Confessions of a Call Center Gal: a novel

by Lisa Lim

  Tatiana’s low-rise jeans ride so low that her fishnet thong and butterfly tattoo is on display for the world to see.

  Fishnet thongs? Why even bother wearing undies?

  Meanwhile, the unabomber is panting like a dog in heat.

  “Here you go, sweetsie.” Tatiana blows him a sensual Marilyn Monroe kiss before he slithers away. “Who’s next?” she chirps.

  As soon as her eyes rest on me, her whole demeanor instantly shifts. It’s so palatably different that I can taste the hostility in my mouth. “What can I get you?” she huffs.

  “Some tater tots,” I say politely and offer her a kind smile.

  I will not judge. For all I know, she could be a very nice person underneath all that spray tan.

  Tatiana makes an irritated sound. Then she scoops up three measly tater tots and plops them onto a plate.

  “May I please have more?” My tone is patient and courteous.

  “No!” she sneers and thrusts the plate at me, dismissing me like I’m some sort of insignificant insect.

  I remain glued to the spot, much too shaken to retaliate.

  The unabomber’s plate was swimming with tater tots, and I only get a few scraps?

  Tatiana flicks her stringy peroxided hair over her shoulder and turns her attention to Truong. My jaw literally drops when she gives him the same appalling treatment.

  WTF?!? We have done nothing to her (well at least not yet; I’m fully confident that Truong can be a bitch enough for the both of us). What is Miss Tangerine’s problem? Truong and I may not be walking testosterones, but we’re still human beings nonetheless.

  “What do you want?” Tatiana’s tone is sharp and rude. “Hurry up! I haven’t got all day here.”

  Big mistake. Big, BIG mistake. Queen Truong takes shit from nobody! She has undeniably awakened the sleeping dragon.

  “Some tater tots.” Truong narrows his steely eyes at her.

  Tatiana returns his contemptuous gaze and slaps two tater tots onto a plate.

  “Bitch! You better give me more tater tots,” he screams in a blood curling voice.

  There is a moment of still silence in the cafeteria as several heads turn curiously to check out the commotion. Little do they know that the drama has only just begun.

  Tatiana glares at Truong scornfully. Then she picks up one puny tater tot and plops it onto the plate.

  The tater tot drops with a sickening thud.

  “There ya go!” she sneers.

  Truong goes ballistic. “Now you look at me, Miss Tan-o-rexia Nervosa!”

  Tatiana remains intentionally obtuse. “Fuck you, faggot,” she spits and flips Truong a birdie.

  Truong flies into a blind rage. “Is that all you’ve got bitch? You give me the finger and call me an eff-ing fag? You know what? That lame tattoo of a dead moth that’s on yer back is so befitting! It’s what I call a tramp stamp. And it’s so nineties.”

  Tatiana’s face contorts.

  But Truong is far from finished. When Truong wants to bitch, he can bitch up a Katrina level storm. “And please do me a favor and throw on some intense Pro V repair treatment. I am sick of looking at your split ends.”

  Slightly dazed, Tatiana touches her parched hair.

  “And news flash! You’re no Kim Kardashian. If I were you, I’d cover up that sorry excuse for an ass. Now you take these tater tots and stuff ‘em up your nonexistent, cellulite, ricotta cheese behind!”

  With that parting shot, Truong chucks the plate of tater tots at Tatiana’s face and yanks my arm. “C’mon. Let’s go, Maddy,” he commands and storms off in a fury.

  As I’m being dragged away by Truong, I peer over my shoulder.

  Tatiana appears flummoxed, and for a fleeting moment, my heart goes out to her.

  But she quickly recovers. Straightening herself, she pelts us with tater tots with an almost deadly precision. The flying tater tots go whizzing over our heads like hot bullets.

  Okay, now I don’t feel sorry for her anymore.

  Truong and I break into a run, dodging tater tots, shrieking hysterically and ducking for cover.

  When we’re safely out of Tatiana’s tater shot, Truong bursts into rhyme. “There’s some hoes in this house. There’s some hoes in this house. There’s some hoes in this house,” he raps in a low, grating voice.

