Now for the Disappointing Part

by Steven Barker

  I found the easiest way to keep myself calm was to trade IMs with a cute chick who sat in the back row and make her “lol” with pictures of squirrels with their heads stuck in peanut butter jars or kittens dangling from ceiling fans. Other times I searched Amazon for authors I was envious of and read their one-star reviews.

  Thankfully, Ratna was just a few inches of plywood away.

  On a regular basis I got phone calls from sellers asking, “Why can’t I sell a breast pump in the used section?” or “How come no one is buying my used copy of The Da Vinci Code that’s priced at fifteen dollars?” Those were the easy questions to which I could answer, “Ma’am, you can’t sell used products in the health category” and “The reason no one is buying your used copy of The Da Vinci Code is because others are selling it for one penny, so you might want to consider lowering your price.” The questions that made me sweat were the ones about uploading giant inventory files or someone complaining about a policy violation, like how come they’re not allowed to put their company address in their product picture. I’d kindly ask them to hold in a shaky voice and pop my head over the cubicle wall.

  “Hey, Ratna, should a flat file be uploaded as XML or as an Excel spreadsheet?” I’d ask, or “What is the policy on directing customers to an external website?” Ratna always gave me an answer, and I appreciated that she never seemed bothered when I asked for help. “You’re welcome, Steven,” she said with a smile at the end of our interactions. Occasionally she asked me a question, but I was rarely helpful. Usually I’d just smile and shake my head while mouthing the word “sorry.”

  “Thanks anyway, Steven. I will just consult my notes.”

  We each had our own five-by-five-by-five cage with two computer screens and a headset. There was a fifteen-minute break in the morning, sixty minutes for lunch, and another fifteen-minute break in the afternoon. Ratna and I never hung out during those moments of free time, mainly because I was shy, awkward, and terrible at small talk, but more than that, because she wasn’t a smoker. The rest of the tar bar swingers and I hung out in the parking lot, where we avoided eye contact and made occasional remarks on the weather. On really bad days, when something was wrong with the system and calls were heightened and people treated us with even less respect than usual, we didn’t even stand near each other. I’d hide in the corner sucking on a cigarette, while hoping for a massive power failure or some type of natural disaster that would force the workday to end early.

  Ratna spent her off time at a table in the break room reading a book with a look of contentment on her face, like she was enjoying the silence more than I would ever understand.

  When I received a call it meant the person on the other line had been unsuccessful in solving their problem independently and had no other option except calling me. They were frustrated and expected immediate resolution, and if they didn’t sense that coming, they attacked.

  What I lacked in knowledge I made up for with a friendly attitude and the ability to not take anything too personally. Regularly being called an idiot was a main component of customer service. A woman who sounded like my grandmother said I was dumb as a bag of rocks because I didn’t know the shipping cost of a seven-ounce jar of maraschino cherries. I often had calls begin with “Are you going to be able to fucking help me,” before I even knew what the problem was. “Your issue is important to me. I’m here to help,” I’d respond. I could usually convince the caller that I deeply cared about their problem and would do everything in my power to resolve it.

  Other times there was nothing I could say because there was nothing I could do. If a small business owner lost five hundred dollars on a deal gone wrong, I directed them to a website where they could submit their claim. I hated doing that because they were looking to me for salvation, and all I could say was “There’s nothing I can do, but I understand your frustration.” They got even more upset when I told them the claims department could only be reached through email. Then I would have to tell them to wait three to five business days for a response, and that was about the time I was told to go fuck someone or suck something and/or shove something up my ass. I laughed off the abuse by knowing I’d have a story to tell at the bar. Ratna couldn’t shake off the insults as easily.

  Regularly, I heard Ratna say, in her thick Indian accent, “No, sir, I’m in Seattle.” One time she even followed up with “Matt Hasselbeck.” I can only imagine that she was speaking to some redneck in a recliner chair with Cheeto crumbs on his chin, who asked, “If you’re really in Seattle, who plays QB for the Seahawks?” One time a customer called her a bitch. I heard it shouted through her phone.

