Overcoming

  1 "But he didn't leave me a remote!" protested the drawling female voice over the phone.

  Shauna Gales faced the wall of her cubicle, crossed her eyes and contorted her face into an approximation of what the redneck dragon lady she was speaking to must look like. She was a seasoned expert at making faces while keeping her tone polite and professional. If she was still stuck doing this job when telephones were all replaced with live video conferencing--like on the Jetsons--her artistic expression would be severely curtailed.

  "As I said, Mrs. Fishbaugh," Shauna said, politely and professionally, "the remote controls came with the set-top boxes. When you downgrade to standard cable, we have to collect our equipment. The technician is required to turn in the digital converters, power cords and remote controls that belong to Avcom, which means he has to take them out of your house."

  "What am I supposed to use for a remote?" demanded Lindy-Sue Fishbaugh, shrilly.

  "How did you change channels before you had our equipment, Ma'am?"

  Shauna's chocolate-brown eyes, now uncrossed, flicked back to her computer monitor and scanned the customer's account info: Three trouble calls in the last five months for "malfunctioning remotes." She checked the comments: battery replacement solved the problem each time. So three times Avcom ate the cost of a service tech driving out to Mrs. Fishbaugh's residence...in a trailer park, most likely...and the cost of the batteries, because she didn't want to pay for her own replacements. It was crazy, how some customers got over like Rover before management finally started cracking down on the nonsense.

  "We used the remotes your technician took," Lindy-Sue Fishbaugh claimed.

  "No; I mean before our installer put the converters and remotes on your TVs, Ma'am."

  "What?"

  "How did you change channels before that?" Shauna asked. "The same way everyone changes channels!"

  Shauna massaged her temples. She heard the muffled ringtone from the cellphone inside her purse. "Well there you go, Mrs. Fishbaugh," she said, cheerfully. "That's how you can change your channels again. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

  "You haven't helped me at all," Mrs Fishbaugh said, angrily, and hung up.

  Shauna removed her headset carefully, so as not to mess up her hair, stuck a knuckle in her ear and wiggled it. She dug the cellphone out of her purse and checked the caller ID: Clarence.

  "You know you can get me in trouble," she hissed into the phone. "I'm not on break."

  "Dag, girl. I miss you too." Clarence had a scratchy voice, but a smooth rap. He had the ghetto accent almost perfected, so people didn't know he was raised in the suburbs and wouldn't be caught dead in the 'hood. Shauna didn't fault him for his upbringing--she was raised middle-class too, with two intelligent, responsible parents. What she faulted him for was the streetwise front.

  "They watch us really close here, Clarence. I told you: I've got like half a second with each customer to ask a battery of six million questions--"

  "I think you're exaggerating a little bit, Shauna."

  "Not by much. I have to decipher what the customer is complaining about, determine if it's valid, then, whether it is or not, somehow end the conversation with them feeling satisfied. I don't think I've met the criteria even once today."

  He laughed.

  "I'm serious," she said. "We're on a timer."

  "I'll keep it short, then. How about dinner tonight?"

  "Clarence..." She had told and told him the importance of giving her more than a few hours notice for a date, but evidently he still didn't get it. There was no time to explain again. "Let me call you back after work. Good-bye." And she hung up.

  Shauna took more calls and did her best to assuage customer outrage. Finally it was time for her last break. She rose out of her cubicle and stretched.

  At five-foot-three Shauna was tall enough to see over the cubicle walls, but just barely. The cavernous, cubicle-packed call center resembled a cutaway honeycomb. Or was it more like a beehive? Either way, her fellow Customer Service reps were the bees, swarming all through and around in seemingly random fashion. A hundred voices mixed together in the ambience as she wove her way through the maze toward the break room. Reps were in various points of conversation with customers, all trying to rush their customers through the checklist in thirty seconds or less while remaining polite.

  She entered the break room, her heels clicking crisply on the hard floor, and saw Jenny at their usual table. Shauna paused to buy a water bottle from the vending machine, then continued to Jenny's table, grimacing while miming a pistol shot to her head.

