This morning I walked in on Matt's girlfriend while she was peeing. I turned back into my room pretty quickly and stubbed my toe real bad on that stupid crate.

It was bleeding, and I had to sit on my bed and wait for her to get done before I could get a band-aid on it.

Matt said he had a "buyer" for the steak knives coming tomorrow. I guess he gave up on waiting for the owner to come forward.

Today this guy at work was celebrating his birthday. Someone dropped a manila folder off at my desk with a card in it for me to sign.

I was one of the last people to get the card, so all the good birthday well wishes were taken ("Happy Birthday", "Happy B-Day" and "Happy [whatever your age is]st"). I think a whole lot of hand wringing could be saved if everyone would just agree to write their name under whatever salutation the card company saw fit to place on the inside.

Neither Gerald nor I knew the guy very well, so we decided to get creative. We figured they wouldn't be able to figure out which Gerald wrote what if it ever got back to us.

I wrote "May you have many more" and Gerald wrote, "Stay Gold!"

Later on they had cake for him, and Sue said we could each take shifts getting off the phone to grab a slice and bring it back to our desks with us. We don't normally have cake for birthdays, but Fitzy told me it was because he had a bout with cancer that went into remission a little over a month ago.

I guess I could have picked a better phrase than "May you have many more."

Today Gerald called out sick so he could get a doctor to check out his nose. It was still kind of purple and made a whistling sound when he breathed through it.

When I got to the remote lot, no one seemed to notice the rear of the garbage car had been smashed beyond repair. People had even been so courteous as to throw their trash in the newly opened trunk rather than resting it on the car where it could blow away.

At work everyone was asking me about Gerald. My desk is in front of the fax machine, so a lot of people like to talk to me after their fax goes through so they can continue not doing their job.

I normally don't mind, although there are times when I think I should have pigeon wire installed on the walls of my cube to keep people from leaning on them.

Reynaldo came by around lunch to tell me Marcia said she had a good time, and wanted us to come to a party at their place this coming weekend. He asked about Gerald, and said it looked like it was broken when we left the bar.

Then he told a story about seeing some guy riding a bike get whaled in the face with a softball.

When I got home from work, one of the bodybuilders on the first floor was checking his mail as I walked in. He asked if someone was doing work at our place, as he heard banging all afternoon.

I got upstairs and Matt was out, Gerald was spread out on the couch with some "tasty" painkillers (his words) he had gotten at the doctor, and the crate of steak knives had made its way from the closet to the middle of my room. It looked like Matt had tried to open it earlier that day.

I was kind of pissed he had left the crate like that, but I had spent the weekend squeezing past it to get out of my room and figured climbing over it to get into bed was the more desirable of two shitty arrangements.

I can't wait for him to sell that slushy machine.

On Friday, Matt met Gerald and I at the remote lot after work. There was this bar nearby with a mechanical bull Gerald wanted to check out, and Matt didn't want to miss out on the action.

We got there a little after 7, and there was already an hour and a half wait to ride the bull. Some guy was on it that must have weighed 300 pounds. I wasn't sure how long the bull would hold out.

The bartender told us to take a number and we'd be called up when it was our turn.

We managed to get a table with a view of the bull. Matt kept ordering pitcher after pitcher, filling up our glasses before we could finish.

I guess he's not secure enough in his alcoholism to get drunk by himself.

After about a half an hour, Gerald came to the table with Reynaldo and his girlfriend, Marcia. I guess he had run into them at the bar.

Marcia was at least 10 years older than Reynaldo, and worked as a correctional officer at a county jail. Matt kept asking her to tell stories. Most of them involved the phone and/or poo.

Reynaldo was pretty quiet the whole time.

At some point Matt ordered shots of Jack Daniels for everyone. I find the sensation of drinking Jack Daniels akin to forcing a cactus down my esophagus.

I'd rather he bought me a punch in the face.

I forced mine down and everyone except for Reynaldo finished theirs in one gulp. Reynaldo sat taking measured sips of it as if it was a glass of iced tea.

Marcia was showing Matt how to perform a thumb hold no one could get out of when Gerald's number was called. The bull was in the center of this wide pen with padding on the bottom, and everyone was hooting and hollering as Gerald walked out.

He started playing up the crowd, pointing his finger up in the air and such. Based on their condition, I think Gerald could have been out there to operate a wet/dry vac and gotten the same response.

Gerald seemed to do pretty well the first minute or so, and gave the guy operating the thing a signal to crank it up. He did.

