Craig Spence© March 2022
It would be interesting to meet W someday, but it’s never going to happen.
He was young, that much I could tell. Our vocal cords get flabby as men age and a sort of flubber distorts our speech. Women’s talk becomes brittle and harsh, an irritating scratchiness transforming their soothing vibrato into the cackling of old crones. I think of young voices as new fiddles for God to play on.
Not that I believe in God, but Heshe’s a superlative metaphor I can’t resist, a word stuck in my lexicon like a rock in the rapids. I don’t even wish for a God, but if I did Heshe would have to be genuinely loving – a concoction of the infinite, eternal and omniscient that did’t threaten with plagues or force me to choose between Hisher versions of fanciful heavens or lurid hells.
Have you ever noticed that customer service representatives are invariably young. Who wants to listen to a fiddle with slack strings or scratchy old 78 records? You’re listening in the future tense when you talk to a customer service representative; you are the past tense… a crotchety old geezer who stumbles over cracks in his sidewalks.
I had time to think about God, while I was waiting for W in the on-hold purgatory of the company that manufactures my fancy new printer. Heshe infused my thoughts, despite the holding tank’s distracting muzak and periodic reminders that a customer service agent would ‘soon take’ my call.
What would any God I could create look like? What would Heshe expect of me? And what could I expect of Himher in return? I can’t imagine myself in Hisher place on the throne of glory. Can only conceive of God as the stirring timbre of harmonized human voices, triumphantly singing the Hallelujah Chorus. That – for me – the crescendo of belief; everything else is distortion, detraction, ritual.
If I was God, I’d strive to be like a cat lover, who knows his companion is going to scratch from time to time and piss in his shoes, but who can’t help laughing as he gently coaxes his wayward charge toward saintliness. I wouldn’t want to be a Putin-type-God, that’s for sure: bombing my designated Sodoms and Gomorrahs, crushing innocents under the flattened debris of their own homes, shops and hospitals…
Sometimes it disgusts me, being human. I want to shower under a nozzle of concentrated bleach.
If Heshe did exist, would God have a customer service line? Would long distance charges apply? Would it be ‘members only’, a club you’d have to register for online? Would Heshe offer trial periods from time to time – or perhaps periods free from being tried: ‘Get a week of salvation for FREE; then pay a small monthly fee for your patch of eternity!”
Any 21st Century God must have call-in and complaint desks, I figure. What would I gripe about on the Holy Hotline?…
~~~
“Hello,” the angelic representative might introduce hisherself cheerfully, after I’d listened to heavenly muzak for three-quarters of an eternity. “How may I help you?”
“Holy shit! I hardly know where to begin!”
“Sorry, I don’t recognize that word, ‘shit’. There’s no such a thing in my vocabulary.”
“Oh! I forgot. Angels don’t eat, do they? So you guys don’t do do-do.”
“Can you describe the nature of your problem in more polite terms, please?”
“Holy crap!… That’s sort of like ‘shit’ with the stink extracted… You’ll have to excuse me for being human. In my quadrant of the universe things do stink, and pinch, and get pretty vulgar…”
“Please! Describe the nature of your problem.”
“Well, to begin with, there’s this guy, sleeps in my parking stall downstairs. His shopping cart and tent make it impossible for me to park my car.”
“I’m not empowered to intervene in parking disputes, sir.”
“It’s not about the parking. I don’t give a flying… crap about the parking! He can camp out in the underground as long as he wants as far as I’m concerned. But it’s cold down there, and it looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks, and he’s filthy… I want to scratch like a flea bitten mutt every time I see him.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Huh?”
“I have to check to see if he’s a member.”
“No! I don’t know the guy’s name, for chrissakes…”
“Sir, I must caution you. Taking the Lord’s name in vain is not permitted on the Holy Hotline. Our client services manual clearly stipulates that a complainant must be cautioned if he blasphemes, and disconnected if he persists.”
“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry. But I assume the guy’s a member. I see him out on the corner of Fort and Douglas streets sometimes with a great big placard says “REPENT BEFORE YOUR TIME ARRIVES. DOOMSDAY STARTS AT TEN PAST FIVE!”
“Do you have a date to go with that inscription?”
“Huh?”
“Does his placard say which day in the Gregorian Calendar Armageddon is scheduled to commence?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, if he has the correct date he’s one of ours.”
“Huh?”
“Only a true saint would know the correct Doomsday date. If he’s got it wrong, or hasn’t included it in his message, he’s almost certainly a fraud, a demon, or possessed.”
“Does he have the right time?”
“I’m not permitted to reveal that information.”
“Oh! Well, let’s just say for the sake of argument that he does know the right date? Could you do anything for him then?”
“If he had the right date, he would automatically be inscribed as a life member.”
“So, if that’s the case, what could you do for him?”
