Signs and Signifiers

I slump in the front seat of my car. A mist is beginning to descend, dampening the parking lot asphalt. The brick of the building goes from a dull pink to a deep orange. The 11:49 pm train is crossing the Gold Line, humming along the cables headed for the Mission St. station. Eleven minutes left until I have to be sitting at my phone. Eleven minutes left for me to just sit and be quiet. I keep my eyes closed, hoping that when I open them the clock will have jumped backwards. It never does. Every time I open my eyes it’s a couple minutes closer. I breathe deep, fly out of my car and into the back door of the building. I haven't seen the sun rise in five years.

The front room has been narrowed by obsolete phone equipment piled and collected over the fifty years the company has been in business. No one really knows why it hasn’t been thrown away, or at least organized to be displayed. Beyond the phone mausoleum lies the main hallway with the breakroom immediately to the left. Large windows display the inside. Four refrigerators, a couple vending machines and tables with plastic chairs. It’s a zoo exhibit.
I clock in before anyone stops to talk to me. My cubicle is littered with new memos. Marta is already at her phone answering calls in her awful tone. She's large, just as wide as the cubicle. She has a collection of five muu muus, at least I've only seen five, that she wears each week. Today it's midnight blue with orange birds-of-paradise. How she has continued to come in dressed like that without a word from our supervisor is a mystery to me. Once I wore jeans and he warned me that if I ever came in dressed like homeless jackass again, I'd be fired. From then on, it's been slacks and a tie. I make up for it by sitting down right at midnight. I never give anything more than I have to. Just enough to stay. Marta is always early and I resent her for it. I hate her for loving this.

“Thank you for calling TRM. This is Marta, how can I help you?” she says.

I drop into my chair and log on to my computer. I pull a sanitary wipe out of my satchel and wipe the ear grease off of my headset. I supposed to answer my first call before 12:01. The phone system comes on.

22 CALLS WAITING, the display reads. The second I hit Ready, the system will randomly route a call to me and I will most likely be speaking to someone across the country.
Marta pushes her chair back on the linoleum and stretches for a second between calls. She opens her mouth to yawn, creating multiple chins on her neck.

“How ya doin today Bobbo?”

“I'm fine, I say to her.”

“That's good, that's good.”

We have the same exchange every day. At the exact same time: 12:01 am. Marta grabs on to the sides of the cubicle and pulls herself back to the computer. She hits the Ready button on her phone system and takes a new call. Sounds like a Lego Catalog order. Who the hell orders Legos in the middle of the night?

I decide it's probably a good idea that I get started so I put my headset on and hit my Ready button. The Ready button is the gate. It is the plug in the damn. When you press that button, my supervisor told me in training, you are saying, yes I am ready to help someone. Yes, I’m ready for whatever is next.

“Thank you for calling TRM. My name is Robert. May I have your first name please?”

“Penny.”

“And your last name Penny?”

“Durham.”

“Okay Miss Durham, can I have the name and number of your store?”

“Corner Drug Store. There's no number. It's the only one I know of anyway.”

“Okay. Can I have the phone number?”

“Nine seven eight. Five nine eight. Five nine eight one.”

“Thank you Miss Durham--”

“Call me Penny, please.”

This is new. I can hear an urgency in her voice. Not the usual, I-want-my-copier-fixed-this-instant urgency.

“Okay, Penny. What can I help you with today?”

“Tell me why I'm talking to you, she says.”

I know everything there is to know about TRM copy and ATM machines. If you have ever had to deal with a grocery store copy machine, it was probably a TRM. Those aren't the only calls I take. If you call to order the LA Times, you could talk to me. Or you could talk to some woman in Ohio, pregnant with her fourth child, holding down this job just to feed herself and the other three not knowing how she is going to take care of the one growing inside her. But you would never know any of that. You only know that she can tell you all about the weekly specials and make a special note for the delivery boy to leave the paper on your porch, not in your driveway. If you call the 800 number from an infomercial, it could be me taking your order. I can tell you all about the new America's Test Kitchen cookbook, or the pill that will change your life and flush your colon. I'm lying mostly. But so is the man on the television. The information I have is just as abstract and general as what you, the consumer, hears from him. I can give you no more than what I'm given. Yes ma’am, the product is designed cleanse the body and make you feel happier and healthier than ever before. How does it work? Well why don’t you try it for sixty days and if you’re not completely satisfied, you can return and get a no-questions-asked refund! How does that sound?