The bull jerked a little faster, and swung Gerald forward just fast enough to meet the front as it was coming up with his nose. You could see a blur of red, which turned out to be Gerald's face when the thing slowed down.

Everyone went "oooo" at the same time. Reynaldo said he should have stayed relaxed over the bull's center of gravity.

Gerald got off and someone came out to meet him with a cloth filled with ice and then walked on to spray his blood off the bull. He tried to act unphased, but you can only play it so cool after your face explodes in front of everyone.

We decided to leave after that.

Gerald had driven that day, and when we got back to the remote lot he realized he had lost his keys. He said they must have fallen out on the bull, and he didn't want to have to go back in and walk out in the middle of the crowd to get them.

Matt asked why there was a car covered in garbage in the corner of the lot, and we told him it had been there for a week or so now.

Gerald was pushing for me to go back in the bar and get his keys for him. I told him we should probably call a cab anyways, seeing as we were all drinking. I was really more concerned with not looking like an asshole stopping everyone's mechanical bulll fun while I searched through the creases in the padding for Gerald's keys, but I made a far better point with the drinking thing.

We went back and forth on this for a minute or so, and we heard a car start up. We looked over and Gerald's garbage car was backing out of its spot towards us with Matt behind the wheel.

Apparently, Matt doesn't need keys to start a car.

Gerald looked walked around and said "See? Problem solved!" before getting in. As if nothing could possibly go wrong with three inebriated people and a stolen automobile covered in trash.

Before heading home, Matt thought it would be a good idea to hit McDonalds and then ram some shopping carts in a supermarket parking lot.

When it turned out the lot was icy, he opted to do doughnuts.

Gerald and Matt cackled in the front seat as the car spun around. The cackling stopped when the rear of the car slammed into the concrete base of a lightpost.

We all flew to the driver's side of the car. Gerald's leg had somehow wedged it's way in between Matt's underneath the steering wheel, but none of us were hurt.

I looked back and saw the trunk had popped open, and then felt like I was going to get sick.

I tried to get out of the car to puke, but the driver's side door was broken and I ended up letting loose all over the floor of the car. Gerald and Matt got out to assess the damage.

When I got out Gerald and Matt were looking at the trunk. The whole frame had been bent in so the door wouldn't shut.

In the trunk was a big crate that said:

FRAGILE
STEAK KNIVES

I've never heard of a fragile steak knife.

Matt said we ought to take the car to the remote lot an park it where we found it. He said it would look like someone hit the car while it was parked and took off.

He called his girlfriend and asked her to meet us there.

When we got there, Matt started moving the box of steak knives out of the trunk. He said they'd probably get stolen if they were left there, and we could keep them at our place until the owner came forward.

He also said he knew someone who could move them if no one showed up to claim them.

The box was really long, and Gerald and I had to lay it across our lap for the whole ride. It was pretty heavy and smelled like old leaves.

When we got home, Matt asked if I could keep the box in my closet. He was keeping a slushy machine in his.

Today the old driver picked us up at the remote lot. Gerald sat shotgun and they traded stories about Tijuana.

I sat next to Reynaldo, who I haven't really talked to since training. He said his desk is kind of isolated, as Sue keeps her door shut all of the time.

He also said a guy from the mail room uses the phone in the empty cube next to his to call his AA sponsor. Reynaldo said he heard the guy telling a story about having to go to the emergency room after drinking hairspray.

As wrong as it is, I'm glad Reynaldo doesn't know enough about anything to know not to repeat that story.

Gerald keeps hinting that we're not going to have to park in the remote lot for much longer. I don't know why he won't just come out and tell me what he has going on. It's really annoying.

My bet is his plan is for us to take the bus to work.

Manager Tom was listening in on our calls today. He was sending e-mails to me as I was talking with a caller telling me what I was saying wrong. His suggestions were full of spelling errors.

He had a big problem with your/you're and their/there/they're.

"Your pausing too long. Theirs too much dead air."

I heard him yelling at Gerald for telling callers our systems were down when they weren't.

Later on he sent out an e-mail telling people to get back on the phones, and said "WERE ARE VERY BUST". Gerald and I spent the rest of the day using the word "bust" in front of him.

"I'm sorry Tom, but I'm far to bust to QC my own trade sheets."

"I'll take a shorter break today. I know how bust we are!"

I went out with Gerald and Matt after work for a few beers. They were going bowling after, but I thought I'd go home and watch TV.