  Gasping for breath, I tease, “Calm down, MC Truong. Now do you mean holes, hoes or whores?”

  “She’s a whore,” he hisses. “But back in the hood, we say hoe!”

  “Okay.” I snicker.

  “Fo shizzle,” he foshizzes, crossing his arms.

  Then he busts out chops to a different rap. “Got lice bitch? Got lice? Got Kikkoman spice in your flied lice?”

  I double over.

  “Westsiiide, Wu-Tang,” he grunts gangsta style. Then he flicks his scarf around his neck in a dramatic fashion, and instantly all his thug-like credibility evaporates into thin air.

  “Maddy, that Tatiana is one nasty bitch. And what the hell is wrong with Mika? Why would he go out with a messed up chick like that? I’m completely gobsmacked!”

  I shrug morosely. I’m gobsmacked myself.

  Sometime later, I’m logging in to my computer when an alarming thought suddenly strikes me. Tatiana is a real threat. Ingeborg was just an empty threat, like the Weapons of Mass Destruction. As much as I tried to search, I could not find a single mean bone in her body. That girl is a true saint.

  But Tatiana the Tangerine on the other hand is pure evil. A Kim Jong-il nuclear threat. Or is it Kim Jong-un, since he is the next successor? And then there is the older son, Kim Jong-nam. Hmm, I need to get my Kim Jongs straight.

  Truong interrupts my highly charged political thoughts. “Will you fight for Mikquisha? I say we do! Let’s start a war, Maddy!” He pumps his fist, fired up and all gung-ho. “Hell, she’s no competition! She’s just a citrus fruit!”

  “No,” I say disconcertedly.”

  “Why not?” he demands.

  “I already gave up on him yesterday.”

  After a pause, Truong mutters, “Yeah, that tacky tangerine will bring too much drama into your life.”

  “No drama for me. I prefer to sail in tranquil waters.”

  Truong begins humming the melody to Mary J Blige’s No More Drama. “No more pain,” he sings soulfully, hopping on board the Soul train, pointing at me.

  Taking his cue, I croon, “No more game, No draaama.” I punctuate my words with big bends and little dips.

  Consumed with raw emotion, I find myself swaying from side to side like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles.

  “No more. No more. No more,” Truong groans, hands in the air, belting out the lyrics in a weary, evocative manner.

  “No more drama, I’m tired of all this drama,” I sing with raw conviction, turning up my soul meter.

  Wearing a pained expression, Truong scrunches up his face and moans, “No more drama yeah, no more, no more, no—”

  Beep!

  “Thanks for calling Lightning Speed...”

  Nineteen

  “We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting, we are meeting a stranger.”

  ~T.S. Eliot (The Cocktail Party)

  The words of the great poet and playwright ring loud and clear. The Mika that I thought I knew has died. He is a complete stranger to me now. All the things I believed to be true about him are thrown into doubt.

  Things have sort of tapered off with us.

  And to be quite honest, after that incident with Tatiana and the tater tots, I refuse to have anything to do with her. If she’s the sort of girl that Mika is into, well maybe he’s just not the sort of guy for me, friend or otherwise. I’m still cordial with Mika, but every time I see him, the air is zinged with awkwardness.
>
  And so I try my best to avoid him. Whenever our paths cross, I make a quick about-face and take off in another direction.

  Mika has yet to confront me about my erratic behavior, but he’s been withdrawn and detached. Sometimes he looks sullen, almost broody. I catch him leaving with the tangerine every day, therefore, things must be progressing nicely between man and fruit. Right this minute, in the parking lot, I’m forced to witness them yet again.

  “Just look at that hoochie mama. That skirt is so short you can almost see her coochie,” says Kars with revulsion.

  Tatiana climbs into Mika’s car and indeed her skirt rides up, exposing her coochie.

  Hey! That must be how the word ‘hoochie’ came about!

  Hooker + coochie = Hoochie.

  I share my epiphany with Kars and she smirks. “Makes perfect sense. Anyway, let’s not get started on that hoochie. I know how much she bugs you.”