So many people want to know more. That's how they get you. They snare you with generalities.
TRM is our biggest client. Customers call from Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Shoppers Drug Mart, 7-Eleven to tell me their copier is broken. There are only two types of people that call: young Southern girls, or male Indian immigrants. I can't understand the men most of the time. They get very upset with me and curse. The girls usually sound like they're daydreaming.

“You say you can't find the paper jam?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, that's right.”

“So you need a technician out right away?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You say you want my hands all over you?”

“Yeah, listen is someone going to be out today? My manager is really on my ass about this.”

“Yes miss. We usually try to respond within forty-eight hours.”

“All right then.”

“Thank you for calling TRM.”

They don't know that I don't really work for the company they're trying to contact. And I'm not supposed to tell them. I am the Wizard of Oz, talking to you from behind my curtain. I am a road sign with subtext.

I pulled the curtain back once. I unchained this guy from the cave wall. He was blinded by his new knowledge. He didn't know what to do with himself.

“You mean to tell me that you don't work for this company?”

“No sir, I work for a company whom that company has hired to answer its customer service calls.”

“So you can't contact the warehouse?”

“No.”

“You can't get in touch with anyone who actually sells this shit?”

“No sir.”

“Oh--This--this is great. I'm gonna sue your company's ass back to the goddamn Stone Age is what I'm gonna do.”

“Sir, they're not my company.”

“Well whoever the hell it is better watch out. Because I'm coming. I am coming, goddammit.”

“Okay sir, anything else?”

“Yeah, one more thing: Kill yourself.”

“Thank you sir, have a nice day.”


I don't say anything for over a minute. I know because I watch the clock on the computer screen change from 12:04 to 12:05 and then to 12:06. I can hear her waiting for my answer.

“Is there someone else you should be talking to?” I say.

“No, but I knew that I would talk to you. A man named Robert,” Penny tells me.

“I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.”

“Look, can I try something? I'm going to hang up and call back, and if I reach you again, we'll know it was meant to be, okay?”

“Penny, I don't want to disappoint you, but I don't think you're going to get through to me again. Do you know how many--”

“There are fifteen call centers nation wide who handle calls for TRM. Furthermore, your call center, Peak Communications, handles calls for 700 clients. All the incoming calls are randomly routed and distributed between all the call centers and all the agents. You're probably only trained on twenty or so of those, which narrows it down considerably. Since it's the middle of the night where you are, there are probably only between twenty and thirty agents handling calls, right? Well assuming it's the same at all the other call centers, I'd say the chances are slim, but that's why it's important. I guessed the name of the person I would get on the phone. I dialed the number and said to myself, I am going to speak to Robert. And here we are.”

“So what does that mean?” I ask. I know this is meaningless, but I want to keep her on the phone as long as possible. She is a customer, after all, and no one is ever allowed to hang up on a customer. Ever. We have to sit and listen and wait until we hear click.

“Well it doesn't mean anything yet. Not until I call back and reach you again. Do you know where I am?”

“No, I haven't looked up your store's account yet.”

“I live in Massachusetts. Have you ever been back here?”

“No,” I admit sheepishly.

“You're in Los Angeles aren't you? I've never been there either. I've never been beyond the Appalachians.”

“And so, you're saying--”

“Here we are, two voices. Neither of us has ever been even remotely near the other. We've probably had completely different life experiences. Has anyone ever spoken to you before?”

“You're joking right? I talk to people every day, eight hours a day,” I tell her in the sort of curt tone that customers usually talk to me in.

“But do they speak to you?”

This is getting weird, I think to myself. I look at the clock and notice that we've been on the phone for almost ten minutes.

“I--I guess not. I mean not in a religious or philosophical--I don't believe I'm having this conversation.”

“Believe it,” she says like an evangelist.

“Look, people call. They have problems. I try to help them fix those problems. That's it,” I say

“No one has ever wanted to know who you are, where you're from, the last time you cried, the name of your first kiss, what you had for dinner?”

“Why would anyone want to know?” I say, almost out of patience.

“That's what you need to tell me,” she says.

“Penny, listen. Is there anything wrong with your copier? Because, if not, I should probably get on to other calls.”

“I'm going to call back. At five o'clock Pacific time. And if I get you, we'll take it as a sign. As fate.”

Now I'm upset. I can't decide why exactly. An irrational anger is growing in my throat.