  “Hey, are you okay?” I said while leaning over the cubicle wall.

  “He was just angry,” she said and tried to force her quivering lips into a smile. “I’m sure he’s just upset about something else and took it out on me.”

  “Don’t let some stranger get to you,” I said. “Dude probably has a miserable life.”

  “His mommy probably never hugged him,” she said, which morphed her false smile into something more genuine.

  I thought maybe she’d be able to brush it off, but the next morning she didn’t show up. Her cubicle was taken over by a recent college graduate who had no answers and pronounced the word “zero” like he was trying to shoot lasers out of his mouth.

  Ratna’s parents were not born in America, but she was. I was not. The callers who asked if I was born in the USA had a limited view of what being born in the USA meant, as if white people with TV-sitcom accents were the only true Americans. I’d lived in four major American cities, so I was familiar with the melting pot that is America, but I’d never experienced it like I did in phone support. I averaged twenty-five calls a day from all over America. I spoke with a wide range of nationalities. More often than not I was the one asking the customers to repeat themselves because I couldn’t tell if they were saying “C” or “Z.” It really would have been easier if everyone just said “zed.” Sometimes I was told, “You speak English really well.” I never knew if I should take that as a compliment or not. I do know it was better than the one time a girl told me I sounded like Napoleon Dynamite.

  I’d lived in the States for over fifteen years and had yet to apply for citizenship. Presuming I didn’t get caught committing a felony, my green card said I could stay the rest of my life. Just in case I snapped and knocked over a liquor store, I took note of a close female friend’s childbearing hips, wondering, if the time came, would she be willing to carry my anchor baby? As a white, American-educated male with the ability to exaggerate my skills on a resume and the will to complete any assignment no matter how boring or tedious, I could reassure her I’d never go too long without a job. I had family and friends in Canada, but I didn’t see myself ever moving back. I wouldn’t even know where to look for work.

  As a perpetual temp I moved from contract to contract, taking jobs from Americans while collecting unemployment in between gigs. Canadians are always overlooked in the immigration debate, maybe because we blend in so well. I’ve never once been pulled over and had my residency status called into question. Most immigrants are doing the jobs Americans don’t want. Canadians are taking the jobs Americans do want. I know plenty of Americans who want Jim Carrey’s job, but none who want Jamie Chavez’s job picking tobacco under the North Carolina sun for three bucks an hour. And I highly doubt there are many Americans who want to bike in the rain to deliver General Tso’s chicken and egg rolls. When I hear Republicans complaining about immigrants taking American jobs, I feel excluded.

  I didn’t know for sure, but there was a strong possibility I was paid more than Ratna. Equal work didn’t mean equal pay in the temp world, which is why I never divulged the number on my paycheck. Some of my naive coworkers weren’t aware of the wage gap and spoke freely about how much they were paid. When a fellow temp said, “This job isn’t worth fourteen bucks an hour” after sharing a story about a customer who suggested he stick his head in an oven, I nodded
in agreement. Canadians need to be liked, and I’m sure if he knew I was making three dollars more an hour for the exact same work, he’d resent me. Neither of us had worked in phone support, but I had more overall job experience because I was six years older than he was.

  Usually by the time a person is thirty years old, they’ve settled on a career. Living in America allowed me to coast. I worked strictly to pay bills. When I walked out of the office at 5:00 p.m., all was forgotten until my return the following day. I’m sure I could have done the same thing in Canada, which is probably why Canadians are always overlooked. It’s more of a lateral move when a Canadian shows up in America, as opposed to the wealth of opportunity it offers someone from a country where clean water is a luxury.

