Signifiers and Signifieds

“Signifiers and Signifieds”
by Joel David Harrison

    I slump in the front seat of my car. A mist is beginning to descend, dampening the parking lot asphalt. The brick of the building goes from a dull pink to a deep orange. The 11:49 pm train is crossing the Gold Line, humming along the cables headed for the Mission Street station. Eleven minutes left until I have to be sitting at my phone. Eleven minutes left for me to just sit and be quiet. I keep my eyes closed, hoping that when I open them the clock will have jumped backwards. It never does. Every time I open my eyes it’s a couple minutes closer. I breathe deep, fly out of my car and into the back door of the building. I haven’t slept at night in five years.
    The front room has been narrowed by obsolete phone equipment piled and collected over the fifty years the company has been in business. No one really knows why it hasn’t been thrown away, or at least organized to be displayed. Beyond the phone mausoleum is the main hallway with the break room immediately to the left. Large windows display the inside. Four refrigerators, a couple vending machines and tables with plastic chairs. It’s a natural history exhibit.
    I clock in before anyone stops to talk to me. My cubicle is littered with new memos. Marta is already at her phone answering calls in her awful tone. She's large, just as wide as the cubicle. She has a collection of five muu muus; at least I've only seen five, that she wears each week. Today it's midnight blue with orange birds-of-paradise. How she has continued to come in dressed like that without a word from our supervisor is a mystery to me. Once I wore jeans and he warned me that if I ever came in dressed like homeless jackass again, I'd be fired.  From then on, it's been slacks and a tie. I make up for it by sitting down right at midnight. I never give anything more than I have to. Just enough to stay. Marta is always early and I resent her for it. I hate her for loving this.
    “Thank you for calling TRM. This is Marta, how can I help you?” she says.
    I drop into my chair and log on to my computer. I pull a sanitary wipe out of my satchel and wipe the ear grease off of my headset. I’m supposed to answer my first call before 12:01. The phone system comes on.
    22 CALLS WAITING, the display reads. The second I hit Ready, the system will randomly route a call to me and I will most likely be speaking to someone across the country.
    Marta pushes her chair back on the linoleum and stretches for a second between calls. She opens her mouth to yawn, creating multiple chins on her neck.
    “How ya doin today, Bobbo?”
    “I'm fine,” I say to her.
    “That's good, that's good.”
    We have the same exchange every day. At the exact same time: 12:01 am. Marta grabs on to the sides of the cubicle and pulls herself back to the computer. She hits the Ready button on her phone system and takes a new call. Sounds like a Lego Catalog order. Who the hell orders Legos in the middle of the night?
    I decide it's probably a good idea to get started so I put my headset on and hit my Ready button. The Ready button is the gate. It is the plug in the damn. 
    “When you press that button,” my supervisor told me in training, “you are saying, ‘Yes, I am ready to help someone.  Yes, I’m ready for whatever is next.’ And it literally could be anything, so you have to make sure you’re prepared.”
    I have never felt prepared.
    “Thank you for calling TRM. My name is Robert. May I have your first name please?”
    “Penny.”
    “And your last name Penny?”
    “Durham.”
    “Okay Miss Durham, can I have the name and number of your store?”
    “Corner Drug Store. There's no number. It's the only one I know of anyway.”
    “Okay. Can I have the phone number?”
    “Nine seven eight. Five nine eight. Five nine eight one.”
    “Thank you Miss Durham—”
    “Call me Penny, please.”
    This is new. I can hear an urgency in her voice. Not the usual, I-want-my-copier-fixed-this-instant urgency.
    “Okay, Penny. What can I help you with today?”
    “Tell me why I'm talking to you,” she says.
