“Beware of judging [people] by their outward appearance.” Jean de La Fontaine

When I worked in the phone room, I often misjudged people, assuming they were something they were not. I found out that many were very different from what I thought them to be at first, and vice-versa, others wondered what someone like me was doing there. Below is an excerpt from “Don’t Hang Up!”

“You Never Know Who You Will Meet in the Phone Room”

“Don’t you people have anything better to do on the Sabbath?” the man on the other end of the phone asks. “Today is the Lord’s Day. To be kept holy. Not for material gains.”

He hangs up before I can give him an answer as to what “material gains” represent to people in low-paid jobs. Things like a week’s groceries.

Why should I give a damn? I’ve had a good day. Not like the young man next to me who is struggling to get surveys. Perhaps it’s the slow, hesitant way he reads the opening statement. From his appearance, he doesn’t seem to be “one of us” phone room people. More like an executive doing a weekend stint here. Too well groomed. Trimmed dark hair and beard, suede jacket. Mid-thirties. Attractive.

It sounds like he got a survey until, throwing up his arms, he stands and shouts, “That f… computer just cut me off.”

Hope he’s not freaking out. I’ve seen interviewers break down over surveys gone wrong – bursting into tears, shrieking, or wrecking a phone. Crazies smash computers and one assaulted a supervisor.

“Don’t worry, that happens to everyone.” I try to keep my voice calm.

Anger recedes from his face. He nods and sits again. “What did I do wrong? I was half way through the survey and it went blank.”

“Sometimes it cuts you off for no apparent reason,” I tell him. “Ask the supervisor.”

He returns with a dispirited expression. “She gave me some half-assed excuse about how this happens when a quota’s full. Let me see if I got it right. First, to qualify, the respondent has to be between forty-five and sixty. Second, he/she ate dinner – no lunch or takeout – at this Chinese restaurant chain at least once in the last three months. Third, only week nights, but not Fridays. Come on. Talk about looking for the proverbial needle.”

In the next two hours, I dial over a hundred times, twenty people answer, four agree to do the survey, and only one qualifies.

Would it really affect results if a respondent went to that restaurant on a Friday? Or had lunch instead of dinner? Or is sixty-one instead of sixty?

By this point, I’m sure many interviewers, desperate to get surveys, are twisting answers. It’s tempting.

Every so often I glance at my neighbor to see how he’s doing. Only two surveys vs. my ten. The supervisor is sure to send him home yet, when she checks, all she says is, “Pick up the pace.”

Another sign he’s special? Lucky man. It’s not as if his livelihood depended on this. Tomorrow, he’ll be back upstairs thanking God he doesn’t have to work down here for a living.

Great. I get another survey.

I feel his eyes on me. Probably feeling exactly what I felt not so long ago. “You really know how to get them,” he says.

Why should it matter if he’s an executive posing as an interviewer? I say, “Let me give you a tip,” and tell him what I learned from Lucky León, our Star Performer, how to tweak the opening statement. “And put a smile in your voice.”

“Hey, thanks, I really owe you.”

Talk about coincidence. On his very next call, he gets a survey.

But with the quota filling, every interviewer is struggling with the almost impossible task of finding someone who fits the profile – and agrees to do a survey. My neighbor is literally begging people, a tactic that rarely works.

I hear him slam down the receiver. “Why can’t those high-and-mighty bible thumpers understand that people like us need to work on Sundays?”

“People like us?”

“Working poor, who else?” He gestures at other interviewers.

“Is that what you consider us to be?”

“What they pay here is just one step above poverty level.”

“How would you know?”

“My paycheck, for one. I’m almost embarrassed to cash it.”

“So you are working here?”

“As far as I can tell, though who knows about tomorrow?”

“Why this job?”

“Because it’s all I could find, and it’s work, and a lot better than being homeless.”

“Homeless?”

“Yes, homeless – as in people who live on the street. I’m sure you’ve seen them around, kind of a blot on the landscape of America’s finest city.” Sarcasm shades his voice. “Last month, I was one of them. Not that a lady like you would know anything about that lifestyle.”

“I can’t imagine you sleeping in a doorway next to filthy drunks and bag ladies.”

“I couldn’t imagine it either”

“Why the streets? Why not a shelter?”

“Ever tried to get into one of those places? Let me tell you, I did and on cold nights they’re stuffed to overflowing. I was afraid to sleep – they steal your shoes right off your feet – and there’re guys crying out from booze or drug withdrawal, or honking away because their noses are clogged up with shit. You get used to the smell but it sticks to your clothes even after you go outside. So I found a couple of homeless, interesting guys – one plays chess in the park and the other reads anything he can lay his fingers on – and hung out with them a few days.”

I shiver. Being homeless seems only a couple of steps from the phone room. “Dressed like you are today?”

“Course not. Hocked my watch, left my bag in the Greyhound terminal, except for an old army jacket and sleeping bag. You’d never tell the difference between me and the real thing, though people don’t look at the homeless – not if they can help it. Finally, I got hold of some cash and rented a room in a downtown hotel. Not the swankiest in town, but it’s heaven after that.”

As the day wears on, the room becomes silent. Surveys have tapered off. It’s hard to be cooped up in here while the California sunlight beams through the front windows. Three hours before our scheduled leaving time, the supervisor tells us, “Everyone, clock out for the day.”

I step into the bright, semi-deserted downtown. After the refrigerated phone room, the March sun on our side of the street is warm and welcoming.

“Isn’t this great?” My neighbor smiles as if we were old friends. “Days like this, who cares about leaving early?”

“$24 less on my paycheck.”

“Didn’t think of that.” He shrugs. “Hey, wanna go for coffee?”

“Why not?”

