Revised 16/05/06
Ricardo finally picked up the phone that was ringing incessantly on the large antique desk in his father’s home-office. He wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone at that moment and he was very annoyed that someone would dare interrupt him that late in the evening; especially on this particular evening. An evening that Ricardo had been dreading for some time.
“Hello?” he sighed after a deep breath.
“Good evening,” an all-to-cheerful voice said on the other end, “may I speak to a Mr. or Mrs. DaCosta?”
‘Fucking telemarketers,’ he thought to himself. ’They always call at the worst possible time.’ And no time was worse than now.
For weeks now, Ricardo knew what he had to do, but the mere thought of it made him sick to his stomach. There never seemed to be a good time—or maybe he never wanted there to be a good time. Tonight, he finally gathered up enough nerve to make the dreaded trip—taking the subway west along the Bloor/Danforth line to Yonge, then south to Dundas, and finally hopping on the 505 Streetcar to Ossington—to his parent’s west-side Toronto home that Thursday evening after work. He had one final task to carry out before he could put it all behind him.
What he had to do was bad enough, he didn’t need the added stress of being rudely interrupted by some stranger, who was likely looking to take some of his parents’ hard-earned money in exchange for something completely useless. His parents were particularly susceptible to this sort of thing. They were very trusting people, and they would never entertain the possibility that someone may be able to knowingly do them wrong. Yet there he was tonight…
Ricardo shook his head as if to dismiss the thought, it didn’t matter anymore. His parents would no longer have to put up with it…no way. They were finally going to rest in peace. No thanks to lowlifes like the guy on the other end of his receiver. ‘Man they pissed me off!’ He thought to himself. Nonetheless, he decided to play it as politely as possible—if his mother taught him anything growing up, it was to be polite to people.
Finally, he answered, “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No, I may not speak to them, or no they aren’t available?” the caller persisted.
“No, you may not speak to them,” Ricardo said in a way that would have made his mother very disappointed in him, “because they aren’t...available.”
“May I ask when I might call back to catch them?” the caller enquired.
Ricardo couldn’t believe this guy’s gall. He hated telemarketers, almost as much as he hated Scientologists and Vegans. They were always all up in your face and shoving their beliefs and/or free lawn-care estimates down your throat. ’Atrasos de vida.’ He thought to himself.
Ricardo didn’t have the time or the patience for this; and if the caller could see him, he wouldn’t be in any hurry to test that patience. The 28 year-old Brazilian-born Canadian was an imposing figure on a good day. At 6 feet, 4 inches tall and 230 pounds—most of it muscle—Ricardo would not have looked out of place on a football field, hockey or wrestling rink, or a Roman Coliseum for that matter. He had tree-trunk arms and large thick hands that looked like they could crush a human skull like a walnut between their index finger and thumb.
His short, dark brown hair and deep blue eyes made most women swoon. His mother taught him early to treat women with respect and to keep himself well groomed. She told him that women liked a strong manly man, not a longhaired, unshaven, ear-pierced, effeminate boy. To say he was an attractive man would have been a gross understatement. Just ask any woman, gay male or even half of most straight men—including those effeminate boys. This was all lost on Ricardo though, as he was oblivious to how others saw him.
That isn’t to say that Ricardo was dumb, because he wasn’t. He was actually very intelligent considering his lack of formal education. He didn’t finish high school; instead he opted to join the work force as soon as he was able to get a good job to help out his family. His knowledge came from experience, and that experience came from hard work, a value he also learned from his parents.
He held his parents in very high regard and loved them dearly, which made this evening’s task all the more painful. Nevertheless, Ricardo was a gentle giant who wouldn’t harm a fly. That is…unless of course…that fly called him after 9 pm to try to sell him something.
“I’m afraid,” Ricardo started after making it halfway to a ten-count, “that they will never be available.”
“Ex...excuse me?” the caller stuttered confusedly. Suddenly, he heard two loud bangs ringing through the line followed by a pair of dull thuds. The caller jumped from the sound. ’What the hell just happened?’ He couldn’t be sure, but he watched enough TV and movies for his imagination to go ahead and form a few hypotheses of its own. ’Did this guy just do what I think he...no, that’s ridiculous. Why then, would he have answered the phone?’
“The DaCostas,” Ricardo’s voice was suddenly strained and it cracked as he spoke, “are quite recently deceased.”