“Nothing more would need doing in such a case. He would already be fully supported and sustained by the Department of Saints and Martyrs.”
“But he looks like a skin and bones in a ragbag, for Christ… opher Robin’s sake.”
“Saints need trials and tribulations to validate their claims, sir. Would you like an opportunity to explore the joys and benefits of sainthood?”
“What?”
“Would you like to be a saint yourself? We have a brochure I could sent you.”
“No, that’s not possible.”
“Why not? All it takes is a will to be perfected through mortal suffering.”
“No way! My ex needs me to be an asshole, and my son needs me to be an imperfect but loving father. I’m not cut out for sainthood, and certainly not for martyrdom.”
“Perhaps, then, you would like to contribute to our PLEASE DONATE TO MAKE A SAINT fund? It’s the next best thing to the real thing.”
“Not right now, thanks. I’m here to complain, remember.”
“Is there any other matter I can help you with?”
“Yeah! This guy Putin. Can you zap him with a gigavolt bolt of lightening or something. Him and his 80,000 thugs chanting about the glories of ravaging a nation and murdering innocent civilians? Kids, expectant mothers, seniors!”
“Putin? Is that his surname or or given name?”
“Surname. His given name is World’s-Biggest-Asshole!”
“Sorry, sir, but we don’t have ‘World’s-Biggest-Asshole’ in our name dictionary. Not even under the male category.”
“Vladimir! His first name is Vladimir for Jiminy Cricket’s sake.”
“Thank you, sir. Excuse me for a moment while I see if he’s in The Book.”
“The Book?”
“The Book of Members, sir.”
“What if he’s not in the Book of Members?”
“Then he’s likely in the other book.”
“What other book?”
“The Book of Those Who Have No Names.”
“If they have no names, how are they listed in the book.”
“They aren’t listed, sir; they are erased.”
“But if they aren’t recorded first, how to they get erased?”
“They’re names are erased before they are even given. Before the beginning of time. They have been erased for all eternity.”
“So what’s between the covers of this Book of Those Who Have No Names.”
“Empty pages.”
“Empty pages? How many empty pages?”
“Oh, innumerable empty pages, sir. That volume is much thicker than the Book of Members.”
“So which book is Putin in?”
“I’ve scanned both; he’s not in either.”
“But, doesn’t that mean he’s in The Book of Those Who Have No Names?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Duh! Excuse me for being a stupid mortal, but isn’t this an either/or kind of proposition: either you’re in the Good Book – so to speak; or you’ve been erased from the Bad Book? Right?”
“There’s a third book, sir.”
“A third book?”
“Yes. It contains the names of those who’s names shall not be spoken.”
“How do I find out if Vlad The Wannabe Great is in that book?”
“Those who dare to speak the names of those whose names shall not be spoken work in a different department, sir. Shall I transfer your call.”
“No, thank you.”
“Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“No. I think I’m beyond help. Goodbye…”
“Before you go, may ask you to give me a favourable rating in the text that will be sent to you after this call is ended?”
“You’re an Angel, for… goodness sake. What kind of rating do you need from me?”
“Striving for perfection is part of being perfect, sir. Thank you for using the Holy Hotline.”
~~~
Like I said, I’ve never heard the flub or cackle of an aged voice on any help line I’ve ever called. But call centre voices aren’t typically human either, are they? W’s voice, for instance, hadn’t been altered by age; it had been dampened by design. A little mind experiment helped me understand the process.
Imagine yourself seated in the exact centre of a stark room, a large computer screen on a stand in front of you. In the centre of the screen, your face in real time; top left, a monitor that shows your heart rate and other vital signs; top right, measurements of the pitch and volume of your voice; lower left, an instant transcription of your every word, with approved terms coloured green, acceptable yak black, unacceptable blazoned red; lower right, instructions and an overall rating of your performance as a Consumer Services Representative.
That’s the set up.
A simulated call comes in over a loudspeaker, and I respond: “Hello,” I say. “My name’s Bob. How can I help you today…”
A beep sounds, the word ‘can’ flashes red and is replaced by the less assertive ‘may’ in green. The client must always believe he’s making his own choices.
“You can help me by sending someone round to pick up this shitty printer you’ve sold me, and by giving me my money back, plus damages for wait time!” the client yells.
The heart gage nudges up to 200, and my respiratory rate quickens to 20 as my adrenal gland squirts cortisol and adrenaline into my bloodstream. A beep sounds, and a message comes up in the instruction box. “Elevated anxiety levels,” it says. “Breathe slowly. be calm.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear that, sir. Can you tell me what’s wrong with the printer?”
“Beep! Beep! Beep!” The control panels go crazy. “Never suggest there’s a problem with our product!” the command voice thunders. My blasphemous ‘…what’s wrong with our printer…’ flashes in throbbing red letters, the sacrilegious response replaced in bright green with: “Oh. Sorry to hear that, sir. Can you tell me what kind of problem you are experiencing with your printer…”
~~~
“It won’t print,” I complained to W.
