I Miss My Old Friends

Over the course of the huge bummer that was my career, I met some people I really liked. It's too bad that I associate these people with jobs and work, because that means it's highly unlikely I will ever seek them out. I'm kind of shy and socially avoidant anyway, so seeking out anybody is kind of challenging, but if the people happen to be former co-workers, chances are it won't be happening. This makes me feel sad. Maybe someday.

One of my favorite co-workers committed suicide. He had a great sense of the absurd, and his outrageous sense of humor helped me get through my five years in one particular call center. He was a good friend, and we would commiserate about how much we couldn't stand all the shit we had to put up with around that place. When I was working in that call center, I hated it so much, that I often considered driving my car off this particular bend in the river, because I thought it would look like an accident. But I couldn't do that to my son, my parents, or the rest of my family and friends.

Sometimes I Google the names of some of my old co-workers. I wonder how they're doing and if they're happy. I remember the cool lady who bought old Barbie dolls at the Goodwill and turned them into Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Cher, and Tina Turner. There was a gal who drove race cars who was absolutely brilliant and one of the most original people I ever met. There was the marketing guy who wanted to be an artist- he actually did this- he's down in Mexico painting & having a groovy life, and I know this from Google.

The yucky nonprofit I worked for was in a sick building. It was built over a parking garage, so all the carbon monoxide fumes would circulate in the air system. People would get mysterious illnesses and get sick and die. People had fibromyalgia, aches and pains, cancer, heart problems, and worsening of existing medical conditions. My supervisor there (the nice one) died. There were at least two cases of brain cancer, and at least two cases of lung cancer and breast cancer- several of these people were my friends. One was the Union steward who organized the Union there; she died of lung cancer and she had never even smoked. The Union was having the air tested because many people were growing concerned about the sick building syndrome there. I don't know what the final outcome of that was, because I left.

"Isn't He Dead Yet?"

When I was supervising call center employees at the company we called U. S. Worst, upper management was obsessed with cost control at any cost. As supervisors, we were expected to do anything and everything to reduce costs, including following employees into the bathroom to find out what was taking them so long. We advised our agents to answer with a one-syllable name to reduce call time. We had a light switch in the center of the room that each person would turn on and off when they went to the bathroom and returned, to ensure that only one person could be using the toilets at a time. The place was really obsessed with toilets and employees' bathroom habits.

I especially dreaded meeting with my boss to go over the reports of employee absence, illness, and disability. There was a long-term employee, a really nice guy, who had been living with HIV for a number of years. I'll never forget when my boss was scanning the disability reports, and when she got to this person's name, she said in an irritated tone of voice, "Isn't he dead yet?"

Walking Past Armed Guards Every Day

When I was supervising in a call center, our agents took calls for the local prisons. Some of them turned out to be socializing with prison inmates on the phones, making dates with them, and in at least one case, running off to marry one of the inmates in the penitentiary. Several employees were fired. Anonymous threats were made, and as a result of this situation, we ended up having armed guards in the middle of our workspace for several months.