“A sign? It would be a coincidence. What would something like that mean?”

“It can mean anything you want it to. People interpret fate in a number of ways. In any way they want. Do you believe in fate?”

I pause for a moment. I’m not deciding, I already know the answer. I just don't know if I want to tell her. Fate is something for mystics and dreamers, my father would say. Destiny, moira, lot--all garbage. A man makes his own. No one can decide for him. All the words of my father. He put up a façade--he didn't believe in anything philosophical. But that in itself was a philosophy and he knew it. He hid behind his blue collar. He used it as a crutch. I could never understand why. He didn't thrive on sympathy. He didn't want anyone to feel sorry for him. I did though. I hated how he would never admit that maybe things could have been better for us. He would never say that I could do better. Everything was acceptable. Community college was acceptable. State was acceptable. This job was acceptable. You make your own destiny, son.
He was a bus driver for the MTA. Never took a single sick day. They laid him off one hot, spring morning just about nine months before he was going to retire. The unusual heat that year was making it difficult for him to see. He wore glasses thick as DMV windows and needed prescription sunglasses.

“I can't see nothin' but heat risin' from the pavement out there,” he'd say. “I'm gonna kill someone or someone gonna kill me.”

His back was also getting progressively worse. Sitting for eight hours a day on vibrating vinyl rattled his insides so that they just wouldn't stop moving. He needed surgery, or he wasn't going to be able to walk by the time he was ready to retire. The MTA wouldn't pay for it. After all his years of service, they just let him go and hired someone younger who already owned sunglasses and had a spotless medical record.

“That's just the way some things are,” my father told me. “No point in blamin' something silly as fate. I'd like to think I have a bit more control over myself. I make my own decisions and so the consequences are mine--no one else's. “

My father's route was considered one of the most dangerous. The 42. It started in Downtown between 3rd and 4th on Broadway, not far from the Civic Center. It crossed down through the Jewelry District, then headed West past USC and Expo Park, then turned slightly South and went through Crenshaw, Inglewood and finally ended just North of LAX in Westchester. The year after Dad got laid off, the police officers accused of beating Rodney King nearly to death were acquitted. Rioters stopped many MTA busses, including Dad's old one. The new driver was able run and escape the mob, who smashed all the windows and lit the bus on fire. Dad never even noticed; he drew no connection. But the coincidence always made me wonder. I don't think Dad would have been as lucky as the other driver. There are some moments in time that imprint themselves on your mind. They make you think about things differently from then on. No one else thinks anything of it. To them, it's just another day. But to you, it changes everything. It is the point on which your existence pivots and changes direction.


“I do,” I finally say.

“Goodbye, Robert. I hope to speak to you again in a few hours.”

I say nothing and wait until the LED on my phone system moves from Call to Wrap-Up. I switch off-line for a minute and breathe slowly.

My shift continues uneventfully. I have a swarm of calls between 2 and 3am for TRM; the grocery store employees in the Eastern and Central time zones always arrive at 5am to open shop. A few sleepless people call to order some colon cleanser from the infomercial they're watching with dry eyes. I hate not having a break between calls. Even ten seconds is bliss. There is an LED on the phone console set apart from the buttons that is supposed to give me an approximate idea of the call volume.

When it is off, I have no calls waiting.
Green means 1-5 calls waiting.
Yellow means 6-15 calls waiting.
Red is 16 or more.

Most days the light is red the second I sign on. Those days are always bad. I know that, statistically, I am more likely to talk to more assholes that day than a day where the light is green when I sign on. It is almost never off.

As it gets closer to 5 am, I begin to get nervous. I know why, but I don't want to admit it to myself. I tried to just forget about it at first. But I keep thinking, what if? I told myself it was impossible. I still want to believe it's impossible. But what will happen if she does get through? I've pinned it. I’m afraid nothing will happen. I want the space-time continuum to tear and shred into a million pieces. I want it to incite a miracle. I want to pivot again. I know strange coincidences and statistical anomalies occur everyday, but most don’t mean anything. I believe in fate. I want to hear Penny's voice in my headset at 5 am. I just want to know before I do, that something will happen. I want it to mean something.

I know that if she calls right at 5 am, she will probably have to wait on hold for at least ten minutes. The West Coast grocery stores call at 5 am. I am trying to time it right, though there's no sense in trying. I want to take a call right at 5 am. I'm on a car loan application at 4:57 am. These can take less than a minute, but I drag it out, and instead of telling the customer I don't know the answer to his questions, I fake it.