  "That bad today?" Jenny asked. She was tall, thin, blonde, with gray eyes. A daily tanning bed regimen had her ready for a Coppertone poster, but her skin couldn't compare to the natural, rich dark hue of Shauna's.

  Shauna plopped down heavily in the chair opposite her office pal.

  Shauna's thin neck and narrow shoulders seemingly belonged on a petite body. And she was petite at the waist, but not so north and south of it. Her high, round cheekbones, plump lips and softly-angled chin were all delicately sculpted. But her eyes were the most striking feature on her face. Men loved her eyes...if they could rip their attention away from her bust and rump long enough to notice she had a pair.

  She exhaled and said, "I'm starting to think there's nothing but bad days in Customer Service."

  Jenny nodded. "I'm ready to take up smoking again."

  Shauna held up an index finger--Jenny's cue to give her a minute. Shauna dug the cellphone back out of her purse and hit Number One on the speed dial.

  An older woman with a Guyanese accent answered.

  "Hey Mum," Shauna said.

  "Hello my darling," her mother replied. "How are you?"

  They exchanged pleasantries and a few comments about recent developments on their favorite TV shows. Once assured the status quo was on even keel in each other's lives, Shauna asked to speak with Katina.

  "Hi Mommy!" her daughter squeaked over the phone. "I made you a picture today!"

  "You did?"

  "Teacher asked us to. But she didn't say I couldn't give it to you."

  "That's sweet, Baby. What's it a picture of?"

  "You'll see!"

  "Are you liking kindergarten?"

  "Well, yes. But the boys are silly."

  As always, Katina was full of news she thought terribly important. Shauna actively listened for a few minutes, before promising she would pick her up in just a couple short hours, and saying goodbye.

  "Have you checked the job openings today?" Jenny asked.

  Shauna nodded, and took a swig of water. "No changes."

  Jenny opened her package of cheese crackers. What did you put in for?"

  "PAC Team and Dispatch. Anywhere but here," Shauna said.

  A cute guy walked in to peruse the vending machines, and Jenny surreptitiously undressed him with her eyes. "I kind of like the call center."

  Shauna's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding? I never would have guessed there were so many whiners, scammers, and just plain old mean people in the world. And all of them call this office."

  Jenny crunched away on a cracker, then asked, "How's Mr. Tall, Dark & Sexy Doctor?"

  Shauna smiled, a bit self-consciously. Clarence was barely average height, but anyone looked tall next to her, she supposed. "He's not a doctor; he's an X-Ray tech."

  Jenny shrugged, watching the cute guy leave the break room. "Anybody who works in a hospital makes good money, except maybe the janitors. Is it getting serious?"

  "I think he wants to get serious," Shauna said, trying to visualize herself and Clarence living under the same roof. They would need two bathrooms off the master bedroom, because Clarence spent more time preening than most females did, including her.

 
; Jenny forgot about her crackers and examined her break room buddy. Personal details from other people's lives were the tasty morsels she craved more than vending machine snacks. "Are you just not into him?"

  Shauna threw her hands up. "He looks good, knows how to dress, and takes me to nice places."

  "Sounds like a keeper to me, Shauna."

  "I just wish the chemistry was...stronger." She took another pull at the bottled water.

  Jenny covered her mouth to muffle a little gasp. "Oh my gosh: he's lousy in bed!"

  Shauna shook her head, glancing around for eavesdroppers, already regretful that she'd opened up her personal life to Jenny. She didn't know if Clarence was good or bad in bed. Maybe he was good. Maybe Shauna just wasn't a very sexual person. But she didn't want to spend her break discussing such intimate speculations with Jenny. "I wasn't even thinking about sex, Jenny." It was time to change subjects. "Have you heard what we're doing for the conference?"

  Jenny frowned, not liking the conversational deflection. "I heard it's going to be some Hawaiian theme for our team--you know, because of Marcie's last name."