I arrived home to a living room filled with fake Christmas trees. I ended up going to bed instead.

Angela sent out an e-mail this morning telling everyone there was banana bread in the kitchen.

I've never been a fan of banana bread. It's like cake that went to dessert school and dropped out before the course on having flavor.

She sent out the same e-mail about 45 minutes later. I walked by the kitchen and it looked like no one had touched it.

A half an hour after that she sent out the same e-mail again. Sue responded with an e-mail letting everyone know that e-mail was for business purposes only.

Later that day, Angela was using the fax machine in front of my cube. She asked me if I had tried any of her banana bread, but I held up my finger and started talking as if I had someone on the phone. Then my phone rang.

I tried to pretend like I was putting my imaginary caller on hold, but she just stood and stared at me for a bit.

She turned to ask Gerald, and he told her he couldn't have banana bread due to a potassium sensitivity issue.

I saw her ask a few other people over the course of the day. I imagine she baked poison into it and was out to kill us all, as she was pushing the stuff like Kool-Aid at Jonestown.

I had my break with Oscar this afternoon. He was talking about how the vending machine gave him an extra bag of Cheetos by mistake.

He said he wondered if they charged the person who stocked the vending machine for this, and how they should since they should stock the machine so two bags don't come out at the same time, and how, then again, they probably factor that into their budget as these things are bound to happen.

It was less of a conversation, and more of Oscar laying out the various potential loss prevention structures of Frito-Lay while I peppered the conversation with the occassional disinterested "Yeah."

When he was done with his Cheetos, he went over to the counter and grabbed a slice of Angela's banana bread. He ate the whole slice in two bites and then grabbed another one.

As he was eating it he told me it was "the worst banana bread in the whole world".

We'll see if he shows up for work tomorrow.

Today I got to work and found someone had stolen my chair.

I ended up having to pull a chair out of one of the conference rooms and I couldn't get the settings right. The back was set at this real awkward angle driving my shoulders forward while my butt was a good foot behind it.

It felt like some medieval torture device.

When I got back to my desk, Tom asked where I was. I told him the situation, and he said people in Pennsylvania aren't looking for their chairs.

What he meant was people would be calling in whether I had a chair or not. The managers use that phrasing a lot here:

"There wasn't a blizzard in California."

"New York didn't miss the shuttle at the remote lot"

"You think Missouri's grandmother had a stroke today?"

Normally it works, but Tom's statement only conjured up an image of the entire state of Pennsylvania wandering around some cube farm in search of seating.

I told Tom I'd stand next time. He didn't seem to understand I was offering a snappy answer.

The phones were real busy today, and Sue kept yelling at people from the Watchtower. At one point she called me as I was getting back on the phone to ask why I wasn't on a call.

Our call center is evaluated on 'service level', or the number of calls we answer within a certain time frame. In our case, we're supposed to enter 92.5% of all calls in 30 seconds or less.

I'm not sure what having a 92.5% chance of not having to wait longer than 30 seconds means to me if my call is answered by someone like Fitzy, who just today told a caller there are only 3 quarters in a fiscal year.

He said it was kind of like a hockey game.

Gerald and Matt "fixed" a No Parking sign right outside our building over the weekend so it can be removed from the ground. The no parking zone takes up about a car length from the sign to the corner of our street, so Gerald's been taking the sign out to park there and putting it back in when he leaves.

He also said he has a plan to get us out of parking at the remote lot. I really feel like I've hitched my reputation to a winning team.

This morning I woke up at 2 to the sound of people in my living room banging on snare drums singing "Yellow Submarine". At 5, I woke up to the sound of an old woman searching the garbage can beneath my window for empty bottles.

I thought the whole point of cashing in bottles for a living was not having to be up at 5 AM.

I woke up later and found Gerald on the couch in his underwear. I got him up, and he asked if I could drive to work. On the way in he was shaking.

Last night I went with he and Matt to a bar down the street to watch the Superbowl. When I left, they were ordering shots of a drink called Prairie Fire that consists of tequila and tabasco.

This weekend it was kind of wet and then got cold very suddenly, fusing all of the various items of trash to Gerald's garbage car in a veneer of ice.

There was a Snickers wrapper plastered flat on the trunk with the word "HUNGERECTOMY" pointing up at me.

Gerald held it together for the first few hours, sweating booze in his cube and taking calls. Then lunch came and he ended up getting a seafood salad sub by mistake. He opened it, turned green, and disappeared into the bathroom for awhile.

