Resolution

by Leslie Edens

They warned all the new phone reps about this in training. Be polite to every customer, always. One day, we might meet one in the flesh without the protection of the phone lines. One day, we might come face-to-face.

I was pretty fired up that night, ranting at Lino, but it had nothing to do with what happened later. It was always like that, Seattle in 1999, the night shift, call center Bothell five. We drank so much coffee I don’t know what. All the reps bounced off the walls, babbled whatever thoughts came into their heads, threw rubber bands all over the place, played golf inside the building at midnight. We did what we could to stay sane. It was so dark all the time.

There’s an hour of the night when the human mind doesn’t function as it should. Blood sugar gets low, coffee stops working, and the world fills with shadows. Every night, I told myself: Jacob—make it past three, three-thirty, you’ll get your second wind and be good to go until six.

So I talked to Lino, kept myself going. Most nights, it was just me and him until the morning team arrived. He didn’t answer—just looked at me like my words were background noise, some overheated static coming off the radio.

“Pluto, man,” I said. “That goddamn planet, know what I mean?” I gestured toward the dark, empty cubicles of the room surrounding us like this explained it.

He peered at me over his cubicle wall, so I said, “The one they named Mickey’s dog after? Then, fifty years later, they’re saying it’s not a planet at all. Something else. A really big asteroid or something. And the whole solar system is different. So what does that leave us with? Mickey’s dog.”

Lino took a bite of his sandwich, offering a friendly nod. His headset bobbed up and down.

“You can hear me, can’tcha?” I knew he could. I flailed my hands in the air, trying to make an impression, any impression at all. “There is no planet Pluto! We had a planet, and now it’s gone. Where did it go?”

He shook his head and smiled like he was listening to baby babble. I noticed he didn’t exactly make eye contact.

“We have this word, ‘Pluto.’ And nothing to attach it to anymore. ’Cept a cartoon dog. Nothing of substance. How do you lose a whole planet, man?” I was near shouting.

His mouth finally opened.

“I like Mickey,” he said. “Mickey Mouse.”

He kept smiling, so tired and just not giving a shit, with that Filipino accent that gave too much “ee” to the “Mickey.” Probably dreamed of Disneyland, using employee discounts to visit there—his life’s goal. Then his head ducked down to take a call. I heard him say, “Thank you for calling—.”

I scanned the darkened floor, the rest of the cubes. All empty now, deep in the night.

The floor. At times, I had thought it had potential to be a sort of home, the call center floor. People tried to make it cozy. One woman huddled under a blanket while she worked. Most people took their shoes off, put their feet up on the desks. A German lady would knit between calls. A guy, originally from Siberia, took naps under his desk with a pillow and a sleeping bag. Some people had plants or fish. I didn’t have much of a home when I first started here, takin’ calls. No girlfriend, a rented studio. I had high hopes of finding my place back then, of making my way in the world. 

That was a long time ago, six years. Still no girlfriend, still a rented studio. Now it was always dark. I had long since given up looking.

The floor. The name had a way of suggesting you’d hit bottom. Still, vestiges of hope clung here and there. People stuck little mottos on their computers, something out of a fortune cookie Scotch-taped above the monitor. Quotes, goals, pictures of things they wanted cut out of a magazine—Lino had pictures of Disneyland. Mantras both cheesy and inspirational: “God is nowhere” morphing into “God is now here,” which mystified me the first time I read it but many months later, only produced heartburn and exasperation.

With Lino on a call, I tensed like a guy on a firing line. I’d be next. The zip tone would ding, and the call would come in, right in my ear whether I wanted it there or not. Lino probably blanked out half my rant anyway—we all had our attention spans split, our concentration jumpy. This phone jockey job took its toll on our personal lives. All the reps talked about the nightmares, the zip tones coming in their dreams, so that we never stopped taking calls even in our sleep. They warned us about that in training. For me, it pretty much wore off after a couple months, but I’d heard of reps who still got it after years. And yeah—me too, on occasion, although not every night like it used to be.

You got so good at resolving things, it cut off the impulse to feel. That tended to piss off a spouse or a lover. One minute, they’d be telling you their feelings about the grocery store or something. The next minute, you were cutting them off, deft as a butter knife, outlining their frustrations alphabetically, going point-by-point over the steps for a solution, telling them what you will do, what you will be more than happy to do, was there anything else, thank you for calling, and all under the six-minute resolution time.

Our brains worked like this—always seeking resolution, resolution—eight hours a day, they worked like this, and it was hard to shut it off. Lots of divorces in our department. Lots of breakups. Life in real time got pushed back after the headset was screwed on and tightened down.

The body of the phone at each desk, the thing that channeled the calls in, was referred to as the callmaster. Whenever I thought about that, I heard the old Metallica song in my head. I thought of the master of calls pulling on my strings like I’m the puppet. The headset of strings.

