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Memoir (1)
Oct. 11th, 2008 10:29 amOh, sure, plenty of things evoke a deeper sense of shame than seeing yourself as an utter and complete financial failure. Say you're a pedophile who’s successfully eluded the authorities for the past twenty years. Then one day the police bust down your door and find you entertaining the entire population of Little Rainbow Daycare, making shadow puppets with your dick. That’s gotta hurt! Or maybe your father is at home dying a slow and painful death from an extremely lethal variety of cancer and you swig down his morphine. I imagine you'd be very ashamed of yourself. When you finally came down.
But I'm not a child molester or a drug addict. I'm just a deadbeat. Which is to say I'm a fuck-up but a harmless fuck-up. Not a bad person. A good person! I let frantic drivers cut in front of me even when I have the right of way. I bring a plastic baggie and use it when I walk my dogs. I pick random trash up from the sidewalks – it doesn't matter that I didn't drop it, we're all in this together, right? When I was making in excess of $125,000 a year – not so very long ago – I donated $250 every month to a worthy cause. I'd dump all the non-profit entreaties that made their way into my mailbox into a pillow case and pick one at random. Secular tithing, I called it. The random element was important.
But Ashley from Monterey County Bank didn't know any of these things. And she'd called me again this morning.
I’d gotten into the habit of keeping my cell phone off at all times so I never actually have to talk to Ashley from Monterey County bank: it's so much less humiliating just to listen to the polite messages she leaves me. Never a hint of judgment, censure, ridicule or exasperation in Ashley’s voice. Ashley is a banking professional!
Ashley doesn't state the reason for her call in the voicemails she leaves, but then Ashley doesn't have to.
I know.
It’s another bounced check.
"This is a message for Patrizia from Ashley at Monterey County Bank. It's 9:30am on April the 11th. Please call me at …"
Ashley, Ashley, Ashley. By now don't you think I know your number by heart?
My rent check had bounced.
All morning long I’d been crouched in front of my computer in my little cubicle at Service Check Inc., one Firefox window open to customer service reports, another open to my bank statement. I refreshed the bank statement every five minutes so I wouldn’t be logged off.
Editing Mystery Shopping was my Number 2 job, and it was often quite diverting.
What’s Mystery Shopping? I didn’t know either till I got this gig.
Mystery Shopping is the means by which large corporations with a service component (think McDonald’s, think Target) get to spy on the meanest and humblest of their employees. That cashier surreptitiously picking his nose while ringing up your gym socks? Don’t worry, sooner or later we’re gonna bust him for it.
Armed with twenty-point assessment guides, mystery shoppers go forth to review the customer service they receive at any one of Service Check’s hundred or so clients. It’s a great scam. People are dying to sign up to be Mystery Shoppers because they’re under the impression that they’re getting something for nothing. See, they’re reimbursed for whatever they buy when they’re mystery shopping and sometimes they make as much as seven whole dollars per shop! Never mind that they didn't actually need a new umbrella or a spandex jump suit; never mind that they didn't like to eat chicken tortilla rolls or peanut coleslaw. Never mind that frequently they spent much more than seven bucks driving to and from the location. The important thing was that they were getting paid to shop!
They draft their impressions in the form of reports. The reports consist of a long, rambling questionnaire and a narrative. After the shopper spends an hour or so filling that out, they have to write a narrative about their customer service experience. That’s where I came in. I read these narratives, correct spelling and grammar, try to turn them into something that will withstand scrutiny when summarized into a PowerPoint presentation at a big corporate meeting. Hard work! Because mostly Mystery Shoppers are illiterate, and when they’re not illiterate, they either think they’re Ruth Reichl or Anthony Trollope.
He efficiently served us politely…
She did not have any enthusiasm in her voice but she was pleasant in her deliverance…
For the amount of watermelons stacked at the store I can say was the largest on inventory at that time but they were laid at the ground. I don't notice the existence of any rodent traps…
My assessment of this location gives it an "excellent" in the cleanliness of the establishment, the positive and helpful attitude exhibited by the personnel, and the low-key but enthusiastic salesmanship, encouraging patrons to purchase additional items…
Time to check the bank screen.
When last I’d checked a few minutes before, my account had held $1609.47. A rent check I’d mailed to my landlord five day ago had been made out in the amount of $1950. But surely my landlord wouldn’t deposit it today. Surely my landlord would wait until Monday to deposit it and by Monday I would have the weekend receipts from my main source of income, The Little Store, to cover the deficit.
Writing checks against future receivables. Never a good thing. But what else could I do? My landlord had called me. On the other end of the telephonic ether, I had flushed and squirmed. Made promises I desperately hoped I could keep.
I refreshed the bank screen.
Overdrawn. By three hundred sixty-five dollars and fifty-three cents. That extra twenty-five bucks was the Monterey County Bank’s Non-Sufficient Funds charge.