  I came to the States in 1993 with my family in my father’s pursuit of the American dream. IBM transferred him from Toronto to Connecticut so he could act as liaison between IBM America and IBM Latin America. My father is the first in his family to graduate high school as well as college. He’s completely self-made and one of the smartest people I know. However, he doesn’t speak Spanish. It’s ridiculous if you think about it—my father, a Canadian, immigrated to America to be a liaison between IBM America and IBM Latin America. I am happy my father got the job; it provided me with a privileged life, but it seems impossible that of the 387.5 million people living in South America and the 318.9 million people in the United States, there was not one bilingual businessman with better qualifications than a Canadian.

  I knew the Amazon job would have been a hell of a lot easier if I spoke Spanish. Knowing the language would open up a whole world of American jobs for me. There’d been a number of times when I thought I found the perfect copy-writing job only to reach the end of the description and see “fluency in Spanish required.” I had exaggerated on applications before, but I doubted I’d be able to pass as fluent when my only background was a C in Spanish 101.

  There was nothing about the Amazon job that related to what I hoped to one day find in a career, but after six months of unemployment, I was happy for the work. Plus, I believed there was valuable life experience in phone support. My Canadian politeness had always been extended to customer service agents, but after being one, I treated them so nicely they probably thought I was stoned. I bet Ratna felt the same way at one point. I never learned why she stopped showing up. I assumed she’d quit, but hoped it was because she’d found a better job.

  A few months after the contract ended, my parents stopped in Seattle on a drive up to British Columbia. They regularly returned to Canada to visit family and friends, but like me, had no plans of moving back permanently.

  During their stay we went to a restaurant I’d never have been able to afford on my own. My father ordered a plate of freshly caught scallops and then brought up tattoos. He was recently retired and was letting go of the business persona he had carried the previous forty years, which isn’t to say he was a square, but career men of his generation didn’t ink their bodies. Our food came, and the conversation transitioned into what type of job I was looking for.

  “Something not too stressful,” I said while holding my wine glass close to my lips. “I don’t know.” I took a sip. “Man, these scallops are good.”

  When we finished our food my dad ordered a round of aperitifs, and I excused myself to have a cigarette, not expecting my father to follow me outside.

  “Your mom hates the idea, but I’m considering getting a tattoo on this trip,” he said.

  “Let’s get matching maple leaf tattoos,” I said.

  “Not a bad idea, son,” he responded.

  We went back inside and took our seats. I assumed the tattoo conversation was just a result of too much wine and didn’t expect him to follow up.

  “I’m about 70 percent sure about doing that thing we talked about,” he said after handing the bill to our waitress.

  “What thing?” my mom asked.

  “Nothing,” my dad said.

  I helped them find a cab and said I’d meet them for breakfast the following day.

  I returned to my apartment and noticed a missed text from my dad that said, “I’m 100 percent sure.”

  The next morning over eggs and coffee my dad asked if I knew of a good tattoo shop. There were a ton of places on Capitol Hill, but because I didn’t have any tattoos I wasn’t sure which were good. I knew there was a place two doors down from where we were eating breakfast. I mentioned it like I knew what I was talking about, still not totally sure we were going to go through with it. We paid the check, then my mom walked to a bookstore. She wasn’t thrilled about the plan, but she wasn’t against it either.

  “It’s your bodies,” she said in that way mothers do.

  We walked into the tattoo shop, my father much more confident than I. An hour later we were both branded with the symbol of a country neither of us lived in, his on his bicep and mine on my inner forearm. I never had much interest in getting a tattoo because it was a lifelong commitment, but sharing the experience with my father felt like something I wouldn’t regret.

  For the rest of my life, every time I met someone new and reached out to shake their hand, they’d see the leaf, and I wouldn’t blend in so well anymore.

  If the day comes when I get my citizenship and I’m asked to raise my right hand to swear an oath to the United States of America, the leaf will be broadcast across the courtroom—not as a sign of protest or unconditional loyalty to Canada, but as a symbol of America, a place diverse in culture, full of the people with the freedom to act as polite or rude as they want to customer service agents.

