"Business Inc, this is Amanda, how may I help you?"
That's when you lay into me. Why, you demand to know, don't our sales reps get back to you? This is absurd, you just want to make a purchase.
I apologize, I offer to reach out to the sales rep, to their supervisor, you go on and tell me how ridiculous this situation is. You tell me how unprofessional we are. Three minutes pass. Ten.
I apologize again for your experience. You ask me the specifics of software we sell. I apologize, I don't have access to that information. You wind back up, you rage and you rant about the three weeks you've waited since you left the sales rep a voicemail. 8 hours pass, it's 10pm, my boss kindly left a sweater from the lost and found for me to rest my head on through the night while you tell me how incompetent our company is, how you need a call back ASAP.
The next morning more calls come in, but you're still ranting and I can't interrupt to say I've got to go. The mail piles up, unopened over the week, different departments call, angry about the mail delay, but I can't take their calls because you're explaining what an inconvenience we're being to your business.
The company buys a mobile office phone so that I can work the muscles that have been wearing away as I sit at the reception desk. The five seconds of silence it takes to transfer your call from the desk phone to the mobile phone are a terrifying endless pit, but your voice is there, reassuringly livid about the poor customer service when it goes through.
I take the mobile phone and eat for the first time in 4 months. My coworkers in the cafeteria grimace when I enter, there was no shower at the front desk, and the company won't spring for sanitary wipes.
Family and friends had begun to worry, then presumed I was dead, I'm sure they held a lovely memorial service. The company hires another receptionist, freshly showered and a concerning lack of dark circles under her eyes. In the break room I find knitting supplies, I purl your disdain, I knit your frustration, I hang on every word, you're the only one left in the world. Ten years pass. My boss has passed away, shooting a guilty glance at me in the corner of the kitchen at her retirement party as you demand to know if it's just that we don't want you money. Twenty years. The interns laugh and throw crumpled balls of sales quotes at me. Twenty five. Your grandchildren, Thomas, Alice, and Marty, take turns telling me how our company's inefficiency is ruining their lives.
I grow old, my hair turns gray and wispy like my grandmother's was. Living off the vending machine food I develop a condition, but don't have the time for a doctor in the brief and terrible moments you take a breath. One day I feel the pain spread through my arm and then my chest. The phone falls from my hand. You hear it clatter on the ground, I distantly hear your tinny voice, outraged at my poor customer service, you can tell I'm ignoring you, you inform me that you'll be going to our competitor and will be filing a complaint with my supervisor. I haven't spoken in forty five years, my voice cracks and struggles to be audible. You've already hung up, you don't hear my last words, "Sir, I'm just the receptionist."