  “I may not like her, but she doesn’t bug me that much. What bugs me is the fact that Mika is dating her.”

  “Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad over that hoochie who doesn’t even wear panties. And what makes you think Mika is even dating her? It’s never been verified.”

  “Well, it’s never been falsified either,” I retort.

  “I think you need to have a talk with Mika and just flat out ask him.”

  “I can’t...” I let out a ragged breath. “It’s too weird. We haven’t spoken in days. I’ve, um, sort of been avoiding him.”

  “Why? Poor boy doesn’t even know what he’s done wrong.”

  “I don’t know.” I sigh dramatically. “I just thought that maybe he felt something for me. And seeing him with someone else just confuses things.”

  Suddenly my phone blasts with Katy Perry rocking out in full angst to Hot ‘n Cold. Reaching for my BlackBerry, I answer, “Hi, Truong.” Pause. “Okay.” I hang up. “Truong is bringing lunch for us tomorrow.”

  “Sweet! I won’t need to go to the cafeteria, which means I won’t have to deal with that hoochie mama.” Abruptly, Kars exclaims, “Hey! You changed your ring tone.”

  I shrug it off as if to say, “Yeah, what’s the big deal?”

  “Oh, Maddy, you’re such a dingbat! Mika has been hot, hot, hot for you the whole time. You’re the one who’s cold, Miss Ice Queen.”

  “I’m not cold!” I cry defensively. “Okay. Maybe I had my guard up a little at first, but I almost pulled the trigger. I almost told him I was more than a bit in love with him.”

  “What? When?”

  “On Christmas.”

  “Well why didn’t you?” she counters.

  “Ingeborg’s vodka. It was my best friend and my worst enemy. It emboldened me, but before I could pour my heart out, I puked my guts out,” I mutter glumly, still burning from shame at the memory.

  Karsynn collapses onto my shoulder, giggling. “How come I wasn’t there to hold back your hair?”

  “Hullo, don’t you remember? Kars, you were hunched over the toilet all night. And not only did I hold your hair back, I braided it too.”

  Kars scrunches up her face. “I don’t recall.” After a beat, she asks, “What kind of braid?”

  I bite back a smile. “Princess Leia.”

  “Aww,” she gushes. “You’re such a good friend, Mads.”

  “You bet I am.”

  We walk in companionable silence.

  After an unreadable minute, Kars says quietly, “Just talk to Mika. You’ll see…everything will work out just fine.”

  I admire her cock-eyed optimism. “I’ll think about it,” I say, just so she’ll drop the subject.

  Beep!

  “Thank you for calling Lightning Speed Communications, my name is Maddy. How can I help?”

  “Hi, Samantha, my username is not working,” says the caller and, I don’t even bother correcting him.

  Sigh. I gave up a long, long time ago. I’ve had customers call me Theresa, Sylvia, Amy, Amanda, Kimmy, Natalie, Susan and Jessica. And none of those names sound remotely like Maddy.

  “I can help you with that sir,” I say and take him through the whole authentication rigmarole.

  Once that is out of the way, I probe, “Sir, what username did you type in?”

  “Ilovebodyodour67,” he says in a kind and gentle voice.

  A loud snort escapes me. I compare his username against our records. “Sir, you are typing in the right username. Can you please make sure that it’s in lowercase letters?”

  A beat of silence ensues.

  Finally, he speaks. “I can’t.”

  I blink. “Huh? Why not?”

  “All the keys on my keyboard are in uppercase letters.”

  I rub my temples. “Sir, can you please make sure that your Caps Lock is not turned on.”

  A beat. Another beat.

  “I’m so sorry, Samantha, but what do you mean by that?”

  Beam me up, Scotty.

  I help navigate him through that simple task, and it literally takes him twenty minutes to turn the Caps Lock off. Regrettably, that doesn’t fix the problem.

  “Sir, when you type your username, do any numbers appear?”

  “No numbers are showing up. But I am typing 67.”

  “Okay sir, that means your Num Lock key is turned off and I need you to turn it back on.”

  “How do I do that?” he asks in a clueless voice.

  I steel myself and walk him through that very task. But it is akin to leading a blind donkey out of a cave.

