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jack_babalon"Girl putcher shoes back on"
"Why what's wrong? You don't like how my feet smell?"
"No I do not. Can't you see i'm trying to eat my lunch!"
"Look my feet don't be stinking... maybe it's your food!"
"Don't make me holler!"
"I don't care if you holler!"
"You're gonna put those shoes back on!"
Said "Girl" leans back in her chair, sticks her bare feet up on the desk, straps on her ear-goggles and begins singing off key defiantly.
"Ohhh you act like a little girl, honey... I hope your daughter don't be acting like you!"
"Shoooot"
Annnnd welcome to the Cube Farm sans management!
Welcome to the corporate America version of Lord of the Flies. The boss, still out sick nursing his birthday hangover from Monday, has left the Call Center to Man itself. The half dozen Alpha Females who run the office unoffically have seized the breakroom since they clocked in and logged on the system. Since then they've been doling out orders from a round formica table, huddled over styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and clearly upset. There's been an hour long debate about where they're having lunch and who's going to get it. Here's a sample of what I caught:
"Shit I ain't going. I went last time."
"You did not! Laqueta went."
"Well... I told her to go and that's the same thing!"
"Hey Jack" one of them eyeballs me in my chemical biological warfare suit pouring black molten coffee over the sink into a plastic cup that hasn't been washed since Clinton was president, "What're y'doing for lunch?"
"The usual: Caffiene, nicotine, candy bars and internet porn!" my voice crackles through the hoods intercom system.
"Hmmmm... what kind of candy bars?"
Meanwhile there's a dance off in the North West Sector of the Farm: The tiny PC speakers blare out Youtube singles while the ladies circle a young man - a new guy who resembles a bespectacled scarecrow applying for an job interview -does this slick little dance while the beta-Females clap along.
I walk by this without comment, sit down at my Station and answer the phone blinking red ominously back up at me.
"Thank you for calling Integratech - how may I help you?"
"I've been on hold for over an hour now..." a nasaly woman shrieks into my headset.
"Great Satan's Balls, Ma'am - allow me to be of assistance" I disconnect her call immediately with a click of a button.
What?
Don't look at me like that!
I had no choice! It was clearly her or me and I drew first. See she'd been on hold too long and had obviously turned. It's just like those zombie movies - once you've been bit by the undead you only have so long to saw off the limb before you have to put a bullet in their forehead. That poor woman had been in too deep, too long. I had no other choice but to 'Sanction" the call.
I look over at my LCD screen on a computer a few years behind the Commodore 64 on latest tech. The monitor is beige and emblazoned with the National Flag of TriKurdighstan, which though it has ceased to exist as a soveriegn nation, is still doing business selling second-hand computers to people who serve the bottomless line.
The green digits flash the number of calls on hold: 431 Calls on hold.
Shit, with "All My Children" just coming on i'll be the only guy manning the line for the next hour easy.
I don't know if i'll have time to hang up on all the calls - but damn it I gotta try.
Otherwise i'll have no time for that "What Hentai Character Are You?" meme i've been eying since I logged in.
"Why what's wrong? You don't like how my feet smell?"
"No I do not. Can't you see i'm trying to eat my lunch!"
"Look my feet don't be stinking... maybe it's your food!"
"Don't make me holler!"
"I don't care if you holler!"
"You're gonna put those shoes back on!"
Said "Girl" leans back in her chair, sticks her bare feet up on the desk, straps on her ear-goggles and begins singing off key defiantly.
"Ohhh you act like a little girl, honey... I hope your daughter don't be acting like you!"
"Shoooot"
Annnnd welcome to the Cube Farm sans management!
Welcome to the corporate America version of Lord of the Flies. The boss, still out sick nursing his birthday hangover from Monday, has left the Call Center to Man itself. The half dozen Alpha Females who run the office unoffically have seized the breakroom since they clocked in and logged on the system. Since then they've been doling out orders from a round formica table, huddled over styrofoam cups of hot chocolate and clearly upset. There's been an hour long debate about where they're having lunch and who's going to get it. Here's a sample of what I caught:
"Shit I ain't going. I went last time."
"You did not! Laqueta went."
"Well... I told her to go and that's the same thing!"
"Hey Jack" one of them eyeballs me in my chemical biological warfare suit pouring black molten coffee over the sink into a plastic cup that hasn't been washed since Clinton was president, "What're y'doing for lunch?"
"The usual: Caffiene, nicotine, candy bars and internet porn!" my voice crackles through the hoods intercom system.
"Hmmmm... what kind of candy bars?"
Meanwhile there's a dance off in the North West Sector of the Farm: The tiny PC speakers blare out Youtube singles while the ladies circle a young man - a new guy who resembles a bespectacled scarecrow applying for an job interview -does this slick little dance while the beta-Females clap along.
I walk by this without comment, sit down at my Station and answer the phone blinking red ominously back up at me.
"Thank you for calling Integratech - how may I help you?"
"I've been on hold for over an hour now..." a nasaly woman shrieks into my headset.
"Great Satan's Balls, Ma'am - allow me to be of assistance" I disconnect her call immediately with a click of a button.
What?
Don't look at me like that!
I had no choice! It was clearly her or me and I drew first. See she'd been on hold too long and had obviously turned. It's just like those zombie movies - once you've been bit by the undead you only have so long to saw off the limb before you have to put a bullet in their forehead. That poor woman had been in too deep, too long. I had no other choice but to 'Sanction" the call.
I look over at my LCD screen on a computer a few years behind the Commodore 64 on latest tech. The monitor is beige and emblazoned with the National Flag of TriKurdighstan, which though it has ceased to exist as a soveriegn nation, is still doing business selling second-hand computers to people who serve the bottomless line.
The green digits flash the number of calls on hold: 431 Calls on hold.
Shit, with "All My Children" just coming on i'll be the only guy manning the line for the next hour easy.
I don't know if i'll have time to hang up on all the calls - but damn it I gotta try.
Otherwise i'll have no time for that "What Hentai Character Are You?" meme i've been eying since I logged in.
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no subject
on 2007-12-12 06:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-12-12 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-12-12 09:19 pm (UTC)sometimes truth is not only stanger than fiction.. it is also dumber
no subject
on 2007-12-13 01:02 pm (UTC)Though I should offer the disclaimer that this is a 'fictional' account and no umbrella corporations were harmed in the making of this blog. However the dialouge is as accurate as I could type it (remind me to learn short-hand some time).
no subject
on 2007-12-12 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-12-13 01:04 pm (UTC)That should make for some intresting future phone calls i'm sure.
no subject
on 2007-12-13 05:11 pm (UTC)Gah, I love it almost as much as, "I am the god of Hellfire!"
Don't read too much into that one. It's a locked away memory that doesn't get out too much anymore.
Big Arthur Brown fan?
on 2007-12-13 05:20 pm (UTC)