“This your regular work?” he asks. “You don’t sound like you belong in a phone room. More like you should be upstairs with the executives. Sure you’re not just posing as an interviewer?”

“Funny, I thought the same about you,” I say and we both laugh at how misleading appearances can be.

“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.” Wayne Dyer

“I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it.” Winston Churchill

Picture a room with clusters of telephone interviewers, bunched together according to some supervisor’s idea of a seating plan. I’d envisioned having a cubicle of my own, perhaps a drawer where I could keep my possessions. No such luck. Our location in the phone room changes every day according to the survey we’re doing. Not even a locker room, which means I have to carry my tote with me wherever I go. You never know with the kind of people who work here.

Interviewers rattle off a cacophony of introductions. Voices blend into a murmur that envelopes the room like a canopy.

This isn’t really me sitting here. Susan is not a person I know. Whatever happened to Penelope who once worked in solitary splendor in an elegant office? I envision it, if only to regain for a minute that lost sense of comfort and security for the days when I worked at a carved, Mexican colonial desk, or leaned back in my king-size leather chair and gazed out at the inner courtyard with its bubbling fountain and ivy-covered walls.

In the phone room, there is no view outdoors. The large windows at the front are too high up and far away so that I can’t tell if the day is sunny or cloudy.

I must not look back. But, how can I face this day-to-day proximity with between fifty to a hundred people, all of us breathing in the same air, farts, body odors, and unwashed clothing? Occasionally, there are eruptions of chest-wrenching coughs. Is the workplace infested with cold and flu germs, or maybe the air-conditioning, on so high that people wear heavy jackets and sweaters indoors, is the culprit.

Supervisors prowl the spaces behind rows and come up stealthily behind us, to catch offenders who goof off or don’t try hard enough. Some interviewers have a sixth sense warning system – a talent, I learn from Ahmed, acquired the hard way. Behind prison bars.

I punch in my number and the research questionnaire comes on the screen. I read, as told, exactly what it says. “Hello, this is Susan, calling from Kelly Research. This is not a sales call. I just want your opinions about…” and I name a fast food chain.

“Not interested.” Another ten dials. No answers. Only taped messages. On the eleventh, I get someone. I juice up my voice only to have the receiver slammed down on me. And so it goes for the next hour.

A supervisor leans over and picks up my batch sheet. “You need to get at least two surveys an hour,” she tells me and the implication is in her tone. If I don’t, I’ll be terminated.

But how, if nobody wants to do them.

Finally, someone says, “Why not? I like your voice.”

We get through the survey that, because of the asinine convoluted questions, takes fifteen instead of five minutes, and reach the last part where I ask age, educational level, ethnicity, and type of work. This can be tricky as some people balk at giving personal information.

This time, I fall down a hole into phone Wonderland.

“Professional firewalker,” he tells me. Oh no, not another joker.

“Er – Is that a profession or a hobby?”

“It’s what I do for a living.”

I hesitate. He must be kidding.

“You’ll find the Firewalkers Institute on the Internet,” he adds as if sensing my thoughts.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that …Where do you fire walk?”

“A lot of places. Some businesses use fire walking to build teamwork. It’s also considered an alternative health remedy.”

“In what way?”

“Helps cope with anxiety issues.”

My God, some people will try anything.

“What got you into that profession?”

“I was doing yoga and I wanted to prove to myself that not everything we’re told is true, including our perception of pain.” He sounds serious, credible. “Then I discovered I liked this.”

“Walking on hot coals?”

“It’s not about walking on hot coals. Not in your mind. It’s like you go through a cleansing ritual that clears it of bad sensations. Some religious orders fire walk as part of their training.”

I wish we could talk more, but I have to get on with my surveys. “I’ll definitely look up that Firewalkers Institute,” I say.

I’m getting lucky. Another man agrees to answer my questions but only if I answer his. Well, okay, I don’t suppose that’s against the rules.

“I like your accent,” he says. “My granddad came from Leicester. Ever been there?”
And, “Did you go to the Royal Academy of Art?”
“The Tate Gallery?”
“The British Museum?”
Or, farther afield, the Louvre, the Prado, the Uffizi in Florence?

I envision him to be a wealthy, cosmopolitan art connoisseur. At the end of the survey, I expect him to tell me he’s an academic or gallery owner or painter.

“Cross-country truck driver,” he says.

What? My image of the rough, uncouth trucker is shattered.

“Why are you so interested in art?”

“Because I’m pursuing my Masters in Art History.”

This country is full of surprises.

The next man I speak to answers my questions easily, but when I ask for his personal information, he acts as if I’m coming on to him, and starts flirting. “I’m thirty-six,” he says, “and ready and willing to meet you any time.” He teases me about my English accent, wants to know if I’m single, and where I live. I tell him I can’t give out that information.

“Your level of education,” I go on. “High school, some college, college graduate…”

“How much do they pay you for doing this? About $8.00 bucks an hour?”

How did he guess?

“Want to make $50 bucks an hour?”

“Doing what?”

His voice becomes husky, intimate. “You sound like a hot chick. That Princess Di accent really turns me on. Ever considered phone sex?”

I feel as if he suddenly stripped himself naked in front of me.

“Certainly not.” I tell him in my most hoity-toity English lady’s voice. “Shame on you. I’m old enough to be your mother.”

“Don’t get mad. Just think about it. Same kind of work, different script.”

“No way.”

Undeterred, he says, “You have my number. Call me if you change your mind.”

I thank him for doing the survey and hang up.

What have I come down to?

Princess Di, indeed.

I sit back in my seat, glance at the monitor, at the questionnaire that has just popped up on it. Look around the room, at my poor, drab fellow phone room employees.

$50 bucks an hour?

(Excerpt from “Don’t Hang Up!”)