Another Phone Job

It was the same job, just in a different wrapper.

When Jacqueline had taken the job, she was on Cloud Nine. It meant an end to her mounting debts that had accumulated over the month she'd been unemployed; voluntarily, however, since the last "phone job" she'd had was, as she'd told co-workers, "hell in a tan wrapper". Now, as she leaned forward so that her forehead rested on a flimsy divider on the flimsy, carpeted wall, she pressed back tears. In her hurried search for a new job, she'd gone back into the ill-fitting shell of customer service.

She hated every part of her job: the twelve computer applications she had to open every morning, the heavy earphones, the short chairs, the ozone-laden air from the many computers, the customers...oh, especially the customers. They, like too many people in the world, felt better by treating other people like indentured servants. So they made a mistake while ordering online? Now they'll call and scream obscenities because they only have themselves to blame.

Giving in to a bitter smile, Jacqueline recalled one particular customer sighing in exasperation when she told him she couldn't recall his online order because he never placed it. "What ever happened to customer service?" he demanded. 'Customers', she thought. 'Customers are what happened.'

The glue smell from the carpet-like wall made her head hurt. Why was it so similar to her? Why did the smell of glue always give her headaches? Ah, because she'd made her current pose before...at the other job: forehead resting on the thin metal divider, the only object actually keeping the pieces of wall together. She had wept then, jerking her headphones out from the connector and leaning against the ugly tan wall. She remembered finally backing away from the wall, then heading out to the parking lot, headphone adapter dragging the pavement, going to the car, getting in, and driving all the way home, adapter caught in the door, dragging on the road as she drove.

God, she had to get out.

Standing up as much as she could, straightening her spine until it popped mildly, she walked the several feet to the time clock, punched out, and headed to the exit. The hot June air smacked her solidly on the forehead, surprising her after the frigid, air-conditioned atmosphere in the office. A crazed giggle threatened to pop out of her mouth. She stifled it, wondering quietly what her co-workers would think. The giggle broke loose, running over her body with a wave of relief. She bent lightly at the waist, hands on the tops of her thighs.

Jacqueline struggled with her blue, fuzzy sweater, yanking it over her head until she stood in her tank top with messed hair. The hot summer sun burned her eyes and the wind pelted her with the exhaust fumes of the nearby traffic, but she took in a deep breath and exhaled, grateful. "What are you, stupid?"...the words of her last customer washed away with the next noxious breeze.

When she reached her little black beetle of an Escort, she yanked open the back door and tossed in her sweater. She stretched up to the sky, hands open, fingers splayed, as the wavering heat of the car roiled past her. Not one of her customers could understand why the world outside felt so good, their own angry bodies huddled in the cold of their air conditioners. They, unlike her, had never really known discomfort, but lived in the tyranny of comfort. She relished the heat, even as her arms dropped to her sides, already sticky from her sweat. The customers had never had to wear dressy clothes to work while employed by a "phone" job or had to listen to demands for the impossible. The customers were the impossible.

She slammed the back door shut with her hip, the black paint too hot from the sun to touch. In a show of hypocrisy, she grabbed the flaming-hot driver's side door handle and yanked the door open. Another wave of heat rolled past, but Jacqueline ("Call me Jackie," she said to her boss with a smile) slunk in, cranked her car and shut the door behind her in record time. Rolling her window down, she flipped a very cheerful finger to the box-like structure of the "phone" building and pulled out....

....and into the nearest restaurant that had a "Help Wanted" sign in the window.