“Wuh...what was that?” the caller asked, hoping he didn’t hear correctly. He thought he could hear Ricardo sniffling on the line.
“Deceased...dead...they’re dead.” Ricardo put it as plainly as he could as he tried to compose himself.
“Oh...well uh...I’m sorry to hear about your loss.” the caller feigned concern to hide his terror, “What was that noise?” he asked—almost immediately regretting it.
“What noise?” Ricardo replied. He seemed to have regained his composure.
“You know what? Never mind.” the caller said quickly, at this point you could tell that he just wanted the call to end but he couldn’t hang up. Not until his prospect—who at this point was Ricardo—either hung up, accepted or declined his offer. That was the cardinal rule in telemarketing.
Hanging up on a client before being rejected got you fired in this job, and he didn’t want to get fired again. You see, all calls were recorded for ‘quality assurance’ purposes and they were constantly screened by management to make sure employees were sticking to the script, abiding by the rules and observing the company mantra of ’Reel’em In, Then Bait and Switch’.
Incidentally, the company was working on changing their mantra in order to drop the superfluous fishing analogies instilled by the former president Arthur P. Ford III, who was an avid angler. He was forced into early retirement at the ripe old age of 37. The board of directors cited the fact he was never at work as the main reason—company presidents are rarely fired—which was fine by Ford since he spent most of his time at the lake anyway.
The caller was Glen Morrison, a 25 year-old who—after taking a year off after high school to find himself—finally succeeded in finding himself, in a dead-end job, 6 years later; in his home town of Saint John, New Brunswick; Canada’s call-center capital. Glen thought he would take that year to travel and see the world. He got as far as Halifax before he realized he needed money to travel—and drink as much as he did.
No, Glen couldn’t afford to lose this job, certainly not at the hands of some homicidal maniac over a thousand kilometres away in Toronto. It was his 5th job in as many months. All of them were in call-centers of some kind. It was the only kind of work he was able to get since he hadn’t gone to college and the only skills required for the job were good phone manners and the ability to take obscene doses of rejection. Glen excelled at the latter, thanks to the inordinate amount of time he spent in singles bars.
He was an average looking guy, 6 feet, 1 inch tall, medium build—but getting larger as he approached his 30th year. He shaved his once-shoulder length locks in a vein attempt to hide the fact he was losing his hair. Only he couldn’t be bothered to shave it as frequently as was required to keep up the charade, so, often by the end of the week, his hair grew out enough to expose his male-pattern baldness anyway.
His face was also almost always in stubble and his idea of proper business attire was a pair of black jeans or corduroy pants; a pair of black or brown Dr. Martens; and a collar shirt with no tie and a top button or two undone to expose an undershirt. To Glen, conforming meant letting his multiple piercings fill in—which he did begrudgingly, and only when he began to notice he was balding.
His brown eyes burned from staring at a computer monitor all day and every once in awhile, he’d get an annoying twitch in his left eye that would last a week at a time. He didn’t know the exact cause of the twitch—friends said it was from stress—he didn’t think he had any stress. To have stress required having responsibility and he felt he had done a great job of avoiding getting any of that.
He developed his own theory. He thought the twitch might be a result of the different frequencies of flicker his eyes were exposed to daily in the office. Mathematically, it could be explained simply and thusly:
Where X represented the frequency of the fluorescent lights, Y represented the frequency of his monitor and Z represented the frequency of the twitching in his left eye. He sat there with a slight slouch in his chair, in his tiny cubicle. His headset was irritating the site of an old piercing.
The entire floor was a maze of cubicles—around 200 of them. On some mornings—as if part of some giant lab experiment—some keener will bring in donuts from the local Tim Horton’s and send out an email informing everyone to come and get them while they’re only a day old. This will cause most people in the office to scramble through the cubicle maze in search of that person’s desk in the hopes of getting the last jelly-filled treat; in fear of being stuck with one of the remaining few plain ones.
‘Why do they sell plain donuts? Why do people buy plain donuts? They’re invariably the last ones left in any box to be eaten, and often they end up being thrown out with single bites taken from them.’ These were the questions that plagued Glen’s existence for the past half-dozen years. In his blog that evening he would write a clever little rant about it for his 5 regular readers—4 of whom were friends and co-workers and the fifth, some weirdo that just stops in everyday to comment on Glen’s entries.