But playing around with words and songs made the job more tolerable. Like making lists of sexually suggestive terms the company condoned for its software: Puk. Piggyback. Back-and-forth action. Siemen.

Or writing lyrics that made fun of customers:

“Oh, technology users with handsets in hand,

Mailboxes rapidly auto-aging,

Don’t try to delete what you don’t understand.

For your client is set on deranging,

Your wireless device is beyond your command,

And third-tier support is raging… ”

“What the FUCK is wrong with you people?!” I didn’t realize I’d been singing it out loud until the voice howled in my ear.

A customer, out of the blue, no zip tone warning. The light on my callmaster glowed solid red. I had my hand on the volume dial right away; this guy sounded like a screamer.

“Thank you for calling… ” I went through my greeting spiel faster than most people can jerk their hands from a hot flame. Then I said, “Excuse me, sir, just give me one moment please while your account comes up for me here.” I dragged the sentence out to give the computer time. This was known as taking control of the call.

My face burned because he probably heard me singing, but I forgot it fast. The loading icon spun in endless circles; the account taking its sweet time coming up on my screen. His voice got quiet, barely audible, and I had to turn up my volume dial.

“I am at the end of my rope, period,” he said. “I WANT MY MONEY NOW! FUCKING CORPORATE ASSHOLES!”

I wasn’t fast enough on the dial and got my ear blasted out. Already, my pulse thumped and sweat rose on my chest, dripping under my arms. I looked down at my hand: a fist. We took an average of ten ugly calls like this a night, but they still kicked your ass every time.

The guy’s account finally popped up, red letters all over it, canceled, unpaid, block cap notes, a bad scene as accounts go. Probably fucking with his credit big time. And I had seen cases like this where the initial thing wasn’t even the customer’s fault. It might have just gotten out of control, probably because of the guy’s charming communication style. It could be hard to help someone who was muttering death threats directly into your ear canal.

I should have dropped the call, citing our no swearing policy. An easy way to get good call times—most reps would do it in a hot second. It was the right thing to do. Calls like this one guaranteed you trouble. But I didn’t drop. Maybe it was that thing where some customers assumed you must be a total fuckup because you took calls for a living. There are those ones, you could hear it in their voices—master and servant. I guess I didn’t take that so well. So, I dug into the call, decided I was going to fix this one.

“Let me take a look at your account, sir,” I said, voice steel cold, as Lino stared at me over the edge of the cube. His eyebrows were raised in concern at my tone, or maybe he just had one to worry about on his line too. I could never really tell with Lino.

Then I saw him on AIM, flickering fresh text in the corner of my screen.

ZippeeGonadz87: is that the dude with the canceled account? 2084513952?

JacobMOTU: Yeah

ZippeeGonadz87: told him never to call back! He’s way beyond canceled. Drop the call!

I muted my microphone so the customer couldn’t hear me, and I swore as I logged into the legacy system. “Goddamn piece of shit!” I could never remember my password for the legacy system unless I swore—some kind of weird memory thing. I ignored Lino and the low growling noise of the customer and dug through the back billing going into last year.

A train wreck of an account—I couldn’t stop looking once I got in there. The customer had never paid a bill since it’d been opened, but he’d had credits and double credits and triple credits. It had gotten so bad, we’d given him money. I could see from the notes the screaming got him what he wanted. It rattled the newer reps, and they would credit him just to get rid of him.

ZippeeGonadz87: It’s gone to collections. Drop it! There’s calls in Q

JacobMOTU: take a call then lazy ass

I saw the queue light flashing, but I couldn’t drop it. As the customer’s story unfolded before me, I got more and more fascinated. When I saw Lino’s head go down, I dove to the bottom of the back billing to see the outcome of the story.

The customer—Herb, that was his name—started demanding payment from us. Of course, our corporate system wasn’t set up to just pay out to customers. That would contradict our goal of separating customers from their money. So, his demands got him passed back and forth from escalation to billing to the resolution desk, back and forth, notes in screaming black caps: DO NOT CREDIT CUSTOMER FURTHER. But the resolution desk always would. They saw his side; they’d been soft-skill trained. He won them over every time.

He learned the resolution desk was the place to go. Like a rat after cocaine, he demanded on every call-in, “Resolution!” And he got it. Nobody wanted to deal with his ear-blasting, mind-scrambling accusations. Again, his account balance rose. Again, he demanded we send him money.

Finally, notes toward the end from a tough-ass manager named Sandra who had been around the block: “Customer has been canceled for exploitation of credits. Customer has received over $4000 in credits and never paid a bill. DO NOT REACTIVATE. DO NOT CREDIT THIS CUSTOMER FURTHER.” –Sandra C.

