12:11 - 2004-05-27
\"Hello?\"
The phone rings. I pick up.
"Hello?" I say. I hear a click and then I am put on hold. I listen for a moment to the jaunty elevator song, and I start twitchin' to the beat a little. Then...
"Hello?" says a lady.
"Hello?" I say.
"Is Dena there?" she asks (that's my mom).
"Who is this?" I ask, politely.
"This is Devan."
"Who?"
"Devan." She's beginning to sound a little impatient.
I hang up.
BIG mistake! But I did. I just did. I couldn't help it! What was I thinking? Here's what I was thinking:
I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but every once in a while we get a call from "Billy" or "Michael". We pick up the phone, say "hello", ask who it is and they say a name. It isn't the name of the person you're talking to, but the name of a child who has leukemia or something, and they are asking around to find out if you'll donate to help the child bearing said name. As noble a cause as this is, I am a minor and I can't give "Billy" any of my hard-earned cash because, to tell the truth, I don't HAVE any hard-earned cash. If I had some, I might consider giving it, you know, because I'm not stingey or anything like that, but...I don't. So I hang up. I figure, when you sign on to be a telemarketter, you have a little page in your handbook that says: "People WILL hang up on you. Don't be insulted, don't feel bad, they don't mean anything personal. It's just part of the job."
Because, really, we ARE entitled to hang up on you. Telemarketters, I'm sorry, but if you're in Florida calling me in Texas, you don't know if I'm having dinner, or watching Star Wars or if I'm using the bathroom. So if you invade my privacy to assault my ears with a sales pitch, I'm gonna hang up on you. You would too. It's like muting the commercials. You don't want any of what they're selling, you don't wanna listen to them, you turn them off. Sorry it's harsh like this, but you gotta understand.
Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Here's why:
The phone rings again a moment later. I pick up.
"Hello?" I say.
"Hello," says the lady from before, sounding really short and p.o.-ed.
"Who may I ask is calling?"
"Devan. Why did you just hang up on me?"
I'm kind of caught in an awkward situation here..."I thought it was a sales call." It's true.
"Well, it's not!"
"Okay, sorry. I didn't mean to."
"Is Dena there?" She's still really mad at me, and I've go this feeling like ice is melting and running down the interior of my face.
"No she isn't. Bye."
I hang up. I sit there, feeling really shocked, and really dumb for a few seconds.
"Who was it?" asks my sister.
"The same lady. Devan."
"Who?"
"Someone calling for Mom."
I realize that I've been assumptive, that that was wrong, and that even if it wasn't a sales call, I should've been more polite. Yes, that's true, and I regret it. But I don't know this lady, and she calls me back, and chews me out about it. Not that I didn't deserve that, but I don't think I reacted too well to it, I mean, I was running on fumes in there *points to head*. And really! How could that NOT have been a sales call? I answer the phone and...am instantly put on hold! "I don't have any money for the cancer kids, I'm sorry! Click." That's what's running through my head! Not "This might or might not be a sales call, and I should be courteous and thoughtful of the kind lady who has had a bad day already and who holds unbridled spite toward teenage children, even though I couldn't possible know those things." When I pick up a phone and there's that little puff of anticipation-instantly-frozen-into-disappointment when I hear a delayed recording and not a familiar friendly voice...and I realize it isn't someone I know, and they don't ask me how I'm doing, and they don't let on that they are involved with my family.... I automatically assume they are a machine trying to sell me lightbulbs. Somehow, even if a person asks me if my mother is there, I am thinking, "No" to what must be, in my mind, an automaton droid that will recieve my answer and makes sense of it using binary code. Yeah, it's probably wrong. But I couldn't help it.
She called back too *holds head in hands*. I was too scared to get it this time. My sister went and got it, and she hung up before she even said "hello"!
"Oh gosh," I'm thinking. I sit there and wait for the phone to ring again, thinking, "This will work out okay. It will. I hope."
Maybe I make too big a deal trying to be polite to people. Maybe she was way outta line getting mad at me. I don't really think so, I prolly woulda been a little ticked too. But if I pick up the phone again and the fur begins to fly, is that really going to solve anything?
Probably not.
The phone does ring again. I pick up, and sheepishly say, "Hello?"
"Hello, is Dena there?" she asks, exasperated. She hates me, and I know it. She's probably thinking, "Why does this have to be so difficult?!" and the answer is a resounding, "I don't know!"
I say, "No," trying to be polite and appologetic. "May I take a message for her?"
"Who exactly is this?" she asks, very hacked indeed. And very stressed.
"I'm her daughter," I answer.
"So, so you just hang up on people calling for your mother!? When people call you?"
"Well..." Yes. *winces* Obviously, I do. But only by accident! People never call for my mother, they call for a CUSTOMER. That's why I hang up! But my brain doesn't work that fast while I'm talking to a woman who despises me with every fiber of her existence. Or at least, who seems to.
"I'm sorry!" I say, heart pounding, trying to repair this ridiculous mutation of a simple call.
She chews me out somemore, I don't remember exactly what she said though, because I think I went into cardiac arrest for a moment there.
I appologize somemore and am poised with my pen and paper, waiting to take down what must be an EXTREMELY important message to cause this chick to keep calling us back over and over, while I'm sitting here, unsuspecting, watching "Indian in the Cupboard", on my first day of summer, and when, unbeknownst to me, she despises children, her job, the Packers, the Pope, and has a hedgehog loose in her underoos--just to deliver this message (and be part of this grotesquely long sentence). I salute her! She must be very very brave!P>
Then she puts me on hold, and then the line goes dead.
Ugh.