Glen found this donut ritual amusingly sad, and he wondered—if there were security cameras on the floor—whether security watched this pathetic scene take place; whether they found it amusing; and whether someday he’d find a video of it somewhere on the Internet on some site called www.officeratrace.com.
He leaned back in his chair stretching and rubbing the twitch out of his left eye. It was late—9:30 pm—in half an hour he would start calling western provinces to offer them a free estimate on replacing their windows. His shift ended at midnight. Five hours later, someone would come in and begin the UK call-list. Then he was due back at 3pm to start his next shift.
The hours sucked, but at least so did the pay and benefits.
Tomorrow was Lawn-Care Day. Glen loved Lawn-Care Day. They were easy calls to make because he wasn’t selling anything. All he was doing was asking the prospect if they minded if someone came by their house, measured the property, looked at their soil and type of grass and then left an estimate in their mailbox. Not only did that mean the prospect didn’t have to be home to deal with a pushy salesperson, but also, some people liked the idea of having their property measured, just to find out exactly how much land they owned. Others will take that free, no-obligation quote and either shop around for a better price or use the information to take care of their lawns themselves.
To make matters even better, the call-center’s lawn-care client was one of the biggest names in lawn-care, making the sell almost a sure thing. Most importantly, for Glen, Lawn-Care Day meant a higher average sell-rate for the day, which brought his week’s average up. Yes, Lawn-Care Day was indeed the highlight of Glen’s week, and the thought of that made him want to choke himself with his phone chord.
Glen had 30 minutes before he switched to the west coast. Usually he took his break now, but not before he finished this last call to Toronto. At this point he wanted very much for this call to end and he was certain from Ricardo’s tone that it wouldn’t be long before that happened—of his prospect’s own volition of course. He was more than prepared to overlook whatever grizzly unimaginable act he had just interrupted and witnessed over the phone—after all, it wasn’t any of his business.
“Can I help you with something?” Ricardo asked.
“That’s all right, I understand it’s a difficult time...Huh?” Glen was in mid-canned-response when he realized that Ricardo wasn’t going to let him off easily.
‘I may as well see what this guy wants, mom and dad may have been expecting this call.’ Ricardo thought to himself.
“I’m sorry, what I meant to ask is; was there something you needed from my parents?” Ricardo rephrased.
“Wuh…huh?”
‘What a minute...parents?! He’s their son? What kind of sick, twisted fuck, offs his parents while on the phone with a telemarketer?’ Glen was reeling.
“Uh...If you’re too busy,” at this point Glen was praying to god he was.
“No, no I’m finished what I was doing. Might as well give it to me.” said Ricardo.
“Give...what...to...you?” Glen was now on the brink of hyperventilating.
“Your spiel.”
“Spiel?”
“Yeah, you know, your sales pitch!” Ricardo was beginning to lose his patience again, “What are you selling?”
“Selling?”
‘He wants to hear my pitch! I can’t believe this guy just capped both his parents and now he wants to know what I’m selling!’ The telemarketer was beginning to feel noxious. He began to picture Ricardo standing over his parent’s bodies in the kitchen—a remarkable feat, considering he didn’t know what Ricardo, his parents or their kitchen looked like; or that they were even in the kitchen for that matter—looking at their lifeless corpses laying there in a puddle of their own blood, a smoking gun in hand while entertaining a call from a telemarketer—Glen watched way too much CSI.
“If this is a bad time...” Glen ventured. ‘Please God, let it be a bad time!’
“Well there is never a good time for you guys is there?” grumbled Ricardo, then he remembered what his mom would always say, ‘You should always be polite to people on the phone. They took the time and effort to call you. You owe them the time and effort to hear them out.’ Ricardo felt a sudden pang of sadness. He glanced over at himself in a mirror hanging on the bureau wall across from him. He was an absolute mess! His face was pale and sagging with fatigue, especially around his tear-soaked eyes. His short dark-brown hair was matted with sweat and his shirt untucked and bloodied.
The room was also a mess from the struggle. He scanned the room, his gaze finally resting on the giant crucifix laying there…broken…staring back at him accusingly. It was as if the wood-carved face of Jesus Christ himself were channelling one of his mother’s patented guilt-inducing stares. A distant throat clearing emanated from the receiver, jolting Ricardo from his trance.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a softer tone, “now is just fine.”
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