pseydtonne | Way too effin' quiet here

I work at a phone bank. It's Saturday. When it's raining on a Saturday, the phone bank is about as lit up as it would be on the Friday before.

It's the last Saturday of July. The sun is shining brightly. Today is a beautiful day. I went ten minutes before I got my first call (usually, there's a preloaded call for you when you log in). It was a guy looking for a channel listing in Newton.

Have I ever mentioned that I dislike the city of Newton? It's done some good things for me -- I had a couple temp gigs there back in 2000, for example. It was the home of Benino Aquino when he was studying law at Boston College and again when he was hiding out before his election attempt in the Philippines back in 1983 (he was assassinated as he got off the plane in Manila, his wife wound up running instead, and Marcos left for exile in Hawai'i). It also has a tree-lined streetcar route; then again, so does Mattapan.

I dislike Newton because I work in a phone bank. When you work in a service company, you tend to hate wealthy towns. The rich will buy an expensive object once but will haggle over the tiniest detail of a monthly service just to get the cheapest version of the service. The nouveau riche aren't a problem this way -- except in Newton. Here you have the homes of contractors, landscapers, and all the people that own the businesses that fix the other wealthy people's houses. The lawns are perfectly manicured, the homes are Arts & Crafts treasures ringed with shady trees, the parking tickets are only ten bucks.

Newton is where I got yelled at by a cop for making a right on red. There wasn't a sign or anything. It was a strange intersection. His first words were "what did you think you were doing?" and I bugged out. He was so pleased that I was trying to appease him that he let me go without a ticket.

For those of you not familiar with the 7-dozen communities of the inner ring of Boston, Newton is one of the towns that fought very hard to stay in the innermost area code (617) instead of ending up in the 781. The other major fighter was another expensive town, Belmont.

This job has taught me a lot about class warfare. I have come to dislike helping anyone that expects me to bend over simply because their address has a higher MLS rating. On the cable company's databases, what matters is how many services are available and whether the last tenant owes us money.

I just had another Newton call. Someone moving into a new place wondering if it's really necessary for us to come out to turn on the lowest level of service. Sheesh. I did wear her down and pitch the other stuff, of course. "Oh, I don't really use a computer..." Right. You have that corporate-executive tone of voice but you don't touch a computer. Don't be coy, hun -- hear the call of the multi-product Siren. I think we only rebuilt Newton for all three products because RCN did first. I would rather talk to someone that is open to suggestions, even if that person doesn't bite, than someone that feels offended you'd even suggest the cable company not try to upsell.

I get the fighters in the wealthy towns -- people that want to antagonize simply because it's an emotion other than boredom. Some of these callers don't have any plans to buy anything: they call because they have a rival service and simply want to rub the cable company's nose in it. "I can get the NFL package with DirecTv so I'd never switch to you." Why did you call then? "Uhhhh..."

Some of you may say "lemme guess. You like helping poor folks cough up too much each month." No. I like setting up people with new stuff. I like that reaction when someone finds out one can get phone service without calling "the phone company". I like blowing someone's mind. I really enjoy being able to answer a tricky question succinctly.

Even when it's this quiet, I still like my job. I'm chatty by nature. I also love the feeling of bringing a satellite customer back to cable. Each time I do that, I get to put an entry into a quarterly contest. I didn't even know it was a real contest until a couple weeks ago, when the kind gentleman

teddywolf told me about it.

It turns out I won the drawing. I found this out yesterday, when I was told I will soon be handed a Sony PlayStation 2.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwkkkkkkkk!

This is an ideal house-warming gift. We get the keys to the Melrose apartment tomorrow, after a trip up to New Hampshire to see some of

chaggalagirl's relatives. We'll start loading stuff in as soon as possible, but the real furniture won't get shuffled until Thursday.

I think it would be wise to grab a copy of one of the Grand Theft Auto titles in advance of the gift. I've been meaning to use this gift card from Toys R Us that I received around Christmas.

Calls still come, of course. I had a woman tranferring her service from one apartment in Quincy to another on the opposite side of the parking lot. She was taking a break between handsful of boxes to get that set up. I made her laugh. Then she said "I gotta get back to being She-Ra in a few minutes, but you've been a great help." I laughed.

I had a little kid in Fall River wanting to get one of the new Nickelodeon spinoff channels on his granny's digital box. Of course I couldn't change the account, but I gave him the details he'd need to pitch the deal to his granny. Hey, it's not like he wanted to know how much the bill was. "I can't sleep without the TV, ya know?" He was very serious about that statement. His upturn on "know" was sharp like a man needing smack. Reality was closing in on him and he wasn't above begging.

I spoke to a gentleman in Waltham, the slightly scuzzier (but much happier and better-fed) town just north of Newton. He's an RCN customer now and he wanted the prices on just TV and phone. I laid out the prices happily, as he was friendly and I enjoy that moment of waiting for a reaction. He was so juiced that he'd save $50 a month that he asked me to transfer him to my supervisor's voice mail to say what a nice guy I was. My paranoia kicked in, but I complied.

My boss played the message. It was glowing. My boss beamed at me. Maybe I don't stink at this job.

-just chillin', Ps/d