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."