  “I still don’t see it,” he tells me for the umpteenth time.

  “It’s on the right-hand side of your keyboard, right above the number seven.”

  “I’m so sorry, Samantha, but I still don’t see it.”

  “Sir, I’m really trying here—” I break off and inhale sharply.

  “Don’t worry, Samantha, I know you can help me fix this. So please don’t give up on me. You can do it. I know you can.”

  My voice falters. “Sir, I appreciate your vote of confidence, but there’s only so much I can do.”

  “What would you like me to do, Samantha? I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” he says obediently.

  I grit my teeth. “Sir, can you please just open your eyes and look?”

  “Wait! Is it this Num Lock key?” he cries excitedly.

  Relief washes over me. “Yes! There is only one Num Lock key. Push that key,” I say to the Numskull.

  “But the green light above it is now turned on.”

  Closing my eyes, I mutter, “Yes sir, it’s supposed to be.”

  “Oh!” he says, seemingly surprised.

  “Okay sir, you’re all set now. Is there anything else?” I ask, ready to wrap up the call.

  “Yes, Samantha, as a matter of fact, there is. If I need to call back with a problem, how late are you open?”

  “We’re open twenty-four seven,” I inform him briskly.

  “Huh? I’m sorry, but can you please explain, in simple and plain English, exactly what that means?”

  “It means we are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year,” I explain good-naturedly.

  He-Who-Loves-BO seems pleased with my answer. But then he hits me with this next mind numbing question. “Um, what time zone is that? Eastern, mountain or pacific?”

  I blink. A couple of times

  ?????????????????????

  When I finally find my voice, I say, “Um...all of them?”

  “I am so sorry, Samantha, but I still don’t follow what you’re saying. Now you’re open twenty-four hours a day in what specific time zone?”

  I decide to simplify things for him. “Well sir, what time zone do you live in?”

  “Um...Eastern?” he says uncertainly, like he’s a contestant and I’m a game show host quizzing him live on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.

  “Well in that case sir, we are open twenty-four hours a day, Eastern time.” I scratch my head at how ludicrous that sounds. But Jeep
ers! That is the only way I could get through him.

  “You are? Well that is wonderful. Thank you for all your help, Samantha. You’ve been super. Have yourself a fabulous day,” he says in a chipper voice.

  “You’re very welcome sir, and thanks for calling Lightning Speed Communications.”

  Now, I have got a pretty high tolerance for stupidity. But that has got to be the dumbest person I have ever spoken to. I daresay he was dumber than algae! Heck, I am not even that smart, but he is so dumb that in comparison, I come off looking like some sort of astrophysicist who just won the Nobel Prize for quantifying the universe.

  But in his defense, he was upbeat and positive throughout the call, and he sounded like a very happy man.

  Ah...ignorance is bliss.

  Plus, he was so incredibly nice, and oftentimes niceness can take a person a lot further in life. I imagine Mister I-Love-BO floating through life in a happy bubble, meandering aimlessly through smelly, sweaty gyms.

  It’s my lunch time! Very swiftly, I log off the phone before another call comes through. Truong is already on his lunch break and browsing the internet.

  “Truong, I just spoke to a guy whose username is I Love BO.”

  He chortles gleefully. “I once dated a guy with really bad BO. Let me tell you, Maddy, it was so bad. You would not believe the stench! But Pepé Le Pew was super hawt, and so we dated for a week until I could not take it anymore. So I told him very nicely that I had serious issues with his BO, and that he really needed to take a shower.”

  “Did you guys still date after that?”

  “No. But many months later, we bumped into each other and he thanked me profusely for bringing it to his attention. I’m such a Good Samaritan,” he says with a virtuous glow.

  “What? He thanked you for bringing it to his attention? Are you telling me he didn’t know that he needed to shower?” I say in my most sardonic voice and smirk. “Wow!”

  “Cut it out you ninny!”

  I reach for my water bottle and take a sip of water. “What are you browsing, Truong?”

  “Just the latest news on Prop 8,” he says distractedly.

  I pause thoughtfully. “Do you hope to get married someday?”