Strangers and Brothers

I work in a bank’s call center. When I finally landed the job, I was grateful because it had been a loooong sojourn through the desert, but I was worried that it would be death. I’d gone from answering to nobody but myself - and making a ton of money doing it - to this: solving other people’s financial problems and talking on the phone all day long. Two of the worst things I could have imagined. Oh, and just to keep the lines clear, every second of my work time was monitored and timed.

As it happens, I actually love the work. Part of it is the structure: with absolutely no ambiguity about what I should be doing with my time, I have ZERO anxiety about figuring out what the next, most important is that I should be doing. Someone else handles the marketing, inventory, equipment, IT, HR, etc. I can just focus on the One Thing. 

The pay sucks, but you know what it’s better than? That’s right: watching my children starve to death.

There’s one other massive perk to the job. It’s something I didn’t even know I wanted to do: I get to help people.

I take anywhere from 50 calls on a slow day, to 90 or so on days of back-to-back calls. (I can’t even decline a call, by the way.) And I’m not the fastest guy on the Phone Force. I’ve worked hard to keep my call times below the ideal threshold, but it’s a daily struggle. An hourly struggle. If a call comes in, I have to be ready. Sometimes it’s a simple balance inquiry, but sometimes you hear the tears before the clients even begin to speak. 

When I get these calls, thoughts about my numbers or other metrics go right out the window. (Fortunately, there are lots of windows. Otherwise, I’d rapidly corpseify like Julian Glover in the denouement of “The Last Crusade.”) Having faced, ah, a bit of financial trouble myself, I can instantly and intimately sympathize with these clients. A good portion of them are extremely grateful to hear some kind words and encouragement, and their surveys about our calls reflect that. 

I had one the other day that was actually fun, but I’ve been thinking ever since that it’s kind of sad.

The guy, (I’ll call him Guy), called about a possibly fraudulent charge on his account. It was related to some kind of protein supplement produced overseas. “I’m trying to motivate myself to get back to the gym,” he said. “But it’s hard, you know? How do you stay motivated?”

Without thinking, I immediately replied, “Well, it’s probably my wife’s general disappointment in me.”

And then came the interminable pause. In experienced time, it lasts for two or three days. In actual time, time, it was probably just a beat or two. It always happens when my mouth outruns my brain. If I get drop-kicked from this intensely corporate environment, it’ll undoubtedly be for something my mouth does when I’m not looking.

Guy lost it. He was slain. Floored. He belly laughed so loud and long that I couldn’t help but join him. My supervisor leaned way back to look around my cube wall. “You alright?” She asked. 

All I could do is gesture that it was fine.

When we could finally speak, we got down to business, but we kept cracking up and cracking jokes. When his wife came by, he told her what I’d said and he lost it again. 

I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t even that funny. It was just a thing that hit him at the right moment in the right way, I guess. 

At the end of the call, business concluded, he said, “Thank you for being the best call center person I have ever talked to. I used to train customer service reps. We should get coffee sometime.”

And you know what? I was there for it. We’re not supposed to give out personal information, but there was something in his tone that made it sound like he needed a buddy. It wasn’t weird, if you know what I mean. I just got the sense that he hadn’t had a good laugh with a friendly person in a long, long time. 

As it happened, he was in a city much farther away from Tulsa than either of us would be willing to travel, and that seemed to hit him...well, kind of hard. I guess he’s a guy of big feels or something. “Damn it!” He said. “It figures!”

“Sir,” I told Guy in my best corporate professional tone, “I’m compelled to remind you that this is a recorded line.”

“Sorry!” He said, laughing again, but then, “Well, [eff] that. Another time in another life then.”

“You got it.” At that point I might have stretched the rules a bit. I told him about this copywriter’s website I know about. “In case you ever need help with your business’s communications. Look…him…up.”

We said our goodbyes (using the Oklahoma standard, “Brother,”) and then it was on to the next 50 calls.

I’ve thought about that exchange a lot in the last few weeks. I’m actually a little worried about Guy. He was upbeat, friendly and hilarious. But in the instant he made the most tenuous connection to another guy, he wanted to build a friendship. Hell, I wanted to hang out with this guy. We’re among the millions of men doing our very hustle best to fulfill our roles as great husbands and fathers, and we’re doing it basically alone. Separated. Cut off from the tribe and the “warrior caste” within it. (Although that’s not entirely my case anymore, thanks be to God.) We can see it in each other’s eyes whenever we meet in the real world, though it’s only a tiny fraction of guys who will break through the Membrane of Solitude and say, “Hey, let’s be friends.”

So, kudos to Guy and everyone like him. Moments like that are few and far between.