I also got to see a burial in the graveyard behind our office. A bunch of people were standing out there for what seemed like 20 minutes.

It was absolutely freezing out there. I wondered how in hell they dug the hole.

Fitzy said over the summer he saw a funeral where they were burying someone in a plus-sized casket and the harness snapped on one side. They ended up having to get a backhoe to haul the thing out. He said the last few burials were pretty boring, so we were bound to get a "good one" soon.

I've never heard anyone feel they were due for a cemetary mishap.

When I got home, Matt apologized for all the noise and said he hoped he didn't wake me up. I said it hadn't, and he said he felt bad about it.

He wanted to give me a case of Right Guard as a make-good, but I told him it was nothing and he didn't have to give me anything. He told me I was a "good shit" and gave me the case of deodorant anyway.

I took it back to my room and put it in the corner. I hate the smell of Right Guard.

I spent most of this weekend setting up my room at Gerald's place. Our other roommate, Matt, doesn't have a job, per se. Gerald says he buys and sells stuff online.

On Saturday there were a bunch of bikes in our kitchen, and some guy with a van came by later in the day to pick them up. Matt showed up with four snare drums later that afternoon.

Gerald said one time Matt came home with a bunch of tropical birds - macaws and such - and had a real hard time getting rid of them. He said they made tons of noise and stank up the apartment crapping all over the place.

Given that neither Matt or Gerald own a computer with an internet connection, I'm really wondering how Matt moves this merchandise.

On Friday, I finally got to meet Tom, my manager. I guess he was at some management seminar all week.

I thought Fitzy was joking about him not being able to be around microwaves, but then he took off at 11:45 and didn't come back until a little after one. Our cubes are right next to the break room, and Tom doesn't want to be too close when people start reheating their lunch.

Later on that day, he just sort of started spacing out in his cube, and Fitzy told me to watch as he was bound to "rev up" at any moment. Tom ended up snapping out of it pretty quickly, and you could tell Fitzy was bummed.

He said someone was probably just heating up water for tea or something.

We had to be in at 8:30 this morning for a pre-work meeting. We were told one of the companies we deal with was closing a paper mill in Idaho or somewhere thereabouts, and we were probably going to be getting a lot of angry calls from account holders.

I must have taken 10 calls from them in the first hour. Half of them made some reference to NAFTA.

One guy got real mad at me and say he was going to come down to Chicago so he could talk to me in person. I told him I thought that was a good idea.

I'm not even in Chicago.

Gerald decided to take calls this morning, and said someone told him he was going to "put a cap in his ass" after hearing he wouldn't be able to get a check for his account for 5 to 10 business days. I'm unsure what would prompt someone to make such a statement. Gerald was the only one out of the two of them with the other's address.

Around 1:00 someone sent out an e-mail letting everyone know they were towing from the lot. Sue sent an e-mail right after telling people they were not supposed to park in the office lot to begin with, and would not be allowed to leave their desks if they did.

A few people made it out before Sue's e-mail, but a couple people had to watch helplessly as the trucks drove around and hope they didn't stop at their car. Everyone else stood up and looked out to see if anyone would start arguing with one of the drivers.

One guy made it out just as his car was being hitched up. I could see him handing the truck driver cash and the driver lowering the car down afterwards.

I heard a couple people groan to see him get off so easy.

Gerald sat in his cube the whole time playing online mini-putt. I didn't see him at the remote lot this morning, so I was sure he had parked at the office, but, then again, I didn't see him at the meeting either.

Today I counted three new coffee cups on the car Gerald started the trash pile on, along with some ketchup packets and a few empty bottles of Zima. I hope whoever owns that car gets back soon. It's starting to become a real eyesore.

Gerald was at the remote lot again when I arrived this morning. He had his breakfast set up on the trunk of the same car as yesterday.

His trash from the day before was still sitting there - a cup half filled with frozen coffee weighing down the wax paper yesterday's sandwich came in. Whoever owned the car must have left it there overnight.

It looked as if other people were following Gerald's lead with the garbage, as there were two other coffee cups and the wrapper to a breakfast bar there as well. Another week and the car is going to attract seagulls.

Gerald said this parking situation was "beat" and that he was going to have to find a way around it.

At work today a man with a really high voice yelled at me for calling him "Ma'am". He was obviously very touchy about the issue. There was even a note in the account that read, "Account holder is male. Do not address as female."

