I told Gerald I'd take the room. There are a million reasons I decided to take it, none of which I'll get into.

Today we spent time sitting with some of the other reps and listening to their calls. The first guy I sat with was named Manny. The first caller he took called him a "cum dumpster".

The second one he took got routed to the wrong department and said he didn't want Manny to put him back in the system as he had already done that twice. Manny said he'd conference himself in with the guy and help him navigate the menu.

Manny pulled out a card that had the whole phone system mapped out, and I sat and listened as he punched the numbers in to get the guy to where he needed to be. After about ten minutes of button pushing, Manny got connected to the guy at the desk next to us.

Manny told the guy our phone system was "updating" and he'd need to take down his number and call him back. Apparently, when something doesn't work you're supposed to tell the person on the phone that whatever's broken is "updating".

I have a feeling I'm going to put that piece of information to work.

The guy on the phone got really pissed and asked to speak to a manager. Manny took off for awhile and I sat and zoned out.

Manny came back with Paige who said it'd be OK if I left for lunch a little early.

Gerald told me the guy he sat with spent the entire time on the phone with his girlfriend. He said she called in through the regular 800 number so it looked like a business call.

After lunch we did role playing, where Paige would pretend to be a caller with questions about her investments and one of us would pretend to be the rep.

She called Reynaldo first. He had a lot of trouble coming up with the right answers and kept calling her "sir".

After a couple minutes of long, awkward pauses, Paige finally gave up and said he could use his book if he wanted to.

Paige let us all use our books after that. It really took the pressure off knowing what a shitty job Reynaldo did. Even Gerald sounded good, and all he did was tell Paige he'd look into her questions and call her back with the information she requested.

When we were done, Paige said we could go back up and find a rep to listen in with. When I got upstairs, I looked out the window and saw Gerald walking to his car.

It was quarter to five anyway, so I walked around pretending to look for someone to sit with and went home.