That should have been the end but not quite. After his cancellation, Herb wound up with a cancellation fee that he would not pay, and his account got outsourced to a collection agency. Yet he continued to call us. So, what they said in training was true: don’t give the kitten milk if you want it to go away. Herb had gotten milk here before; he was convinced he’d get it again. And here I was reviewing his account.

Feeling stupid, I gazed up at the golden trophy perched above our manager’s cube. The gold plate on the marble base read, “Team Recognition Best Overall Resolution Times.” I felt Lino’s glare prickle the back of my neck.

ZippeeGonadz87: you still on that call?

Our team didn’t have much chance of keeping that trophy if I didn’t speed things up. I’d been the weakest link lately. I kept telling myself I’d get my game on soon. I was just tired. One of the other teams would take the trophy from us if I couldn’t be more of a team player.

I unmuted the call. “Wow, Herb. Just—wow.”

“Well?” He sounded strung out and hungry for credits.

“I don’t quite know what to say, sir. Let me congratulate you on putting one over on this company for, let me see—nine months. That’s amazing. And I would like to advise you to never call us again.”

“WHAT?!” he screamed. “I thought you said you could help me—Jacob S.” He had my name, of course. The good ones always write it down.

“Absolutely, sir. I can help you to contact the collections agency that has your account. Do you have a pen on hand? Their number is 1-800—” I rattled off the digits.

“Now you listen to me.” His voice had gone liquid nitrogen cold. “Get me my money.”

Again, I wanted to drop him, but I was keyed into the whole thing by now. The armpits of my shirt were soaked through, and my hands were cramping into fists. I twisted the coils of my headset cord around my forearm, stretching them almost to the breaking point. Who was this asshole to challenge me? He had no right. He had nothing! And I was the rep. I was the master of this account.

I knew they didn’t listen in on our calls late at night anyway. It made me bold.

So, I let the anger take me. I told him, “To be frank, sir, I’ve reviewed the notes on this account, and this is a scam. You’ve been intimidating our reps for credits and then demanding checks, and you’ve never paid a dime on this account. You deserve to have your credit ruined. May you rot in hell, sir.”

I reached for the drop button.

“Don’t you hang up on me, Jacob Sieberson, C2804 second floor,” he said.

His tone made me freeze. How could he know my last name? My physical designation? My cube number? I listened.

“That’s right,” came his voice. “I know who you are. I know what desk you sit in and what floor you’re on and what building you’re in. So don’t you hang up on me.

My blood pounded in my ears. A noise like a shot went off next to me, and I jumped, but it was only the cubicle’s plastic creaking. Where was Lino? I couldn’t see him in his cube. When did he go on break?

“Jacob? You hang up on me and I will kill you. You got that?”

That arrogant voice—and then it dawned on me. He sounded so clear. So close. No static in his death threat. I’d gotten plenty of death threats before, but this one—it unnerved me how I could hear him breathe in and out. Then I realized why there had been no zip tone. You don’t get a zip tone when the call is coming from inside the building.

He was here, somewhere. He was going to kill me. My blood pounded. My fists gripped the coils of my cord. I took a deep breath. I stretched out my index finger, quivered over the drop button. Then I pressed down. I dropped the call.

I’m the callmaster,” I said, and I ripped the coil free of the phone jack and dropped my headset. Shaking, I reached over into Lino’s cube, into his golf bag. I pulled a nice, long, steel-headed golf club from it—I’d had my eye on it for some time. Couldn’t say why exactly. I whacked the steel head into my hand, feeling its weight, then I padded down the carpeted corridor in my stocking feet. I didn’t call security. I would take care of this myself. More than happy, I thought. I’m more than happy to take care of this.

It was a stroke past three-thirty as I closed in on the elevator shaft. The midnight of the soul when the world’s a well of shadows. I throbbed with fear and anger, my sweat going cold now, and the adrenaline made me jumpy. I’d see a flicker of movement, spin, and nothing. He was in the building though. I knew it. How had he gotten past security? But the guards were missing teeth, their job too shitty to provide dental insurance. How committed could they be? People had sweet-talked their way into the building before. Once, a girl got in using her ex-boyfriend’s badge. There were ways.

My eyes felt glazed and swollen like they’d been open too long. My ears strained to hear any sound. I listened for Lino, but instead, the vent system went on, roaring and thumping, making it impossible to hear anything. I stumbled back down the corridor toward the manager’s cube, keeping the club low. I coulda used a smoke, a cup of coffee, or a friendly word. Anything to shake me out of this zombie state, this graveyard walking death.

I saw the shadow of Lino’s figure sitting in his cube, and I relaxed. I recognized that Mariners ball cap he always wore.