  Luxury Items

  I went to high school with kids who carried credit cards without limits. They always had full tanks of gas in their brand new SUVs and money for milkshakes and chicken strips at the diner. They bought concert tickets and CDs without a second thought and never saw a credit card bill.

  I was raised comfortable. I got new soccer cleats when I grew out of my old ones and a new sweater every winter. I had everything I needed. It was the things I didn’t need that I had to acquire on my own.

  During the summer of eighth grade, when all my friends picked out new mountain bikes without considering the cost, I struck up a deal with my parents. They bought me a two-hundred-dollar bike on the condition that I paid them back with chores. A record of my debt was stuck to the fridge, and my mom subtracted ten dollars every time I mowed the lawn and five dollars when I washed her car. It took the whole summer to climb out of debt.

  At the time, I thought my parents were being wicked lame, but learning that you need to do stuff to get stuff was beneficial for my life as a temp. I evaluated every purchase by how much work was required to pay for it, to determine whether it was a luxury item or a necessity.

  I was not a beer snob. I’d crush tall boys of PBR or if someone else was buying sip microbrewed milk stout, but when I said I was bringing a twelve-pack to the party, you could predict with 100 percent accuracy that I was showing up with a box of Rainier under my arm.

  Unlike the meticulous decision-making that went into the purchase of pizza delivery—was I financially stable enough to order a twenty-dollar dinner or was it more responsible to just eat a five-dollar Digiorno?—Rainier never felt like a downgrade the way a frozen pizza felt compared to delivery. “It’s not delivery, it’s Digiorno.” Yeah, no shit.

  When my finances were steady and I still had a decent amount of time left on a contract, I swapped the occasional twelve-pack of Rainier for Moosehead. Seeing twelve green bottles lined up on the bottom shelf of my fridge symbolized success.

  Lunch meat didn’t have a Rainier beer equivalent, and I was a sandwich snob. I’d rather starve than eat a turkey sandwich made with the spotted beige cold cuts that hang next to the hot dogs in the grocery store. The sliced-before-your-eyes Boar’s Head maple-smoked turkey was significantly more expensive than those slimy sheets packaged by Oscar Mayer, but well worth it. I rationalized purchasing the more expensive option because, while on co
ntract, I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch every single day. The twelve dollars I spent on a pound for the week, plus the ten dollars’ worth of bread, mayo, and Swiss were cheaper than hitting the food truck, making it a necessity while on contract. When I was unemployed, it was an easy luxury to give up.

  On the other hand, boxed mac and cheese was a staple of my diet both when I was working and when I was unemployed. I doubted that even the most financially troubled college student would call a ninety-nine-cent box of Kraft macaroni and cheese a luxury, but when the store brand was fifty cents cheaper and you hadn’t received a pay check in four months and rent was due, those fifty cents determined whether you wore a clean shirt to your next interview.

  I’ve been eating mac and cheese from the box as long as I can remember. My mom always had it on hand for nights when I was too picky to eat her casserole. When my friends and I gathered in the kitchen after a day of street hockey, I’d whip up a batch. I ate it after high school while watching Yo! MTV Raps and showed up at the beginning of every college semester with a Costco pack of eighteen that never lasted longer than the first two weeks. I ate it for breakfast to cure a hangover and ate it at three in the morning to prevent one. I ate it with hot sauce, ketchup, and, when I was feeling fancy, a handful of bread crumbs. No matter what my financial situation, I made sure there was a box on hand. It comforted me to know it was always an option. If some insane series of events made me a billionaire, I’d still make sure to throw a couple boxes in my grocery basket before checkout.

  I couldn’t tell the difference between the store brand and Kraft in a blind taste test, but when finances were up I always went with the blue box.

  I didn’t have the same brand loyalty for clothes as I did for boxed mac and cheese. My style of dress was casual and comfortable. I stuck to classics like jeans, T-shirts, and solid-color button-ups. I never rocked name brands, because paying an extra $50 for a man on a horse stitched into the pocket didn’t seem worth it.