Ma Bell: A Call From Marnie
Also, notice there is no headset attached to it. We were on the phones eight hours a day, holding the phone on our necks crooked to one side to keep our hands free to write and file documents while we talked. Only one person in the office had a headset. That was Jane, a Liza Mannelli look-alike who had obtained special medical permission from The Surgeon General or Dr. Nick or Doctor Bell, some special doctor. The rest of us had to suffer a few years until someone decided they could get more work out of us if we had headsets. Oh, and maybe we wouldn't need so many green pills for our headaches and sore necks.
I have already described how we had to almost run, and some did occasionally, to get our paper records. It was mayhem. Adding to that were lights, like lights on an old police car that would be triggered when all of our incoming lines were busy. To top that off, we had gongs and bells that were also triggered by busy conditions. Each section or unit in the office had a different sounding signal. We had three units, a ding, a ding dong, and a ding ding ding. When we were busy, as we often were, at any time, large numbers of people were scrambling to find accounts, and lights were flashing and bells going off. It was intimidating. And when the bells and lights started going off, it sent the supervisors into a panic. One, in particular, Dee, would hang her head over you and eyeball you like you were screwing around, which was impossible because you were on the phone. Like, what else could you possibly be doing? It was stressful, I can't lie. And when I left work, I would be mentally exhausted but wired from the stress. Add to that being in a strict learning environment and schedule, always afraid you would screw up, and we were just manipulated brain matter, robots.
Keeping all of the working conditions in mind, the more we learned, the longer we stayed on the floor practicing our skills. We didn't need any kooky customers to make our routine harder. If we hadn't been trained on something, we passed the call off to our referral reps. But if it was a general call, or maybe you didn't get to stay on the call long enough with the weird person to get to the meat of their discontent, you could be stuck in infinity or hell with the wrong person.
Marnie. Meet Marnie. My friends that worked with me will remember her. It was my misfortune to get a call from her. Always unlucky, I was the first in my class to have her tickle my ears. Lenny, Jan, and Ching missed the call. I will never forget it. As soon as I answered the phone, before I could even spit my name out, she started talking ninety miles an hour. She told me her name was Marnie and gave me her phone number, and she never took a breath after that. She sounded young. She seemed terrified. She started half crying, telling me a telephone man was standing on a pole staring through the window at here. After that, she was semi-hysterical. We weren't allowed to interrupt a customer while they were talking. "The man is on the pole, and he's watching me. He is looking at me. And he is saying nasty things about what he is going to do. He is going to rape me. He is making gestures with his fingers and his mouth." Now she was full-on crying and screaming. What the hell. She kept on like that over and over. I couldn't put her on hold. She had me convinced that she was in danger. I motioned to Barbara for help. She picked up the handset to listen. She put it down. I was waiting for her to run and call the cops. She didn't. She motioned for me to cover the receiver. "That's just Marnie; she calls all the time. She has mental issues; we think maybe she was attacked or raped. She had something traumatic happen to her. All you can do is listen and let her talk. Eventually, she will just hang up." I was stunned, so I sat back down and listened to hysteria for about forty-five minutes. And then she hung up. I was hoping that Jim had not been listening to that call. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than this crazy guy with the crew cut started walking towards me laughing. Oh crap, he was listening. I felt my cheeks burning; why didn't they warn us about her? I felt like I had been set up, but of course, I hadn't. But Jim was laughing at me, and I didn't know if I did the right thing or not. And the call bothered me; just the nature of it was disturbing. What could have happened to that girl?
Throughout the years, I talked, no wait, listened to her many times. We all did. Every time it disturbed me. Jim told me that I did everything that I should have done. When we got back into the classroom, we talked about the call. My compadres were given ample warning of getting a call from Marnie. Now all they had to do was wait.
It wouldn't take long.
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