Another Day In The Office
I get to work, say hi to Alena and start making calls.
About half an hour later she starts telling me about her weekend. Some friend of her boyfriend’s went out with them on sunday night. They were out at some pub in Raymond Terrace. Well, he’s not really a friend of her boyfriend’s. More like an annoying shit. They tolerated him and spent most of the night trying to ditch him. Later, out the front of the pub, some random guy comes and crash tackles the dude, and everyone starts beating the fuck out of him
Alena & Boyfriend: “LOL!”
Then they get out of there before the cops come.
I give Alena a puzzled look.
“What?”
“You lead a strange life.”
“What do you mean. Haven’t you ever seen a fight before or something?”
“Maybe, when I was young. But I’m not really in the habit of watching my friends getting beaten the fuck out of.”
“I’m still 18. Plus he wasn’t really a friend, just some guy.”
“Okay.”
“You lead a sheltered life, Jones.”
“Okay then.”
Half an hour later she started telling me more weed stories.
“You know, I never really thought about it, but it’s kind of odd… Like my whole family smokes weed. My mum smokes weed, my dad smokes weed. My grandma smokes weed.”
“Crazy old hippie, huh.”
“Yeah, along those lines. I’ve smoked weed since I was 12. Hm. Maybe it is a strange thing.”
“Hah. No kidding.” and I give her a glare.
She says “Yeah. You still lead a sheltered life though.”
Just then a call came through.
“Hello my name is Jones Brixton, is Samantha xxx available? I’m calling from such and such a company about a new benefit available to you. Blah blah blah life insurance.”
I get through the presentation… The voice on the other side took on a deeper tone.. “Oh darling… I’m not really interested in life insurance. I’m immortal, you see.”
“Oh I see. How do you manage that? Do you… drink 6 egg yolks a day like Rocky or something?” Playfully.
“Nooo… I have lots of sex.”
“Oh right, the Hugh Hefner method of longevity.”
“Yes… and also I swallow.”
“Swallow?”
“Yes, you know, swallow.”
“Oh, right.”
I hoped quality assurance wasn’t listening to this.
“And I’m very good at it… I can deepthroat.”
“Oh yeah. Someone was telling me about this movie the other day with Linda Lovelace where she… uhh. Never mind.” Alena looked over at me. This customer is putting the hard word on me and here I am trying to make pleasant conversation about it.
“Yes well uhh Samantha, this conversation is starting to get a little less than professional. Anyway we can cover you for $8.77 a month. How does that sound?”
“No darling, I told you, I’m not really interested in insurance.”
“Okay then, I’d better let you go. I’ll look you up if i’m ever in…” Looking at her details… “Queensland.”
“Okay darling, my email address is so and so @ hotmail.com”
“What was that?”
“So and so @ hotmail.com.”
“OK then, have a nice day.”
Alena makes a stern look at me.
“What!” I exclaimed.
“Ah, nothing I guess. So what did you do on your weekend?”
I made a note of the email address.
“Well… I went to a pick-up seminar.”
“A pick-up seminar?”
“Yeah.”
“So did you pick-up?”
“Not at the seminar. There was only one woman there, and she was a 50 year old lesbian. Afterwards though, I was walking down past the Criterion hotel. There were three young girls saying hello to everyone. So I thought, what the hell, may as well be social. They asked what I was doing in Sydney and I say ‘oh, I just came to hear this international playboy speak and tell us about his attitude and stuff’. So they ask me ‘Oh what did he teach you? This sounds interesting’. At this point I was scrambling through my head thinking, what could I tell them aside from Jeffy’s story about trying to woo a girl by sleeping with all of her circle of friends, plotting them off on a kill-bill-style list.”
“What?”
“Yeah it’s a great story. Jeffy wanted this girl… she found out he was into this internet pick-up line stuff, and Myspaced him saying ‘I don’t care what you do, none of that stuff would ever work on any of MY friends’. So he decided to prove her wrong. You know, out of love.”
Alena said “Well, I can say for sure… none of that stuff would EVER work on my friends”
I laughed. She went on to a call.
Serge on my other side asked me “So what did you say to the girls?”
“Huh? Oh. I said ‘Techniques are many but principles are few.’ they said ‘What kind of principles?’ and I’m like ‘It’s the simple stuff. Like being authentic, putting your personality on the line and letting people see what you’re all about’. They said ‘yeah that’s so true, like I hate it when guys do all that fake stuff.’ Then said ‘So show us how you do it. Pick me up!’ and I was like ‘Okay… stand up’ and I picked her up, like this.” and made the action of lifting the girl up. “I got the cute one’s phone number.”
Alena was looking at a women’s magazine. The article was about a woman who made a business by setting up rich bachelors with beautiful women. The women brought their looks to the table, the men brought their money. She would go scouting at parties and such to find new wives for her client. What do they call it when you only pay on results? Pro bono… no. Anyway, the man would only pay upon marriage.
I said “look at the body language in all those photo set-ups. The women are all gazing out the window and stuff, and the men are all gazing at the women.”
Alena said “Yes of course, that’s the way it should be. I have the boobies, so I have the power. Don’t you agree?”
I laughed “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t agree?”
“Of course not. It’s like a natural order in nature. Man dominates, and woman submits.”
Alena laughed “Not in my experience.”
“Probably because you’ve never experienced a real man.”
“And I wouldn’t want to experience a ‘real man’.”
“Sure, and see how happy it makes you.”
“It does me just fine.”
Dorothy from QA comes over. She’s like 50. Starts giving Alena some feedback. “blah blah blah selling on review blah blah blah. By the way Jones, were you getting fresh with some young lady before?”
“No no, she was getting fresh with me!”
“Haha. I laughed all the way through that call.”
Alena’s like “Yeah, I heard you talking about Linda Lovelace and stuff and I was thinking ‘you can’t say that to a customer!’”
Dorothy got Alena to sign, and went back to her cubicle.
Marta made us stop making calls for a moment, to make an announcement. If we referred a friend and they worked here, we got $100 gift voucher for every month, for the first three months, that they worked here.
Alena said “I wouldn’t want to refer any of my friends to work here. I told my friend the other day how much I got paid. He said he’d come and work here for two weeks so he could afford enough for an 8 ball… then he could start his own business.” For the uninitiated, an 8 ball is an eighth of an ounce of amphetamine.
“You lead a strange life, Alena.”