  Upper management had brainstormed the upcoming conference, in which each department was being officially compelled to dress and behave according to some humiliating motif. Customer Service was such a huge department, it would be broken into multiple teams--two per shift. Shauna and Jenny were at the mercy of their supervisor, Marcie Luaulu.

  "So we have to wear grass skirts and dance the hula?" Shauna asked.

  "That's what I heard."

  "You know somebody's gonna protest that it's sexist."

  "Marcie thought of that. She'll allow us to wear normal clothes under the skirt if we want. And the guys have to dress up, too."

  "Are you going to?"

  Jenny pshawed and waved her hand. "Girl, I'm gonna show as much skin as I can. Everybody is going to be at the conference, from every department. Watch how many guys come stepping up to me after that. Hopefully one will be a manager or coordinator. I wouldn't sneeze at a producer or plant engineer, either."

  Before this topic could be explored further, the break was over. Shauna returned to her cubicle, donned the headset, sighed and took the next call.

  With only twenty minutes to go in the shift, she received a call from Isabelle Watson, an angry, foul-mouthed woman insisting that an installer had damaged her house.

  2

  When contact with a wooden rafter makes your hand involuntarily recoil, you know it's hot. Miles Bowser cursed himself for his career path, put his sweating hand back against the hot rafter, coughed hard, and pushed himself deeper into the dark, dusty hell.

  On a mild day, it was normal for the temperature inside an attic to reach 140 degrees. On a hot day, like this one, it was worse. Miles coughed again, hoping all the asbestos-based insulation he'd breathed in places like this wouldn't cause lung cancer. He used to wear a painter's dustmask, but inevitably would sneeze, subsequently leaking snot into the mask. So he just breathed the dust, now.

  This attic was shallow, and the rafters left little room to maneuver, but he did take some satisfaction in the thought that he must be close. However, the light from his caving lamp was dimming fast.

  He itched all over. Shifting his weight to the ceiling joist under his left elbow, he snaked his right arm behind him and groped for the spare batteries in his hip pocket. When he pulled them out, fittings and barrel adapters spilled out with them to become just another hidden treasure in the sea of nasty insulation, along with the rat droppings and dead insects. He'd had plenty of practice changing batteries in the dark, and did so now; his sweaty fingertips just sensitive enough to do it blind. He wrung the sweat out of the elastic headband and slipped it back on his head. Within seconds the band was saturated again, so profusely was the sweat pouring out of him. He twisted the lamp until it came back on, with satisfying brightness. The first thing he noticed was an ugly spider rappelling down directly in front of his face.

  Panic was not an option up here, because sudden, erratic movement could easily cause a man to slip off the ceiling joists. Ceilings were made of drywall, which was strong enough to support heaps of nasty insulation, but not the weight of a human body, or significant portions thereof. He brought his right arm back up to rest on another joist, shifted his weight back to that side, blew the spider away from his face and smashed it against a rafter with his left fist. Unfortunately, his head tilted upwards during this movement and he was rewarded with the puncture of his scalp by a roofing nail.

  The second thing Miles noticed was his miscalculation as to where he needed to be. The coaxial cable he had poked through from the other attic, separated from this attic by a barrier he had drilled through from that side, was five feet further to his left. Five feet was nothing outside; but in a space like this it might as well have been a hundred yards.

  With the angle of the roof this close to the corner of the house, he had no choice but to back up until he had enough room to crawl over between another pair of joists. The going was slow and miserable. His feet, knees, and even items bulging through his pockets snagged on obstacles as he went. If he only had brought the reach pole, he could hook and pull the wire from here. But he already lost his 3/8s drill bit somewhere in the ocean of insulation on the other side, and he didn't want the same thing to happen with more expensive equipment--even though a reach pole was much larger and more difficult to lose.

