EggsOverEggs

My Friend Karma

More and more I am becoming a believer in Karma.  I don’t know what it is exactly that has inspired this shift in my thoughts and actions other than the feeling that I’ve been getting shit on a lot lately.  That being said I could only deduce that, if Karma exists, I’m getting the bad kind and am most certainly getting my ass kicked by it.  Now you may be saying to yourself; “if he’s receiving all this bad Karma and getting “shit on” as he so elloquently put it, he must be doing something to deserve it… Right?”  Oh absolutely.  I’m not saying that I lead an evil life or that I intentionally go out of my way to harm or hurt people, but I can narrow down my misdeeds to a couple crucial events that, if they had gone another way, may have let me avoid this “bad karma” that’s been haunting me as of late.

As you may recall, I mentioned in an earlier post that I am a receptionist.  Part of this job requires me to take all incoming calls and transfer them on to the appropriate parties.  Unless you have ever been a receptionist, you have no idea how annoying this task can be when people call up and seem as if they have no idea why they called or to whom they need to speak.  Sometimes it’s as if the person on the other end has an uncontrollable urge to pick up the phone and dial a random number out of the phone book.  When the phone rings on my end, I pick up and say “(company name) how may I direct your call?”  This is where the chain of communication begins to deteriorate.  The most popular responses to this greeting are “I have no idea”, “what is the name of this company?”, and “do you speak eh spanish?”  To me these responses are unacceptable, and after a string of ten or twelve calls in a row which typically result in me telling the person he or she has the wrong number, I start to lose my patience.  I’ve never told anyone to fuck off or anything like that, and I’d like to think, even when I’m on the brink of insanity, I am able to keep my cool and assist these people.  These people whom I have come to realize for the most part are severly to profoundly retarted. 

So what does this have to do with me being on the receiving end of Karma’s ultimate wrath?  If I’m able to remain calm and keep my composure, certainly only good things could come of that.  Well I’ve realized that I’ve developed certain habits, perhaps even prejudices toward some of these callers.  For instance; I’ve reached the point where anyone with an incomprehensible foreign accent is treated with the least amount of class possible and is transferred to customer service within five seconds of the phone ringing.  This has resulted in a general loathing of yours truely by most of the nice ladies in our customer service department.  If there’s anyone who hates dealing with foreigners more than I do, it’s a group of middle aged white women who have never seen the inside of a 7/11.  But what else am I supposed to do?  I’m not even supposed to help these people.  It’s not part of my job.

There was another instance which I could have handled a bit more delicately which I will explain now and, depending on your personality and general disposition toward the mentally challenged community, may cause you to reflixively click on the red “x” button on the top right hand corner of this window never to return to this site again.  I don’t blame you for this, and I think if I was any other kind of person, I’d do the same thing…But I’m not so here goes.  There is a local newspaper that caters to the south/central region of Connecticut called “The New Haven Register”.  Every once in a while this paper will employ people to make sales calls to past and existing customers with the hopes of renewing their subscriptions or making a small donation to help support the very, very, super quickly dying breed that is print media.  I have received a multitude of these calls throughout the months at my current post but there was something about this last one which, for me anyway, set social tolerance back about thirty years. 

The phone rang, and I glanced at the caller ID “New Haven Register”.  I picked up and quickly went through my spiel, my mantra, that opening line I say reflexively dozens of time a day; on certain nights when I wake up sitting in bed and a cold sweat has broken out on my forehead it is the first phrase that comes to mind or I’m already mouthing it as my eyes struggle to adjust to the infinite darkness.  After this, there was a slight pause, an instance of silence which immediately dictates to the person on the receiving end that this is a sales call.  I sighed heavily and said “Hello” in not such a polite tone, and then I heard a voice come from the other end.   This voice was…different, not normal, special I suppose you could say.  The slurred words read from a simple script as if each one was being pointed at with the tip of the reader’s forefinger his eyes hovering a few inches above crinkled paper.  Riffling through the sales pitch as quickly as possible there was no hint of inflection in the dull monotone of the caller’s sloppy diction.  It was then I realized exactly what I was dealing with, a gainfully employed retard, and for an instant a broad smile flashed across my face as I thought of the possibility of fucking with this person.  I quickly banished those thoughts and wiped the grin off my face, but it was too late.  Somehow, after the poor simple soul struggled through the first part of his sales script, before I could even think about it I said “what?”.  Sure enough he launched back into the pitch right from the beginning.  At this point I gasped and fought back a chuckle and hung up the phone.  “Did I just fuck with a retard?”  I asked myself.  I had.  That much was obvious.  The saddest part was that it was almost instinctive, reflexive as if some deeply embedded genetic code was triggered when I heard this person’s voice and I had to give him a hard time.  At least I caught myself and hung up before things escalated, but I know what I did, and Karma knows what I did, and now I”m paying for it. 

You hate me don’t you?