or a she? The transgender could be a male who is trying to convert to the female species, and he hasn’t yet begun hormone therapy. Hence the manly voice.

  Or, the transgender could very well be a female converting to a male, who is on hormone therapy. Hence the manly voice.

  Hmm, something to think about.

  I whip out my BlackBerry and text Kars a message:

  If you don’t quit smoking, you’ll end up sounding like a dude or a shemale transgender. xoxo M

  Then I turn off my phone and briskly stow it away.

  I don’t want Hillary breathing down my neck about the ‘No Cell Phones on the Floor’ policy.

  “No,” says the caller. “The light on the modem is not on.”

  “Okay Miss Heinz, now I need you to—”

  Truong interrupts. “Err, did you just call her Miss Hind? Like Miss Ass? And are you sure you’re not really talking to a dude named Mister Hind?” he implores with a sense of urgency.

  Studiously ignoring him, I continue assisting my caller. “Miss Heinz, can you unplug your modem and then plug it back in?”

  While she takes care of that task, I push MUTE once again and address Truong’s pressing question. “No, not Mister Hind. Her name is Miss Heinz, like the ketchup.”

  “Oh,” he says, clearly disenchanted.

  Truong once shared an overtly sexual dream of his. In this fantasy dream, he was marooned on a magical island where it rained nothing but asses all day long. Butts just fell from the sky, nonstop, pouring down on him. He confessed that he never wanted that dream to end.

  “Sorry to rain on your parade, Truong. The next time I’m talking to a Mister Ass, Arse, Anus, Buttocks, Backside, Bum, Tush or Hind, I promise I’ll let you know, okay?”

  He shoots back a winsome smile.

  Within minutes, I determine that the modem is faulty and inform Miss Heinz that I’ll need to send out a new one. “Ma’am, can you please confirm your mailing address and email address?”

  She rattles off her mailing address and I compare it against our records. Everything matches and is up to date. Then the manly voice startles me when he-she says, “My email address is hard-as-a-rock@lightningspeedmail.com.”

  “Hard-as-a-rock@lightningspeedmail.com?” I repeat just to be sure. “That is your email address?”

  At this point, Truong is beside himself.

  “Yes, that is my email address,” Miss Heinz concurs.

  I can’t help it. This is just too much fun.

  “Um sir, sorry, ma’am, just to clarify, your email address once again is hard-as-a-rock@lightningspeedmail.com?”

  The shemale concurs yet again, “Yes it is!”

  “Great!” I exclaim. “We’ll shoot you an email with the tracking number once the modem is shipped out.”

  After the caller disconnects, Truong squeals with delight. “See! I told you she was really a dude.”

  Several days later,
I slug into work, set my things on my desk and glance over at Mika’s cubicle. It’s still empty.

  Mika has caught the flu bug and he has been MIA for the past two days. When we talked over the phone last night, he sounded terrible. I insisted that he go see a doctor, but he flat out refused.

  I kept pestering him about it and he kept dodging the subject until I was so fed up that I demanded, “Well why not?”

  His huffy response to that was, “Why should I see a doctor when I have WebMD?”

  He’s so stubborn. The type of guy who won’t see a doctor unless his femoral artery is gashed, his intestines ruptured, and his skull cracked open, blood spraying out of every orifice.

  Even then, I’m not sure if he would.

  Beep!

  “Thanks for calling Lightning Speed Communications, this is Maddy, how can I be of service today?”

  “My name is Doctor Frederic Feingold Wood the Third,” comes a dry and pompous voice, “and I am having some major issues with your website.”

  A doctor cometh knocking on my door. An image of George Clooney pops in my head; he’s on the ER set, suited up in scrubs with a stethoscope dangling effortlessly around his neck.

  “Well, Mister Wood, I’d be happy to assist you with—”

  “You will address me as Doctor Wood,” he snaps in a sharp, cutting, almost cruel voice.

  “Okay, Doctor Wood,” I say apologetically.

  Sheesh! Clooney evaporates, only to be replaced by Doctor Evil.

  “As I’ve mentioned earlier on, I am a doctor. Hence, I prefer to be addressed as such. Now, I want Doctor to be prefixed to my name on all your records. This is paramount! If it is not already stated so, I suggest you update it right now,” he demands self-importantly.

  “Okay, Mister, um—I mean—Doctor,” I quickly catch myself.

  Whoopsie! I’m so conditioned to use words like mister and sir that I have to consciously tell myself to use Doctor.

  Unfortunately, Doctor Evil is not so forgiving. He blows his top at my slip of tongue. “DOCTOR Wood!” he screams like a lunatic and I flinch. “Young lady, you are not listening to me. That is an absolute pet peeve of mine!” He raises his voice ten octaves. “I did not spend years working to get my MD to be called Mister. I shall be addressed as Doctor every day, until the day I die. Even my tombstone shall bear the title bequeathed to me, and that’s Doctor Frederic Feingold Wood the Third! GET IT? Or is it too difficult of a task for simple-minded people like you?”