    I know everything there is to know about TRM copy and ATM machines. If you have ever had to deal with a grocery store copy machine, it was probably a TRM. Those aren't the only calls I take. If you call to order the LA Times, you could talk to me. Or you could talk to some woman in Ohio, pregnant with her fourth child, holding down this job just to feed herself and the other three not knowing how she is going to take care of the one growing inside her. But you would never know any of that. You only know that she can tell you all about the weekly specials and make a special note for the delivery boy to leave the paper on your porch, not in your driveway. If you call the 800 number from an infomercial, it could be me taking your order. I can tell you all about the new America's Test Kitchen cookbook, or the pill that will change your life and flush your colon. I'm lying mostly. But so is the television. The information I have is just as abstract and general as what you, the consumer, hears from it. I can give you no more than what I'm given. Yes ma’am, the product is designed to cleanse the body and make you feel happier and healthier than ever before. How does it work? Well why don’t you try it for sixty days and if you’re not completely satisfied, you can return and get a no-questions-asked refund. How does that sound?
    So many people want to know more. That's how they get you. They snare you with generalities.
    TRM is our biggest client. Customers call from Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, Shoppers Drug Mart, 7-Eleven to tell me their copier is broken. There are only two types of people that call: young Southern girls, or male Indian immigrants. I can't understand the men most of the time. They get very upset with me and curse. The girls usually sound like they're daydreaming.
    “You say you can't find the paper jam?”
    “Hmm? Oh yes, that's right.”
    “So you need a technician out right away?”
    “Uh, yeah.”
    “You say you want my hands all over you?”
    “Yeah, listen is someone going to be out today? My manager is really on my a*s about this.”
    “Yes, miss. We usually try to respond within forty-eight hours.”
    “All right then.”
    “Thank you for calling TRM.”
    They don't know that I don't really work for the company they're trying to contact. And I'm not supposed to tell them. I am the Wizard of Oz, talking to you from behind my curtain. I am a road sign with subtext.
    I pulled the curtain back once. I unchained this guy from the cave wall. He was blinded. He didn't know what to do with himself.
    “You mean to tell me that you don't work for this company?”
    “No sir, I work for a company whom that company has hired to answer its customer service calls.”
    “So you can't contact the warehouse?”
    “No.”
    “You can't get in touch with anyone who actually sells this s**t?”
    “No sir.”
    “Oh—This—this is great. I'm gonna sue your company's a*s back to the goddamn Stone Age is what I'm gonna do.”
    “Sir, they're not my company.”
    “Well whoever the hell it is better watch out. Because I'm coming. I am coming, goddammit.”
    “Okay sir, anything else?”
    “Yeah, one more thing: Go f**k yourself.”
    “Thank you sir, have a nice day.”

    I don't say anything to Penny for over a minute. I know because I watch the clock on the computer screen change from 12:04 to 12:05 and then to 12:06. I can hear her waiting for my answer.
    “Is there someone else you should be talking to?” I say.
    “No, but I knew that I would talk to you. A man named Robert,” Penny tells me.
    “I'm not sure I understand what you're saying.”
    “Look, can I try something? I'm going to hang up and call back, and if I reach you again, we'll know it was meant to be, okay?”
    “Penny, I don't want to disappoint you, but I don't think you're going to get through to me again. Do you know how many—”
    “There are fifteen call centers nation wide who handle calls for TRM. Furthermore, your call center, Peak Communications, handles calls for 700 clients. All the incoming calls are randomly routed and distributed between all the call centers and all the agents. You're probably only trained on twenty or so of those, which narrows it down considerably. Since it's the middle of the night where you are, there are probably only between twenty and thirty agents handling calls, right? Well assuming it's the same at all the other call centers, I'd say the chances are slim, but that's why it's important. I guessed the name of the person I would get on the phone. I dialed the number and said to myself, I am going to speak to Robert. And here we are.”
    “So what does that mean?” I ask. I know this is meaningless, but I want to keep her on the phone as long as possible. She is a customer, after all, and no one is ever allowed to hang up on a customer. Ever. We have to sit and listen and wait until we hear click.
    “Well it doesn't mean anything yet. Not until I call back and reach you again. Do you know where I am?”