I felt like throwing up.
In the cubicle next to mine, Katrinka, the blonde and Juno-esque Client Manager, was attempting to entice a mystery shopper into visiting a restaurant that specialized in meatballs and breadsticks. “Well you don’t actually have to eat the whole breadstick,”
But I'm not a child molester or a drug addict. I'm just a deadbeat. Which is to say I'm a fuck-up but a harmless fuck-up. Not a bad person. A good person! I let frantic drivers cut in front of me even when I have the right of way. I bring a plastic baggie and use it when I walk my dogs. I pick random trash up from the sidewalks – it doesn't matter that I didn't drop it, we're all in this together, right? When I was making in excess of $125,000 a year – not so very long ago – I donated $250 every month to a worthy cause. I'd dump all the non-profit entreaties that made their way into my mailbox into a pillow case and pick one at random. Secular tithing, I called it. The random element was important.
But Ashley from Monterey County Bank didn't know any of these things. And she'd called me again this morning.
I’d gotten into the habit of keeping my cell phone off at all times so I never actually have to talk to Ashley from Monterey County bank: it's so much less humiliating just to listen to the polite messages she leaves me. Never a hint of judgment, censure, ridicule or exasperation in Ashley’s voice. Ashley is a banking professional!
Ashley doesn't state the reason for her call in the voicemails she leaves, but then Ashley doesn't have to.
I know.
It’s another bounced check.
"This is a message for Patrizia from Ashley at Monterey County Bank. It's 9:30am on April the 11th. Please call me at …"
Ashley, Ashley, Ashley. By now don't you think I know your number by heart?
My rent check had bounced.
All morning long I’d been crouched in front of my computer in my little cubicle at Service Check Inc., one Firefox window open to customer service reports, another open to my bank statement. I refreshed the bank statement every five minutes so I wouldn’t be logged off.
Editing Mystery Shopping was my Number 2 job, and it was often quite diverting.
What’s Mystery Shopping? I didn’t know either till I got this gig.
Mystery Shopping is the means by which large corporations with a service component (think McDonald’s, think Target) get to spy on the meanest and humblest of their employees. That cashier surreptitiously picking his nose while ringing up your gym socks? Don’t worry, sooner or later we’re gonna bust him for it.
Armed with twenty-point assessment guides, mystery shoppers go forth to review the customer service they receive at any one of Service Check’s hundred or so clients. It’s a great scam. People are dying to sign up to be Mystery Shoppers because they’re under the impression that they’re getting something for nothing. See, they’re reimbursed for whatever they buy when they’re mystery shopping and sometimes they make as much as seven whole dollars per shop! Never mind that they didn't actually need a new umbrella or a spandex jump suit; never mind that they didn't like to eat chicken tortilla rolls or peanut coleslaw. Never mind that frequently they spent much more than seven bucks driving to and from the location. The important thing was that they were getting paid to shop!
They draft their impressions in the form of reports. The reports consist of a long, rambling questionnaire and a narrative. After the shopper spends an hour or so filling that out, they have to write a narrative about their customer service experience. That’s where I came in. I read these narratives, correct spelling and grammar, try to turn them into something that will withstand scrutiny when summarized into a PowerPoint presentation at a big corporate meeting. Hard work! Because mostly Mystery Shoppers are illiterate, and when they’re not illiterate, they either think they’re Ruth Reichl or Anthony Trollope.
He efficiently served us politely…
She did not have any enthusiasm in her voice but she was pleasant in her deliverance…
For the amount of watermelons stacked at the store I can say was the largest on inventory at that time but they were laid at the ground. I don't notice the existence of any rodent traps…
My assessment of this location gives it an "excellent" in the cleanliness of the establishment, the positive and helpful attitude exhibited by the personnel, and the low-key but enthusiastic salesmanship, encouraging patrons to purchase additional items…
Time to check the bank screen.
When last I’d checked a few minutes before, my account had held $1609.47. A rent check I’d mailed to my landlord five day ago had been made out in the amount of $1950. But surely my landlord wouldn’t deposit it today. Surely my landlord would wait until Monday to deposit it and by Monday I would have the weekend receipts from my main source of income, The Little Store, to cover the deficit.
Writing checks against future receivables. Never a good thing. But what else could I do? My landlord had called me. On the other end of the telephonic ether, I had flushed and squirmed. Made promises I desperately hoped I could keep.
I refreshed the bank screen.
Overdrawn. By three hundred sixty-five dollars and fifty-three cents. That extra twenty-five bucks was the Monterey County Bank’s Non-Sufficient Funds charge.
I felt like throwing up.
In the cubicle next to mine, Katrinka, the blonde and Juno-esque Client Manager, was attempting to entice a mystery shopper into visiting a restaurant that specialized in meatballs and breadsticks. “Well you don’t actually have to eat the whole breadstick,”