I’d anticipated an inhuman interaction, its every nuance controlled by some heartless bastard who gazed down at the world and its working schleps from the remote pinnacle of a meticulously disinfected and ordered office tower. That’s the distance between heaven and hell, you see. Heaven is a corner suite on the 99th floor; hell the sweatshop down in the basement, where people are plugged in and connected like bits of binary in a code driven solely – and soullessly – by markers of efficiency and profitability…
“Phone number?”
No kidding! Those were W’s first words. A confirmation that went beyond even my grimmest customer services scenario. Brusqueness bordering on rude, not sycophancy, was the tone of this interface. Not “Hello”, not even a phoney greeting like “Welcome, we’re here to help you.” Just “Phone Number?” demanded in a voice that would make Hal the Computer sound ebullient by comparison.
My world slewed and I thought: If I’m trying to build a bridge between me and this guy, it ain’t going to happen. It’s going to be skewed more than a couple of centimetres off centre, and somebody’s going to have to take the blame. Hackles raised, I spat out the ten demanded digits…
“Name?”, W demanded, then when he learned I wasn’t a registered account holder: “Address… Postal Code… Email address…,” all in that flat monotone perfected by customs agents…
“What’s your problem?”
I explained that I’d upgraded my operating system so I could install his company’s software to manage my new laser printer, the ‘deluxe model’ being hyped on their website. But, that done, my email program wouldn’t work. I’d fixed that, but then my printer icon disappeared again, and my word processing program became unstable. So I fixed that, and my email stopped working… and so on.
W was the last link in a lengthy chain that supposedly led from the hell of computer dysfunction to that Nirvana where I could actually print a fucking page and send an email… I bore with him.
Every relationship has an identifiable pattern. W’s job was to uncorrupt my computerized, workaday world by linking my computer to something called a ‘server’ in a stable network. Apparently millions of other frustrated clients were demanding the same. W knew all about my problem…
That was the prequel to our relationship.
“What kind of operating system are you using?”
“I’m on a Mac.”
“Thought so,” W said disdainfully. “Have you contacted them?”
“They told me to contact you.”
My first computer was a Tandy portable. I had only worked on typewrites up to then, bashing out stories on half-sheets of newsprint. My editor would then shuffle the pages into a sequence he felt best made them news, mark them up and pass them along to The Courier’s typesetter, Maria, the goddess of the Compugraphic.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a luddite. But there was something satisfying to the process of hammering out stories direct to paper on a machine that never, ever broke down – no matter how hard you pounded the keys – then handing them off to someone else for proofing and inputting, while you got on with your next story. If nobody had invented anything else, I’d still be happy with the bash and dash mode of getting words into print. But along came Tandy, and after that the Macs… And now, four decades later, we’re all expected to be ‘multi-media journalists’, monkeying around with our mobiles, getting news clips and soundbites for our eEditions, while the real news gets away from us and fascists like Putin can claim images of a pregnant woman dying after a maternity hospital has been bombed are ‘fake news’…
“There’s nothing wrong with your printer app,” W pronounced.
Exasperation is a state of mind closely related to panic, except it triggers fight rather than flight. With difficulty – and in my oh-so-Canadian way – I restrained the impulse to somehow reach down the telephone line, out the mouthpiece of W’s headset, and grab him by the throat. Instead, I reminded him as clearly and precisely as I could that my email wasn’t working if my printer was…
“I can’t send anything,” I said in that clipped voice of inhibited rage.
You can put your shoes on the wrong feet, but you can’t put them on backwards, my old man used to say. Translation: If I’m not understanding a situation, it’s not necessarily because I’m stupid. More likely I’ve missed a nuance; or I’ve been in too much of a hurry; or it’s not my job to know how the engine works, I just need to know how to turn the friggin’ key in the ignition… I detected a gloating undertone in the pattern of W’s speech that suggested I had in fact put my shoes on backwards.
W described the difference between my Mac’s email client (an interface, designed to make the business of sending and receiving emailing ‘look pretty’), and the spinal, hard-wired core of the Internet, which sends messages through the atmosphere and receives them in the same instant…
Imagine hitting a home run, and being in the stands to catch it – the hitting and catching not taking place through a continuum of time and space, but occurring simultaneously – and you have a glimmering of the Internet’s geeky priests’ power to fuck-up your thought processes. I’d had enough!
“What’s your name,” I demanded, interrupting his lecture.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like your tone and I’m going to complain.”
“Sure,” W obliged, giving me his employee number. “Do you want me to end this session?”
“No! I want you to fix my problem. I’ll complain later.”