    “No, I haven't looked up your store's account yet.”
    “I live in Massachusetts. Have you ever been back here?”
    “No,” I admit sheepishly.
    “You're in Los Angeles aren't you? I've never been there either. I've never been beyond the Appalachians.”
    “And so, you're saying--”
    “Here we are, two voices. Neither of us has ever been even remotely near the other. We've probably had completely different life experiences. Has anyone ever spoken to you before?”
    “You're joking right? I talk to people every day, eight hours a day,” I tell her in the sort of curt tone that customers usually talk to me in.
    “But do they speak to you?”
    This is getting weird. I look at the clock and notice that we've been on the phone for almost ten minutes. 
    “I—I guess not. I mean not in a religious or philosophical—I don't believe I'm having this conversation.”
    “Believe it,” she says like an evangelist.
    “Look, people call. They have problems. I try to help them fix those problems. That's it,” I say.
    “No one has ever wanted to know who you are, where you're from, the last time you cried, the name of your first kiss, what you had for dinner?”
    “Why would anyone want to know?” I say, almost out of patience.
    “That's what you need to tell me,” she says.
    “Penny, listen. Is there anything wrong with your copier? Because, if not, I should probably get on to other calls.”
    “I'm going to call back. At five o'clock Pacific time. And if I get you, we'll take it as a sign. As fate.”
    An irrational anger is growing in my throat.
    “A sign? It would be a huge coincidence. You are seeing a nexus in something that has absolutely no meaning to anyone else. What would something like that mean to you?”
    “It can mean anything you or I want it to. People interpret fate in a number of ways. In any way they want. Do you believe in fate?”
    I pause for a moment. I’m not deciding, I already know the answer. I just don't know if I want to tell her. I don’t know if I want to commit myself to her experiment.
    “I do,” I finally say.
    It is now my experiment too.
    “Goodbye, Robert. I hope to speak to you again in a few hours.”
    I say nothing and wait until the LED on my phone system moves from Call to Wrap-Up. I switch off-line for a minute and breathe slowly.
    My shift continues uneventfully. I have a swarm of calls between two and three for TRM; the grocery store employees in the Eastern and Central time zones always arrive at five to open shop. A few sleepless people call to order some colon cleanser from the infomercial they're watching with dry eyes. I hate not having a break between calls. Even ten seconds is bliss. There is an LED on the phone console set apart from the buttons that is supposed to give me an approximate idea of the call volume.
    When it is off, I have no calls waiting.
    Green means 1-5 calls waiting.
    Yellow means 6-15 calls waiting.
    Red is 16 or more.
Most days the light is red the second I sign on. Those days are always bad. I know that, statistically, I am more likely to talk to more a******s that day than a day where the light is green when I sign on.
    As it gets closer to 5:00 am, I begin to get nervous. I know why, but I don't want to admit it to myself. I try to just forget about it at first. But I keep thinking, what if? I tell myself it’s impossible. I want to believe it's impossible. But what will happen if she does get through? I've pinned it. I’m afraid nothing will happen. I want the space-time continuum to tear and shred into a million pieces. I want it to incite a miracle. I want it to be a moment on which my entire existence will pivot. An epiphany beyond all other epiphanies. I want to hear Penny's voice in my headset at 5:00 am. I just want to know before I do that something will happen. I want it to mean something.
    I know that if she calls right at five, she will probably have to wait on hold for at least ten minutes. The West Coast grocery stores call at five. I am trying to time it right, though there's no sense in trying. I want to take a call right at five o’clock. I'm on a car loan application at 4:57. All I have to do is take the caller’s name, address, phone number, social and employment history, which then gets sent on to the dealership. These can take less than a minute, but I drag it out, and instead of telling the customer I don't know the answer to his questions, I fake it.
    “Yes sir just got three blue Escalades in this morning. Yes, one of them is in the showroom right now. Oh, well, I think they're all fully loaded, sir. Yes, I will check on that. Sure, let me take your number, and a sales rep will call you right back. Thanks for your business.”
