There are a number of topics that I want to tackle, but I have been a little occupied and, rather than keep putting things off in order to have the concentration to deal with them in earnest, I think it would be best to at least tackle something, regardless of whether it is a pressing concern, primarily so that I won't allow myself to stagnate.
A couple of days ago, I was forced to search through more-or-less all of the documents I have around due to a small issue with some paperwork; I never relish searching in places where I know there isn't what I am asked to look for, and that is doubly true when I am fairly certain I was never given what is asked of me to find — and even more than that if the person is insistent that I must have lost it. There are various issues at play here, but I'd rather not press them, because I don't want to have a fight over something that is likely the oversight of at least one person in at least one party, which can also really be me, and if it is not, I still don't see much sense in picking fights. I'd just rather not make a ruckus...
So, that aside, it just happened then that I came across an old sheet of paper that I had kept around. I'm quite fond of notes, you see; be it sketches, funny thoughts, ideas that come to mind: I like to get to look back on what I thought like — what plays with words I'd played back when — and what little oddity sprung up here and there. This is definitely one of my fondest memories, which is ironic, since it comes from a time that was otherwise problematic, in its own way. If anything, the best thing that actually came out of it was the fact that, at least for two months, I got a regular paycheck. It is, to this day, the only post I've held besides working as a desk clerk (a story I'll leave for another time).
As you must have already surmised, back then I used to work at a call centre; it was a job that I was told about at the time by another applicant and we signed up together. I held that position for two months, and I still might have worked there for a while longer, if not for a number of reasons. One was the terrible pain I started getting at some point: trigeminal neuralgia. There were others as well, but that was the clincher for me. I told them at first that I wanted to stop for that reason (it was the office doctor that actually diagnosed me, so there wasn't any leeway around that) and to not sign me up again, but they ignored me and signed me up anyway, most likely so that they would get around unemployment compensation. I had to quit in person, but even then I also had to loudly explain to the overseer over the phone that I would not get back to work and that was that. It probably has not been the smartest thing I've ever done, and I might have saved some more money, but what's done is done.
Aside from all the memories I have from that place that are too keen to forget, there are many details which I can't recall on my own. A few phone calls stood out far too much to escape my memory, but some particularly tantalizing details I just knew I would not be able to keep in my head for too long. Luckily enough for my interest, I had taken to bringing a notebook with me to jot down all the little things that I had to keep in mind anyway: whom I should be calling and when, names of interest, stuff I had to ask for and so on and so forth... That notebook, however, ended up being where I also wrote some of the more interesting stuff, amidst the notes that were useful for the jobs and all the doodles. And what I found two days ago is a sheet of paper that I have kept separately, because it has some of the funniest (at least to me, really) of all the tidbits I heard on the job.
There are, of course, actual notes on the job on it as well, but that's not all of it. Some of the notes I scribble on the paper are, believe it or not, nothing other than surnames, with a few full names too; examples include names that are funny because they refer to common objects or local dialect words for such things; others because they sounded so utterly bizarre, and some still do to this day. Others include references in them that were uninteligible to me then and made me curious as to what they might mean, given that surnames universally tend to mean something specific (such as an occupation or some association the locals had with the person they ascribed the surname to).
But of all the funny stuff, the names I don't think I should share. They belong to the people that are named after them and it would be unkind to put them up as a laughing stock. I'd rather focus on the other thing that stood out the most, and it is part of the reason I write this now...
As I just mentioned earlier, some of all this has escaped my memory to some extent; but reading back on the paper, especially with the outlined discussions, I get glimpses of those events flickering at the back of my head, being reminded as I am by reading these excerpts of the things as they transpired.
So there is this one discussion that I was reminded, once again, and which brings fond memories, as it is one of those incidents that really made that part of my life so bright, at least in retrospect. The call centre I worked for occasionally got us to ask people to participate in polls, and that was one of my favourite assignments; at other times, we'd receive incoming calls for donations and assistance, and that was perhaps the best job of them all that I held there. Regularly, however, I was assigned one of the most ugly tasks I can think of: calls for banks.
You see, the call centre I worked for had a long-running contract with the National Bank. Just so you know, the National Bank is a private company that has nothing to do with the National Bank of Greece; regardless, the National Bank is perhaps the most powerful private bank in Greece and many deals are struck exclusively through it for that reason — and it also happens to be most bothersome. In any case, the company was tasked with making calls on the behalf of the bank, such as to bother people with new offers and, thankfully, rarely bring up matters of debt or what have you; and because the National Bank is such a strong player in the field, most of our work was on their behalf.
That's more or less what happened one such day that I was working there: I had just had an outgoing call picked up. For your information, I had no control over who was called on the phone — all that was done by a dedicated desktop application which run through a database to make the phonecalls automatically, which I might get to on a later date. Regardless, the voice I heard over the line was the uncertain voice of what accurately seemed to be a very young child. I didn't jot that part down, since it wasn't the first time I've heard an unsteady response, nor that of a child, so nothing warranting any special attention had happened up to that point — it is what followed that sparked my interest.
In response to the child's query as to who was on the phone, I originally tried to see if I could get the company poem across — “Hello, my name is [...]” and so on and so forth — without confusing the kid. I realized that wouldn't work, so I just asked if the father (as far as I could surmise from the data shown on screen, which was slim at best) could talk to me on the phone.
Here's what followed:
[Child]: “Dad, there's somebody on the phone!”
[muffled male calls, likely from a bedroom or bathroom]
[Child]: “My dad is not here...”
[I]: “I am sorry, what time should I call?”
[Child]: “What time should they call, dad!”
[more muffled calls]
[Child]: “Monday!”
At that point, grinning broadly, I politely thanked the child for being so helpful, greeted the kid off and dropped the call; it really took a lot of willpower not to laugh like a maniac.
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