“Yes sir just got three blue Escalades in this morning. Yes, one of them is in the showroom right now. Oh, well, I think they're all fully loaded, sir. Yes, I will check on that. Sure, let me take your number, and a sales rep will call you right back. Thanks for your business.” Click.
5 am.

The LED sits on Wrap-Up. My heart is beating in my wrists. I try to slow it down. Stop. Stop. Stop. I want to prepare myself for disappointment before I hit Ready, but I can't. I have to get this over with and get back to normal, no matter what that is.

3 CALLS WAITING

“Thank you for calling TRM. My name is Robert. May I have your first name please?”
Silence. This happens from time to time. Someone is on hold for a long time and they put the phone down. Their ear hurts after a while and they need a break. They get sick of the elevator music. Music I have never heard. I don't even know what type of music they're really listening too. Many people complain about it, but they only tell me, You need to get that waiting music changed. I have no idea what it sounds like.

“Hello? You've reached TRM, this is Robert. How may I help you?”

“Oh, Hello? Hello? Is this the copy place?”

“Yes sir, may I have your first name please.”

My heart drops.

With each call, disappointment displaces my anxiety. The time moves closer and closer to 5:30. I take more TRM, a comment for Downey Fabric Softener, an LA Times order. I have to take a break. Not because I need one, but because my supervisor tells me it's time.

“Take ten, Bob,” he says to me.

Marta is in the break room finishing her breakfast: a SlimFast shake.

I saunter around the room, contemplating a soda or snack from a machine, but decide against it. I grab a seat in the corner of the room and just sit for a moment with my eyes shut tight and the palms of my hands stretching my face back. I can feel Marta’s eyes on me. Please God, I don’t want her to talk to me.

“Bobbo?” she asks in a motherly tone. We have never spoken outside our five-second conversation first thing when I come in. Christ, please let this end.

“Yes?”

“You're not really looking like yourself today. Is everything all right?”

I snap up and open last September's Time, trying to ignore her, but something tugs at me.

“Well--” I breathe deeply-- “Marta. The truth is that I think I've missed a huge opportunity. A chance for change. I think I’ve missed something really big, and there is nothing I can do about it now.”

She looks at me with a furrowed brow. Her forehead is deeply ridged. I can tell she understands and is turning it over in her head. “What are you wanting to change?” she asks me.

“I don't know,” I say, frustrated. “I was waiting for a sign. For fate to step in. It's not just this job. It's everything. The way I think. Christ, I sound like an idiot. I just wanted a new philosophy.”

“Fate? Robert.” And she looks at me hard. Very seriously, the way a doctor would. She has never called me Robert before. “I don’t know, I don’t want to sound rude. I guess I’ve always believed fate was sort of--well--just ridiculous.”

She looks at me sheepishly, like she just insulted my mother and feels bad about it.

“Ridiculous how?” I say, humoring her.

“Not ridiculous, but--I guess I just learned that a person chooses his own. I figure, I can’t go blaming something like fate every time things don’t my way. I’d like to think I have a bit more control over things.”

I feel something in the pit of my stomach. It’s rising. At first I think it’s vomit--it’s familiar like that, but different. I stare ahead and focus on nothing. My eyes blur.

“Weeeellll,” Marta says heaving herself out of her chair, “I guess I better get back to the old grind. It's what I've chosen.” She cracks a smile out of the corner of her mouth and gives me a wink. “It was nice talking to you Bobbo. I hope we can do this again sometime.”

“Yeah,” I say still staring. I check my watch. Two minutes left of my break. I walk back to my cubical. My supervisor is going over new procedures for placing TRM service call orders. Marta is telling someone all about the benefits of a clean colon. I know I will never see either of them again. I'll probably get a call from my supervisor, cursing and telling me I'm fired. I won't say anything and I'll hang up. I know this. I think about Penny and breathe relief. I look at my computer screen. I see the Ready button. I reach down and press it. I walk back passed the break room and out to the parking lot. I get in my car and just sit for a minute. I will drive, but the timing isn't important. The where isn't important right now. I can decide when and where. The sun is coming up over the cables of the Gold Line. The mist is being burned away, but it clings to the tops of the oak trees. The rays sparkle on the damp asphalt of the parking lot. The world lights up around me.