    Click.
    5:00 am.
    The LED sits on Wrap-Up. My heart is beating in my wrists. I try to slow it down. Stop. Stop. Stop. I want to prepare myself for disappointment before I hit Ready, but I can't. I have to get this over with and get back to normal, no matter what that is.
    3 CALLS WAITING
    “Thank you for calling TRM. My name is Robert. May I have your first name please?”
    Silence. This happens from time to time. Someone is on hold for a long time and they put the phone down. Their ear hurts after a while and they need a break. They get sick of the elevator music. Music I have never heard. I don't even know what type of music they're listening too. Many people complain about it. They tell me, “You need to get that waiting music changed.” I have no idea what it sounds like.
    “Hello? You've reached TRM; this is Robert. How may I help you?”
    “Oh, Hello? Hello? Is this the copy place?”
    “Yes sir, may I have your first name please.”
    My heart drops.
    With each call, disappointment displaces my anxiety. The time moves closer and closer to 5:30. I take more TRM, a comment for Downey Fabric Softener, an LA Times order. I have to take a break. Not because I need one, but because my supervisor tells me it's time.
    “Take ten, Bob,” he says to me.
    Marta is in the break room finishing her breakfast: a SlimFast shake.
    I saunter around the room, contemplating a soda or snack from a machine, but decide against it. I grab a seat in the corner of the room and just sit for a moment with my eyes shut tight and the palms of my hands stretching my face back. I can feel Marta’s eyes on me. Please God, I don’t want her to talk to me.
    “Bobbo?” she asks in a motherly tone. We have never spoken outside our five-second conversation first thing when I come in. Christ, please let this end.
    “Yes?”
    “You're not really looking like yourself today. Is everything all right?”
    I snap up and open last September's Time, pretending to read. But I can’t resist.
    “Well—” I breathe deeply— “Marta. The truth is that I think I've missed a huge opportunity. I think I’ve missed something really big, and there is nothing I can do about it now.”
    She looks at me with a furrowed brow. Her forehead is deeply ridged. I can tell she understands and is turning it over in her head.
    “What kind of opportunity?” she asks me.
    I roll my eyes, not even trying to hide my contempt for her prodding.
    “I don't know. I was waiting for a sign. For fate to step in. It's not just this job. It's everything. The way I think. Christ, I sound like an idiot. I just wanted a new philosophy.”
    “Fate? Robert.” And she looks at me hard. Very seriously, the way a doctor would. She has never called me Robert before. “I don’t know—I don’t want to sound rude. I guess I’ve always believed fate was sort of—well—just ridiculous. Never thought of you as much of a fate man.”
    She looks at me sheepishly, like she just insulted my mother and feels bad about it. I didn’t know she had ever though about what kind of man I am. I feel something in the pit of my stomach. It’s rising. At first I think it’s vomit—it’s familiar like that, but different. I continue my fake reading.
    “Weeeellll,” Marta says heaving herself out of her chair, “I guess I better get back to the old grind.” She cracks a smile out of the corner of her mouth and gives me a wink. “It was nice talking to you Bobbo. I hope we can do this again sometime.”
    “Yeah,” I say still staring blankly at an ad for Absolut Vodka. I check my watch. Two minutes left of my break. I walk back to my cubical. My supervisor is going over new procedures for placing TRM service call orders. Marta is telling someone all about the benefits of a clean colon. I know I will never see either of them again. I'll probably get a call from my supervisor, cursing and telling me I'm fired. I won't say anything, and I'll hang up. I know this. I think about Penny and breathe relief. I look at my computer screen. I see the Ready button. I reach down and press it. I walk back past the break room and out to the parking lot. I get in my car and just sit for a minute. I will drive, but the timing isn't important. The sun is coming up over the cables of the Gold Line. The mist is being burned away, but it clings to the tops of the oak trees. The rays sparkle on the damp asphalt of the parking lot. The world lights up around me.