Quintessential Me

Pulled from the reverie...

I was sitting at my desk lost in thought, or perhaps just lost, when the phone rang and a stranger asked to speak to a co-worker. This co-worker does not "co-work." She works another shift.

The incessant need to leave a message betrays the bill collector. Telemarketers quite often eagerly shift towards whomever answers the phone, but a bill collector leaves a "message" that invariably includes some 1-800 number and an extension. A loan officer seeking business might use an 800 number, but they don't leave pointless messages that have little chance of being relayed.

"Can I leave a message?" she says. There was a time when I dutifully took and delivered such messages, but the specific co-worker stated certainly not to bother.

"This is," I say, "a business." Bill collectors are funny little things. They must be businesses like any other, but they are odd. Either they have her home number and she blows them off -and if so are doubly wasting their time "leaving messages," or they do not have it. Yet these pushy creditors --"Oh, I see that she works nights. Can I leave a message?"- will not call here the hours that the person actually works.

Of course they could be receiving no response from her directly at night, which means they are attempting to get her in trouble with her boss, and they are misguided because her boss has an entirely different number.

"You can't call her at home," I question. She asserts that she doesn't have her home number. She relays an 800 number and some extension. I don't even note a single number.

"What's," she asks, "your name?"

I answer, "Bob." Call me Bob. You know it's kind of funny, I pulled from my mind a name that belongs to no workers in our general area. It is also the brief nickname that a childhood friend had. I can't remember how or why he got that name, but thinking about it, I laugh as I imagine the bill collector relating to my co-worker that she left a message with "Bob."

posted by mokru @ 3:31 PM