The Vault
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Refuge for the rational.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
Work Stories
I came to work yesterday, the center of the world, supplier of telecommunications, only to discover that the internet was not working...again. Ironic, no? We connect people to their lives through various web-capable devices and yet we can't even connect to the internet long enough to activate them or invoice them. Now that is just silly.
I had an especially taxing day as it was unusually busy and everyone I encountered was unusually rude. One such encounter occurred just before lunch. A slight, badly dressed woman whose entire face looked as though it were being stretched to the floor despite an approximate age of forty, ushered her sullen teenage son into my office. He had bad posture, hanging his head and silently staring at his feet, hypothetically from too many slaps to the back of the head. The entire time they were there this bitch-mistress of authority and her son gave me the feeling that someone was in trouble. I didn’t know if it was him or me.
I began the encounter with a polite hello, but this wasn’t returned, and I realised how habitual this greeting and its usual follow-up exchange had become. The silence was slightly off-putting and I expected to be besieged by an outrageous phone bill or a broken phone, but neither were presented. Instead, the woman informed me that she had three phones “through you” and wanted a fourth and (sternly) “what are you going to give me” (not a question). I was further put off by this obnoxious demand and slightly irked by the obvious eagerness for, or anticipation of, conflict. To constantly assume someone is going to fuck you seems like a terrible way to be and a sad way to be. But, as I stared at the mousy brown hair pulled back into a loose bun, the thin line of reddish lipstick, straight and narrow and emphasizing her scowl, the violet eye shadow applied quickly and amateurishly and clumping in the folds of her eyelids, and the terrible fashion, a touristy t-shirt (the color matching her eye shadow) tucked into jeans worn high above the waist level, I realised that improvement was well within her reach, that I had no responsibility to make her day any better and that I fucking hated her and wished she would die a slow and painful death, miserable and alone. The bittersweet reward to all of this is that she probably will because she already is.
This is the way cell-phone sales operate: You choose a cell-phone. You choose a plan. You choose a term. Depending on the term you choose, (none, monthly, one, two or three years) you will receive a hardware discount on your cell phone purchase. This is the way it works and I am unable to “get you a sweet deal”. Despite explaining this to the evil bitch, she still seemed to expect to be able to buy a cell phone for fifty dollars and not have to sign a three-year term. Her reasoning was that she was a loyal customer. There are many faulty and stupid assumptions in capitalist society and this is one of them. If you are on the right side of the fence, you are probably like this woman and value money more than you should. You also assume that money talks and that if you throw enough of it at someone they will eventually treat you well (monetarily speaking, anyway) in the future. Most of our clients are corporate. What this means is that her three out-of-date cell phones are swimming in a sea of double-digit accounts and people who, capitalistically speaking, just matter more. Fortunately, once I gave her a pricing sheet and told her that I had no control over special treatment she decided that she would try to buy a cheaper phone elsewhere, which is impossible because it is the phone company and not the store that assigns the hardware discounts. I couldn't help but notice that the woman's address resided in the most affluent section of town and proceeded to note the irony in that. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she let the silence hang as she was leaving and I said “have a good day”.
I had an especially taxing day as it was unusually busy and everyone I encountered was unusually rude. One such encounter occurred just before lunch. A slight, badly dressed woman whose entire face looked as though it were being stretched to the floor despite an approximate age of forty, ushered her sullen teenage son into my office. He had bad posture, hanging his head and silently staring at his feet, hypothetically from too many slaps to the back of the head. The entire time they were there this bitch-mistress of authority and her son gave me the feeling that someone was in trouble. I didn’t know if it was him or me.
I began the encounter with a polite hello, but this wasn’t returned, and I realised how habitual this greeting and its usual follow-up exchange had become. The silence was slightly off-putting and I expected to be besieged by an outrageous phone bill or a broken phone, but neither were presented. Instead, the woman informed me that she had three phones “through you” and wanted a fourth and (sternly) “what are you going to give me” (not a question). I was further put off by this obnoxious demand and slightly irked by the obvious eagerness for, or anticipation of, conflict. To constantly assume someone is going to fuck you seems like a terrible way to be and a sad way to be. But, as I stared at the mousy brown hair pulled back into a loose bun, the thin line of reddish lipstick, straight and narrow and emphasizing her scowl, the violet eye shadow applied quickly and amateurishly and clumping in the folds of her eyelids, and the terrible fashion, a touristy t-shirt (the color matching her eye shadow) tucked into jeans worn high above the waist level, I realised that improvement was well within her reach, that I had no responsibility to make her day any better and that I fucking hated her and wished she would die a slow and painful death, miserable and alone. The bittersweet reward to all of this is that she probably will because she already is.
This is the way cell-phone sales operate: You choose a cell-phone. You choose a plan. You choose a term. Depending on the term you choose, (none, monthly, one, two or three years) you will receive a hardware discount on your cell phone purchase. This is the way it works and I am unable to “get you a sweet deal”. Despite explaining this to the evil bitch, she still seemed to expect to be able to buy a cell phone for fifty dollars and not have to sign a three-year term. Her reasoning was that she was a loyal customer. There are many faulty and stupid assumptions in capitalist society and this is one of them. If you are on the right side of the fence, you are probably like this woman and value money more than you should. You also assume that money talks and that if you throw enough of it at someone they will eventually treat you well (monetarily speaking, anyway) in the future. Most of our clients are corporate. What this means is that her three out-of-date cell phones are swimming in a sea of double-digit accounts and people who, capitalistically speaking, just matter more. Fortunately, once I gave her a pricing sheet and told her that I had no control over special treatment she decided that she would try to buy a cheaper phone elsewhere, which is impossible because it is the phone company and not the store that assigns the hardware discounts. I couldn't help but notice that the woman's address resided in the most affluent section of town and proceeded to note the irony in that. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she let the silence hang as she was leaving and I said “have a good day”.
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