“Hey, Lino,” I hissed, and I thought I saw him turn toward me. The side of his face glowed in the light of his computer screen. My socks hardly made a sound as I stalked toward him. I crouched next to his cube, searching for his face, his nod of recognition. He still didn’t turn his head from the shadows, and I wondered if he was mad about the golf club. I opened my mouth to apologize for taking it, when I saw an odd black streak slide out of his hat and down the side of his face. At first, I thought it was his hair. Drip-shaped hair. When it glittered red in the light of his monitor, I knew.

I swiveled the chair, and his slack face came into view. His eyes were closed like he’d given up, like he’d just been too tired. Still wearing his headphones. He must have just jacked in when the killer hit him. When Herb hit him.

Ducking into the cube’s shadows, I listened for any sound of breath. Maybe Lino had survived. But all I heard was a tinny voice from his headset. Some woman’s voice saying “Hello? Are you still there?” over and over. He had been on a call when it happened. I reached over and hit the release button on Lino’s callmaster, then I unplugged his cord. Something painful swelled in my chest and almost choked me. I didn’t want to die like that, chained to a desk by my head, my brain bleeding out. Lino shouldn’t have died like that.

I clutched at his fingers, his unresponsive fingers, as the blood poured from his cap down his neck, thicker now. My pulse pounded, my heart stuck in my throat and nearly choking me.

Lino. Lino. I don’t want to die in a call center. You were what, twenty-six?

I began to crawl for the exit of the cube, keeping low. I kept talking to Lino in my head like his ghost could hear me. I don’t know why.

Where did you go, Lino? How can a whole person just be gone? Just lost in the shadows of another night shift to one more customer’s rage? It’s like they always bled us, Lino. Just bled our brains until we had nothing left but a hole. Then we filled up that hole with all the tiredness and the complaints and the anger. With all the fear of a life lived in darkness. We were paid to talk and to tell the truth, Lino, but we lived in darkness and traded in other people’s lies.

I crept along the outside of the manager’s cubicle now, certain I could hear someone moving inside, someone breathing. Had to be him—the customer. Herb. The golf club hung ready at my side.

The orders come down from on high, Lino, and the customers call in, but we never see anybody except each other, night after night. Who’s to say they’re even real, Lino, the rest of them? All those voices floating into our ears. The flickering ghost screens and the dark. Sometimes I felt like you weren’t real either, until tonight. Until I saw you bleed.

The sign by the cubicle door: God is now here. Or God is nowhere. The truth a matter of perspective, as they’d told us so many times in training. I startled at a spot on my hand—a fleck of Lino’s blood. I didn’t know where God was in this hell of a call center, but Lino’s blood was right there. No perspective could make it disappear. I touched the spot. Then I rounded the corner of the cubicle.

A shape lurched out of the cubicle door straight at my head. I froze, unsure if I was seeing just another shadow. No warning—I felt a slam to the back of my head. I crumpled. He stood above me, swinging something gleaming and golden. For an instant, I thought he held a sword. He swung at me again, that golden sword, and I rolled. I put my hand to the back of my head and looked at the sticky, dark stuff on my fingers.

Then I gripped my bloody hand around the golf club, rage surging up in me. Something else took over then. I watched the golf club fly through the air, guided by my hand. When it connected with his head, I felt the impact all the way up my arm. I saw him sag to the floor, the whip of metal still singing in the air. He lay still, facedown, with blood pooling under his head. Good Jesus! I hit him in the head! His hands splayed out to the sides. A golden trophy dropped near his feet. I read “Team Recognition Best Overall Resolution Times” on the gold plate near the marble base.

Then I did something I shouldn’t have done. I stared hard at the old-man fringe of hair and the bald top of his head and the blue twill collar, and I pushed his shoulder with my foot, rolling him over. I put my face next to his face. Breathed in the sour milk stink of him. I took in the large pores, the uneven bristle of his beard, the creases around his lips suggesting a smirk even as his brain’s blood stained our industrial strength carpet. No breath disturbed that smirk, and his chest did not rise or fall.

A customer. And he was real. I’d never been this close to one before, to see one bleed. I’d never been face-to-face.


Leslie Edens grew up in New Mexico and lives in Bellingham, Washington. Usual hobbies include drinking coffee, hobnobbing with other writers, playing D&D, and riding a tiny ebike really fast. She writes far too much supernatural comedy, fantasy, horror, and science fiction. She especially loves reading at the Village Books open mic and chatting with the other writers on the NaNoWriMo discord server. In real life, she is a freelance editor of genre fiction. She’s currently writing a supernatural scifi horror series she likes to call Stranger Things meets Twin Peaks, but the real title is Above & Beyond.

Leslie’s short story “The 7 Habits of Highly Magical People” was featured in Autumnal Equinox: Hearth Songs and “Old Punks Die Hard” was featured in Summer Solstice Issue: Life Expectancy.

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