  After a lot of grunting, coughing and sweating, he had the end of the wire in his hand and began the long, laborious journey back to the spot where the outlet was going. As the roof angled higher, his progress got a little easier, but there was a lot of friction on the wire he pulled along; his hands were slick with sweat; his muscles fatigued. He stopped near a roof vent to catch his breath as best he could in the perpetual dust cloud, then continued on. Finally he was able to advance on hands and knees, which was painful, but still better than belly-crawling from joist-to-joist.

  He reached the spot where his drill bag lay. He opened it, extracted the chain and duct tape, then attached the chain to the end of the wire. He dug around in the bag and found the paddle bit, and tightened the drill around it. He scooped insulation out of the top plate channel by the handful, then drilled his hole. He lowered the cable, chain first, through the hole, wiggling it and listening to the chain slap against the drywall on its way down. He pulled slack in the cable, undid the loops and kinks as best he could, laid it out in an "S" pattern and advanced to the trapdoor.

  The cooler air from below, seeping up through the trapdoor, felt like an arctic wind to his steaming skin. He positioned himself on the framework carefully, then lowered himself down to the top of his stepladder.

  A shower of insulation followed him down from the hole. Panting, coughing, and dehydrated, he staggered outside to get some fresh air, some water, and spit a lot. With the insulation stuck all over his sweat-soaked clothes and skin, he resembled a victim of the tarand-feather treatment. Miles was lean, but broad-shouldered, and stood at six feet, one inch and change. His blue eyes were weary and irritated from the dust. His face, though haggard, still appeared youthful despite the stubble covering his square jaw. His hair, thick and brown, was now plastered to his skull by sweat, and littered with insulation.

  After recovering, he re-entered the customer's house and squatted down at the spot where the outlet was to go. He triplechecked the position of the AC vent, the nearest light switches and receptacles, hoping those landmarks had not deceived him up above. "What the heck," he said, under his breath, and pulled the drywall saw out of his toolbag. He cut a small rectangle in the wall in what he hoped was the right place. He took the magnet out of the tool bag, stuck it up the hole and fished around. When he pulled it out with the chain stuck to the magnet head, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  When both outlets were finished, his surviving tools collected and put away in the truck, he rinsed his arms off with the garden hose, drank some more water, then prepared his paperwork.


  Back inside the house, Mrs. Watson stared at him like he was caught attempting burglary. "What about the jack upstairs?" She asked.

  "Jack upstairs?" he asked. "They told me you'd give me a jack upstairs, too," she said. "With a box."

  Miles stifled a groan. There was no mention of a third outlet on the work order; nor a converter, and he was already late for his next appointment. Still, he felt bad for Mrs. Watson. According to the sob story she dumped on him upon his arrival, four technicians had been out here before him, each one giving her a different excuse why the job couldn't be done. He couldn't really blame them, considering the labor entailed; but neither was it her fault that the house was built with shallow, partitioned attics. Also, if some knuckleheaded Customer Service rep had promised her an extra outlet from the comfort of their air conditioned office...and they promised the moon all the time with no concept of the work required...then Avcom might lose her as a customer if Miles gave her what she'd view as another excuse.

  He sighed. "Show me where you want it, Ma'am."

  She led him upstairs. She wanted the outlet right under the window, right behind the huge, heavy entertainment center.

  "There's no way to fish that wall," Miles said. "To put an outlet there, I'd have to drill through the wall and bring the wire in from outside."

  "They told me you could do it without any wire on the outside of the house," she said.

  "Sorry, Ma'am. That's not possible here." He hoped she'd nix the third outlet, unwilling to accept visible wire outside.

  "You did it in the other rooms inside the walls, though."

  For about twenty minutes, he did his best to explain that he couldn't fish an outside wall, especially on the second floor, due to the insulation, barriers between the floors, etc. Finally, she told him to go ahead and build the outlet however was necessary.

  Now he had to move the entertainment system. If anything broke, he was screwed. Legally, techs weren't supposed to move any furniture at all--it was all supposed to be done by the customer prior to arrival, and supposedly the CSRs were trained to advise the customers accordingly. But nine out of every ten jobs would be cancelled or rescheduled if he followed the regulations about furniture.