If he hung up, I figured I could add that to the litany I intended to paste him with. Perhaps the anonymous bastard up there in his posh, sanitized office Nirvana would see a brief flash out on the internet’s fringe when my flame arrived. Maybe, in his complex spreadsheet of profit and loss, human dignity would get a column of its own that could be sorted and searched as if it somehow mattered.
Then it zapped me, my moment of revelation. I suddenly understood the big shot’s strategy, up there smiling smugly, looking down on all us ordinary folk from the 99th percentile. W wasn’t really there to help me; he was there to absorb my hate. If he fixed my problem, so much the better, but if the problem couldn’t be fixed, I’d pin all my frustrations and anger on the customer services rep. Being hated was part of W’s schtick.
For his part W didn’t so much as sigh in reaction to my threat. His response came across as a gigantic, invisible shrug. I suddenly became aware of other voices in the customer services background, the white noise of an immense bureaucracy designed not so much to help people with their problems as to absorb and deflect them, triaging complainants into those worth dealing with; and those best written off.
To his credit W plodded on. He got me to download a program that allowed him to take control of my Mac’s operating system.
“Take your hand off the mouse,” he instructed.
He had become a ghost inside my OS – whether malignant or benevolent remained to be seen. The cursor jumped around the screen, code magically filled in required preference settings, test emails accumulated in my outbox. I watched. Could almost hear him thinking.
When I entered my late teens, Dad bought me a wrist watch – a Timex with analog arms and a little square that told you the date, but which had to be adjusted for any months that didn’t have the requisite 31 days. You had to wind the thing up to make it go… a hint from Dad, perhaps, that he wanted me to get over my daydreaming ways and take responsibility for my time on earth, for the realpolitik of daily existence.
My brother, who has a bit of the mad scientist in his genome and was ADD before that diagnosis existed, took this symbolic gift – this tribute to nascent manhood… er, personhood – and disassembled it on the workbench in our basement. What remained was a collection of cogs, springs and tiny screws spread out on the wooden bench top. I should have killed him, or been killed in the attempt, but it wasn’t long before we were absorbed in the utterly hopeless challenge of trying to reverse the process of taking apart my timepiece by putting it back together again. We found ourselves enjoying each other’s company in a way only brothers can.
W hovered the mouse over the various options: Incoming Mail Server; Outgoing Mail Server (STMP). He twiddled, tweaked, saved, then created another ‘test’ email… and got another infuriating dropdown box that said my server could not be found, did I want to “Cancel”, “Try Later” or “Try Again”… and again, and again.
“These are not your real email settings,” W reminded me. “They are the settings of your Mac’s interface.”
But something in his geeky-priest demeanour had changed. He was thinking out loud, as if I was looking over his shoulder at a problem we might be able to resolve together. Port, SSL, he clicked and fiddled with things I didn’t understand. Paused, hovering the cursor over decisions that needed to be made. He sighed, relieving his frustration…
“This is my first day back,” he said distractedly.
“Pardon?”
“I’ve been off sick. The flu. I was scared shitless it might be COVID. It wasn’t, but I still shouldn’t really be here at all.”
As he talked, he continued making adjustments… saving… hitting the send button on yet another test email, which stubbornly refused to fly from my Outbox. For a good three-quarters of an hour he tried and tried – even though he’d warned earlier there were limits as to how long a session could remain open.
W has three kids. His wife works as a practical nurse. They both do shift work.
I told him about my status as an ex hubby, and imperfect dad. We had a laugh.
Friends and colleagues of mine had been down with the flu. The first question anyone asks these days, when they sneeze or cough is: Do I have it? Am I going to end up dying in a hospital bed with a trachea tube rammed down why throat?
Did W’s coifed and deodorized boss up in his office tower know W had come down with the flu? That W has a family? That W and his wife barely get a chance to kiss each other Hello-Goodbye in their frantic comings and goings from their two bedroom flat? Or is the big boss too busy calculating the profitable angles to the COVID pandemic to make room for human Being on his spreadsheets?
Whoosh! A test email flew the coop.
“It’s gone!” I whooped.
W said nothing, but I knew he was smiling.
A few hours later I got round to responding to the automated message that landed in my Inbox. It asked if I had been satisfied or dissatisfied with my ‘customer service experience’, and if ‘my problem’ had been resolved.
I checked ‘satisfied’ and ‘resolved’ because they were the only options the man looking out his 99th floor window allowed, other than the implied ‘unsatisfied’ and ‘unresolved’. Then I punched ‘Send’.
‘Thank you!” a responding email zipped into my inbox. The message contained a slick photo of what I took to be a customer service representative, represented by a male model, smiling happily and waving at me from my computer screen. He was positioned on the corner of a desk, a window behind him overlooking a blurred-focus image of somebody’s downtown. It wasn’t W, but a part of me wished W could be faked well enough to be that real.
~ The End ~
Hope you enjoyed Customer Service.
There’s more in The Feel of Gravity collection.