Later in the day I got an equal response for pronouncing the last name "Kochless" as "Cockless". There was no note in this instance.

I think people might have been reluctant to write the word "Cockless" in our computer system.

Gerald's figured out a way to call himself so it looks like he's talking with an account holder to the people in the Watchtower. He spent most of the day on dating sites or playing Risk online.

I don't know where the hell our manager has been this week, but his "hands off" management style combined with Gerald's work ethic is like handing a toddler a bowl of scissors.

Towards the end of each day, we get a photocopy of a menu from the place we're ordering lunch from, as we have to have our order in that morning to ensure it arrives by 12.

Today's menu was from a place Fitzy called the "Smelly Deli". Everyone was pissed because the buffalo chicken sub was scratched off the menu and that's the best thing there.

I'm really hoping this doesn't get back to me.

Gerald was at the remote lot this morning. He was eating an egg sandwich and drinking a coffee when I got there. It was set up on the trunk of a car like it was his own little table.

He left his trash there when the van picked us up.

The Angry Haitian was driving again, and Gerald sat shotgun. Gerald told him there was another route that could get him to the office much quicker and then told him to slow down when they were coming up on this parking lot he saw a cop parked at yesterday.

At one point, the Angry Haitian nearly cracked into someone while he was making a left turn. The other driver stopped and flipped him off.

Then Gerald told him this street was could be really dangerous, which is another reason why he takes the other route. The Angry Haitian turned up the radio after that.

Today we ordered lunch from a place Fitzy calls "Ass on a Bun". The company doesn't want us off the phones all at once, so they buy us lunch and have us eat it at our desks in between calls.

I ordered a buffalo chicken sub.

The delivery was late and there were only three managers available to hand out lunch to about sixty reps, so my sub waas cold by the time I got it. I was starving at that point, so I didn't care all that much.

Whenever I'd try to take a break, I'd get a call from the Watchtower asking me to get back on the phones. I guess calls always spike around lunch on account of everyone slacking.

The first call I took was from someone looking for their account balance. It was a simple enough request, but I put him on hold so I could take a few bites out of my sandwich and look like I was on a call. I did it a second time with a guy who needed to change his address, and the mic from my headset got stuck in the sandwich.

When I pulled in out, it was all gunked up with bleu cheese. I tried to wipe it off, but a big chunk of it was lodged in the hole the sound goes into.

I call that part "the sound-hole".

When I got back on the phone, the guy couldn't hear a word I said. He knew I had picked up because the hold music stopped playing, and kept saying, "Hello? Hello?"

I ended up having to hang up on him and clean out the sound-hole with a thumb tack. The Watchtower kept calling, so I stood up and waved my headset at them so they could see something was wrong.

They sent a manager named Peter over to see what was going on. I told them some stuff from my sandwich got stuck in the hole in my headset.

He asked if I meant the sound-hole. I said I did.

He asked if I had the buffalo chicken sub. I guess this happens a lot.

Today was our first day on the phones. Paige came around to help us get signed in to our computers, and then took off.

Gerald kept taking time off the phone to tell me about his weekend. He and Matt had their bowling night and he ended up hooking up with the woman who rents the shoes.

He also apologized for the whole scene with Ryan's girlfriend. He said she was there well into the night, crying and yelling and such. Gerald said he heard her smash some stuff before she left, but he was pretty sure none of it was mine.

Every time he got into a story, he'd get a call from the manager at the Watchtower telling him to get back on the phone. By the end of the day, they were just yelling at him across the floor.

It turns out I get two 15 minute breaks that day. I guess they give you a half an hour break every day, and you have the option to take it all at once or break it up into two smaller ones.

I don't remember choosing either, but I was informed I did at some point.

My first break was in the morning. Cheryl, the friend of the one with the big ones, was in the break room talking with a couple of friends.

I went to the other side of the room to a table with a bunch of newspapers on it. Someone had taken most of the newspaper and only left the car section.

I decided to see where I could get the best deal on a Nissan Pathfinder.

Cheryl was talking about someone and described them as "not the brightest knife in the drawer." I don't think she was going for irony.

My second break was around two. Gerald and I had it at the same time, but he said he had to go out to his car and make a private call. I went to the break room and sat with this guy who sits in a cube a few rows away from me. His name is Oscar.

He said he's been on the phones for awhile. Before that, he worked in a factory that made transmissions and got to travel to transmission factories all over the world. He was halfway into a story about his trip to Germany and how they made transmissions over there when Sue came in to tell us our break was over.

