Week One, Night One, Continued
Break Room, 7:20pm
“Okay everyone,” says Julien, who has returned from his smoke break. “We’re going to go on a tour of the building. But first, is everyone here?”
We look at each other blankly.
“There’s fourteen of us,” says a woman sitting with her arms crossed. “That’s how many of us you wanted, right?”
“Yeah, um, yes,” he says. “Alright, we need to take you on a tour of the building. Let’s go! Follow me!”
We all take the elevator downstairs to the underground parking lot where we stand, shivering, in the night air.
“This is where we gather in the event of a fire,” Julien says.
People look around dubiously at the rows of cars stretching out all around us. A concrete wall is off to one end. Looking the other direction, squinting in the gloomy light, we can just make out some chainwire fencing with a few scraggly bushes poking through.
“The hell it is,” murmurs someone in a low voice.
Julian points to a corner a few feet away where to two Asian middle-aged men in casual attire are standing and talking.
“And that’s where we take smoke break,” he says.
We crane our heads and see that the men are smoking. They turn their backs and continue smoking and talking.
“That’s it,” Julien says, raising his arm to lead us back to the elevator. “Tour’s over. Let’s head back up.”
We gather in the training room while Amber looks at a pile of training documents and her eyes grow even wider.
“These are copied all wrong,” she scolds Julien. She waves the documents in front of him.
“I’ll fix them,” she declares. “You just start with the phone call handouts for now.”
Julian hangs his head. I’m betting that the phone call documents are easier than whatever are the ones that she’s got in her hands. It hasn’t been specified to us what is the pecking order between the two of them, but a view does seem to be emerging.
As the temps pass around the documents, I get another look at the group. I’ve met most of them by now. They’re mostly women, mostly in their 20s, a diverse group of different backgrounds. This pretty much fits with what I expected for a customer service job.
There are only two men, and they’re both young, too. There’s Derek with his gelled, moussed hair and his manga comics. Now that he’s been here more than a few minutes, he seems more sure of himself. He tells me that he worked for an agency before this and that he helped a major local political figure with his image. I find this hilarious because Derek is about 20. But I inquire if this politician needed a lot of help.
“Oh my God,” Derek says. “So much help. That guy really had no clue. You can’t imagine.”
I am left with my vain imaginings as Julien asks us to turn to page one of the training booklet.
As we sit for the next couple of hours and learn about handling calls, I resolve that tomorrow evening I will make an effort to meet the other fellow.
He sits in the back of the group and he seems quiet. Justin, I heard his name is. He looks like he might be some combination of Hispanic and Asian background. He’s got a slightly bigger build, or that might just be the effect from his oversized sweatshirt. From what I can see of him chatting with the others, he smiles and looks down or away when he talks to them. This, of course, makes the smiling women press all the more questions upon him. He seems to be dutifully replying.
I look back up front in time to see Julien smiling as he tells us that we have to think like detectives when we’re trying to find out as much as we can about customer cases in order to help them.
“Detective shows, cop shows, legal shows, I watch all that stuff,” he says, beaming. “You name any one of those shows, I watch it.”
“I’m a Jack Bauer fan,” offers the woman who sits with her arms crossed. I met her earlier; her name is Lori and she is a mom and her preferred drink is bourbon.
Julien practically jumps with excitement. “Yes! Twenty-four! I love that show!”
I grab for my empty pack of m’n'ms and wring it with frustration. I love 24. No one loves that show more than me. I can’t believe she answered that before me. It’s been too long since I was in class. I have to get back in the game. Twenty-four. She is such a suck-up!
Julien’s smile vanishes as Amber bursts back into the room, waving her newly made copies.
“Are you done yet?” she asks him tonelessly.
“Almost..we were just..how many times can a customer swear at us before we terminate the call?”
Derek raises his hand and answers the question at the same time, which is extremely uncool. He is already starting to annoy me.
Justin, on the other hand, has become one of the more interesting members of the group — or so I’ve decided by the end of the evening. Hard to get to know? No problem. I used to be a journalist. It will take me two, three days tops, to figure him out.
How wrong I would turn out to be.