From f00d869e4c0e64be6093e4980e62e3c9b9b33cc9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Case Duckworth
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 10:36:44 -0700
Subject: Add links to Elegies; write TODO.txt

---
 39-telemarketer.txt | 73 -----------------------------------------------------
 1 file changed, 73 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 39-telemarketer.txt

(limited to '39-telemarketer.txt')

diff --git a/39-telemarketer.txt b/39-telemarketer.txt
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----
-title: 'Telemarketer'
-project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
-...
-
-It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the
-street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had,
-of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only
-tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He'd never thought about
-it until he'd heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was
-now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to
-and from work in gritty blue buses.
-
-Inside the building, the constant sound of recirculating dry air made
-Larry feel as though he were at some beach in hell, listening to the
-ocean, or more accurately at a gift shop in a landlocked state in hell
-listening to the ocean as represented by the sound a conch shell makes
-when he holds it up to his ear. The buzz of the fluorescent bulbs
-overhead sounded like the hot sun bearing down all day in this metaphor,
-a favorite of Larry's.
-
-His cubicle was made of that cheap, grayish-blue plywood that cubicles
-are made of; inside it, his computer sat on his desk as Larry liked to
-think an eagle perched on a mountainous crag much like the crag that was
-his desktop wallpaper. The walls were unadorned except for a few
-tacked-up papers in report covers explaining his script. When Larry made
-a call to a potential customer it always went the same way:
-
-"Hi, Mr/Mrs (customer's name). My name is Larry and I'm with (client's
-name), and was just wondering if I could have a minute of your time?"
-
-"Oh, no, sir; I don't want whatever it is you're selling." (customer
-terminates call).
-
-Larry had only ever read the first line of the script on the wall.
-Sometimes he had an urge to read more of it, to be ready when a customer
-expressed interest in whatever it was Larry was selling, but something
-in him---he liked to think it was an actor's intuition that told him it
-was best to improvise, though he worried it was the futility of it---kept
-him from reading further into the script. So when Jane said, "Sure, I
-have nothing better to do," he was thrown completely off guard.
-
-"Um, alright Mrs…Mrs. Loring, I was wondering---"
-
-"It's Ms, not Mrs. em ess. Miz. No ‘r,' Larry." She sounded patient, as
-if she were used to correcting people about the particulars of her
-title. But how often can that happen? Larry thought, and he was suddenly
-deeply confused.
-
-"Oh, sorry, ma'am, uh, Miz Loring, but I wanted to know whether you'd
-like to, ah, buy some…" Larry put his head in his hand and started
-twirling his hair in his finger, a nervous habit he'd had since
-childhood, and closed his eyes tightly. "Why don't you have anything
-better to do?"
-
-Immediately he knew it was the wrong question. Even before the silence
-on the other end moved past impatience and into stunned, Larry had a
-mini-drama written and staged within his mind: she would call customer
-service and complain loudly into the representative's ear. The rep would
-send a memo to the head of telemarketing requesting disciplinary action,
-and the head would delegate the action to Larry's immediate supervisor,
-David. David would saunter over to Larry's cubicle sometime within the
-next week, depending on when he got the memo and when he felt like
-crossing fifty feet of office space, and have one of what David liked to
-call "chats" but what Larry knew were lectures. After about half an hour
-of "chatting" David would give Larry a warning and ask him to come in
-for overtime to make up for the discretion, and walk back slowly to his
-office, making small talk with the cubicled workers on the way. The
-world suddenly felt too small for Larry, or he too big for it.
-
-Quietly, with the same patience but with a bigger pain, Jane said, "My
-husband just left me and I thought you could take my mind off of him for
-just a minute," and hung up.
-- 
cgit 1.4.1-21-gabe81