I'm Seasonal

I'm sitting in front of a computer screen, hand on my mouse, my personal "foamies" on the headset I'm using. I glance nervously at the phone. The LED display is blank. An infinitesimal beep sounds. I pounce.


"Hi, this is Amy, " I chirp. "How may I help you today?"


"I'd like to place an order."


I"d be delighted to help you with that today," I say enthusiastically. "May I have your first item number?"


As the customer tells me her first item number, I click on the "search" box in the top right hand corner on my company's web page. 


I am live.


After completing my day and a half of training, during which we had practiced taking orders while our instructors role-played being customers with a variety of requests and gift cards and additions or subtractions from their orders, we were ushered into an area called "nesting." 


I had notes. I had catalogues. I had shipping information. I had a button on my phone labeled CS, for customer service, which meant if there was any sort of situation other than me feeding information through a variety of screens all the way through to checkout I could, with extreme courteousness, pass my customer along.


"Ma'am?" I had been instructed to say, "I am so sorry, but may I place you on hold for just a second? I'm going to put you through to Customer Service. Thank you for your patience, and again, I apologize."


There was another button I could push should I need information on a product. That button was labeled, as one might imagine: Product. 


In "nesting," I had a red flag I could wave if I got stuck, or panicked, or if the screen froze mid-order and I lost everything. That first afternoon, I waved that flag like a seaman on an aircraft carrier. I stood and gesticulated until one of the instructors came to my rescue.


I was certain that my first call was a test. Or a prank. How had one of my friends gotten through and how clever she was at imitating a little old man from the midwest hunkered down in his Laz-Z-Boy, thumbing through our catalogue.


"Hello, Amy? I'd like to place an order, uh, uh, oh, damn, I gotta go turn that durn television set off."


Who talks like that?


A little old man from the midwest. From Anamosa, Iowa, in fact.


"Amy? You still there? I nearly got the durn thing off, uh, oh, I just gotta sit back down." I hear a muffled rustle and then a thump. "There, all set now. You in Vermont?"


I picture cornfields and a surrey or two. Perhaps chicks.


"Yes, sir," I respond. The customer needs to hear the smile in my voice. He is a potential friend, and I am a storekeeper, selling nostalgia and occasionally, an "intimate solution."


The first time a sweet little old lady from Tennessee sneaks an intimate solution into her order sandwiched between rum balls and a Lanz nightie for her granddaughter, I am astonished to see something that looks like the neon mouth guard my son used to wear playing hockey pop onto my screen. I spend a few seconds pondering the practical usage of this item.


"Yes, ma'am, we do have the Dual Pleasure Intimate Massager in stock. And how would you like that
shipped?"


When we graduated from "nesting," our instructors clapped their hands together vigorously and cheered "Bravo."


"You're gonna be okay," said the instructor I accidentally smacked with my flag.


"I know," I said. I felt proud.


I'm live all the time now. I'm a TSR, a telephone service representative. I have two 10-minute breaks and a half-hour for lunch during my 8-hour day. I field about 100 calls a day. 


"Amy, I like you, I do," a lady named Billie from West Virginia tells me. "I thank you shorley can shoot 
the shit."


"I shorley can," I answer. "But, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our holiday fruit cake, made from the finest ingredients right here in our bakery."


That's the up-sell.


"Why, honey, I thank I'll take one."


"Why, yes, ma'am," I say. "And y'all have a wonderful day."

Beauma Goes to Florida

When my daughter, Katherine, first invited me to The Breakers in Florida to babysit for Tripp, I imagined dipping his tiny toes into the ocean, or sitting on the edge of one of the four pools and gently splashing his chubby legs protected by SPF 60 sunblock. I figured we'd drop in at some of the activities my daughter was orchestrating  - perhaps wave "bye-bye" at the dock as the catamaran adventurers set sail, observe a croquet match, peek in at dinner. I pictured us strolling lazily up and down Worth Avenue.


Not.


Tripp is five and a half months old. The wind blustering off the ocean took his tiny breath away. There would be no toe dipping, nor would an ounce of chlorinated pool water mar his perfect skin.


On the first day, as we unpacked and opened our sliding doors that gave onto the ocean, admiring our sumptuous adjoining rooms and marble baths, Katherine glanced at my clothes hanging in a color-coordinated row in the closet.


"Why did you bring all this?" she asked. "You're not going to be seen."


"I'm not?" I asked. "By anyone?"


"No, remember, your job is taking care of Tripp."


The schedule was rigorous. The door between our rooms opened at 6:00AM the following morning.


"Rise and shine, nanny," my daughter sang. This didn't mean "rise and shine, Nanny," as in dear beloved Grandmother, this meant "rise and shine, nanny," as in servant. Well, to be honest, a servant with room service privileges and pretty much carte blanche.

After feeding the baby, Katherine disappeared to attend to a myriad of tasks and organizational details to do with the arrival of approximately 60 women who had earned a deluxe three-day, all-expenses-paid vacation at one of the most luxurious resorts in Florida. Tripp and I were left to ourselves. 

We read the cloth edition of Goodnight Little One.

We played with our red dinosaur pull toy.

We explored the hotel and discovered where Beauma could purchase her three daily cups of cappuccino. We strolled along the brick boardwalk by the ocean, and through the gardens by the raised herb beds with little signs proclaiming: "Pardon Us, We're Germinating." We found cozy corners under porticos, we gazed at expanses of flower-bordered lawns. If we were lucky, one of us napped.

Katherine and I kept in constant text communication.

Me: "When will you be back?"

Katherine: "In a few hours."

Me: "Can I have my break then?"

Katherine: Long sigh. "We'll just have to see."

My break consisted of racing to the gym, working out for slightly less than an hour, flying into the shop to purchase a smoothie, and speeding back to my tiny charge.

"It's about time you got back," my daughter would say. She had Things To Do: 60 goodie bags to pack and make sure were delivered, meetings with hotel personnel to attend, schedules to plan, menus to oversee, transportation to and from off-site events to coordinate. I just had the baby.

At night we took turns reading verses from the onomatapoeic oeuvre Roadwork. We invented a game. First Katherine chanted, "Plan the road. Plan the road. Mark it on the map. Hammer in the marking pegs. Bing bang tap!" Then, I would repeat the refrain, "bing bang tap!" in Donald Duck. Tripp caught on fast. He would turn to look and listen to Katherine, then swivel his head to me. In case you didn't know, "bing bang tap!" in Donald Duck is howlingly funny. Just ask the baby.

One day, Tripp and I were gazing out to sea at fishing boats and trawlers when a line of dolphins leaped and dove and leaped one behind the other right in front of us.

"Tripp just saw his first dolphins!" I texted my daughter.

"He saw his first dolphins with YOU?" she texted back.

"He did," I replied.

"Don't even think of taking him down to the ocean," she told me later. "I want him to see his first ocean with me. I'll smell his feet and I'll know."

I sang "Edelweiss" to my grandson, and held him in my arms for hours and hours and we engaged in long one-way conversations. While to the casual observer I might have appeared to be a dotty woman under an enormous sun hat in Ray Bans talking to herself in a dreamy, singsongy voice, Tripp listened intently. 

He learned about palm tree bark.

And magical shadows.

And color.

And when his mama had finished all her work and all the ladies had gone home, he was very very happy.

We kept the fact that he had glimpsed his first parrots to ourselves.

The End