Page 1 of Call Me Anytime
1
Hannah
Monday, May 6
10:00 a.m.
When I was a little girl, I used to dream of the future a lot. Of fancy houses and a handsome husband and jet-setting trips to the south of France. I pictured perfectly manicured nailsandlawns, and I imagined big diamond necklaces resting heavily around my clavicle.
Instead, at twenty-five, I sit inside a warehouse on the outskirts of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, in a dingy office on the second floor, wafting cigarette smoke away from my face as discreetly as I possibly can while the woman interviewing me for a telemarketing job blows a continuous stream in my direction.
This, friends, is not what dreams are made of.
“I see it says on your résumé that you just left a job at Alliance?” Margo, my interviewer, asks.
“Yes. That’s correct.” I wiggle in my seat to sit a little taller, desperate to make the best of this situation. After fifteen interviews and no job offers in the last month, I don’t have much choice.
Margo Mavis’s makeup is thick—blue eye shadow, pink lips, pink blush—and her jet-black hair is almost as big as her currently pushed-upbreasts, which I can only assume are fake. They, like NASA, defy gravity. Everything else about her is aged—like she’s a character straight out of ’80s TV—and, since her office is windowless and there isn’t a fan or air purifier in sight, her views on the risks of indoor smoking seem just as old fashioned.
“And what’s Alliance, hon? A club?” She drops my single sheet of job history to the desk in front of her and takes another drag from her Virginia Slim.
“A club?” My eyebrows draw together. “No. It’s a medical-based technology company. I was doing data entry, but they’re relocating to Atlanta and aren’t offering any remote positions.”
Margo takes another drag, and a few ashes fall onto the neckline of her red sweater, which covers little more than her nipples—and comes nowhere near her neck. She brushes them off with a nonchalant hand, but not before they burn a tiny hole in the fabric. For continuity within the look she’s going for, the heavily coated foundation around her eyes cracks to reveal a few crow’s-feet as she squints down at my résumé for another quick read. “You have any experience on calls?”
“Um ... I did some cold-calling with Alliance, but I’ve never been in direct sales before,” I admit, fudging the truth a little in the hopes that it makes me sound less like a fish out of water. Nadine, my old boss at Alliance,didattempt to put me on the sales team at one point, but after a week of calls and no actual sales, back to data entry I had gone. Being pushy with strangers isn’t one of my fortes.
Still, I’mdesperatefor a job,anyjob, and if that means doing a crash course on slick tricks via YouTube tutorial, then so be it. I wouldn’t be sitting here, secondhand smoking my way to bronchogenic carcinoma, if I weren’t willing to do anything necessary.
I’ve got a lot counting on me to bring in a steady stream of reasonable income—things I absolutelycannotsacrifice—and every day I’m not doing that, we go farther in the hole.
When Margo doesn’t say anything, I feel the urge to expand, the impulse to convince her to give me a chance nearly overpowering.
“I’m a dedicated employee, though. I give a hundred and ten percent to every assignment,” I add. “It might take me a day or two to get my feet under me, but I’m confident in my ability to adapt.”
Margo meets my eyes, searching my face for a long beat before nodding. “You’ve got a nice sound, I’ll give you that. A nice look, too, not that that matters too much around here.”
I glance down at my white blouse and black pencil skirt a little self-consciously and cross my legs at the ankle. I tried to “dress to impress,” but if Margo’s squeaky hot pants and tattered scrap of a sweater are anything to go by, I may have missed the mark.
“How’d you hear about the position, hon?” she asks.
“I saw the ad in the newspaper. The, um,Nashville Newsleader, I think it was.”
Margo nods. “Glad those things are working. Most of the time, I don’t know if anyone even reads that shit anymore.”
I shrug. My dad used to read the paper every morning and every night. I don’t take the eccentricity quite as far as he did, but I crack the pages every now and then.
“All right. Let’s get down to it.” Margo takes another puff of her cig and blows actual smoke circles into the air. “Go ahead and give me a taste of your phone voice.”
“My . . .phone voice?”
“Yeah, hon. Just act like you’re answering a call.” Her hot pants squeak again as she leans closer.
Nerves flit around inside my belly. Truth be told, I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything worse than a job in telemarketing. I’m an introvert. A classic case of “text instead of call” and a certified homebody. I don’t put myself out there—I never have.
But I need the job—the money—and that means my comfort zone is a thing of the past.
“Okay.” I swallow hard against the nausea and lick my lips to wet my dry mouth. I even pretend to put a phone to my ear, splaying myfingers in the hang-ten hand sign. “Hello, thank you for calling Call Me Anytime. My name is Hannah. How can I help you?”