After meeting Oscar, I think that fifteen minute break is way too long.

On Friday we had our final training sessions and then took some calls at the end of the day. Paige said she'd put us on the "overflow queue" so we'd only take calls if there were people being put on hold, and she'd be monitoring so she could help us out if it sounded like we were getting stuck.

I ended up getting put on the line for people looking for assistance in Spanish by mistake and had to field calls in a language I don't speak a word of.

I told Paige after the first few, and she ended up giving me this script in Spanish and told me to read it, put them on hold, and transfer them when a Spanish speaking rep was available. I remember the script began with the phrase "Bienvenidos el programma de retiros..."

I kept looking over the script to see if I could find the Spanish word for "updating".

After about an hour, Paige brought Reynaldo over. Apparently, he speaks Spanish and we were going to trade phones.

I only took one call after that. It was from a guy who wanted his account balance and spent the next 45 minutes talking about the town he lived in. I guess Garth Brooks grew up there and hadn't done a "damn thing" for the town since he left.

Before we left for the day, Paige said to plan on working some overtime next week. I guess their call volume was still very high, and everyone on the floor would be working 9 to 7.

I looked around to watch everyone act not disappointed. Reynaldo looked at Paige as if she was serving pie.

Over the weekend I went to move my stuff into the new place. Gerald said Ryan, the guy who was moving out, was still there, but he said it would be OK for me to drop my stuff off.

When I got to the apartment, it was just Ryan and his girlfriend there. His girlfriend was sitting on the couch and it looked as if she had been crying.

Ryan walked with me into the room and told me that he had just told her they were breaking up, but it was still OK for me to bring my stuff in if I wanted. I guess he was moving to Phoenix to work as a greenskeeper on a golf course and had just gotten around to telling her now.

I really didn't want to be there, but I had already rented a van and packed up all my stuff.

Every time I walked in the front door, the place would get really quiet and I'd see Ryan and his girlfriend staring at me as I walked past the entrance to the living room. Then I'd hear whispering as I walked through the bathroom to my room, followed by silence as I walked by them again to get more stuff.

I ended up trying to make as much noise as I could walking out of the bathroom so they'd know when to stop talking.

There was this huge puddle on the bathroom floor and I kept tracking water all over the place. It looked as if someone had showered with the shower curtain open.

When I got my mattress up there, I realized I was going to need someone to help me lift it through the bathroom so it wouldn't absorb the water and get all mildewy. I was standing there trying to think about how to pose the question to Ryan when I heard him ask if I needed any help.

I think they were getting tired of waiting for me to leave so they could resume breaking up.

I walked in and explained the situation. He was really cool about helping me out, but his girlfriend sat glowering as the whole exchange took place.

I felt kind of bad, but probably would have felt worse sleeping on a moldy mattress.

Tonight we all went out for drinks after work and some guy punched Gerald in the mouth. I guess Gerald was talking to his girlfriend and started spouting off when the guy stepped in.

I didn't hear much of what Gerald said, but I believe it was the phrase "Take it easy, beefcake" that set the guy off.

As it was happening, everyone was looking at Reynaldo to step in. He just stood there and watched like the rest of us. Afterwards, when Gerald told him he could have used his help, Reynaldo said the first rule his sensei taught him was restraint, and it wouldn't have been right for him to use force seeing as the situation was defused.

That guy defused it all over Gerald's face.

Angela wasn't at work today. Paige said she was sick, but everyone thinks the pressure's getting to her.

I'm not sure what pressure she's been under, but given the work we've had to do thus far, there isn't a scenario where I could see myself being too ill to do my job that doesn't involve a trip to the third world.

We had to take messages again today, and I ended up getting a guy who must have spoken with Gerald yesterday. He said I told him we'd be overnighting a check to him last night, and he never received it.

I tried to explain to him that I didn't know anything about the check, and he might be confusing me with someone else. Then he told me he wrote down the name of the person he spoke with.

When I told him there was more than one Gerald at the company, he asked how many there were.I said that as far as I knew there were two, and his response was, "You mean there could be more?"

He sounded truly alarmed by this.

He ended up asking for a manager, and Fitzy took the call pretending to be one.

Gerald did something with his phone so it wouldn't receive calls. When Paige stopped by to see why things were so quiet, he said his phone hadn't been ringing and assumed it wasn't that busy.

She asked someone to look at his phone and said she'd take him to the "order desk". It sounded exciting, but later Gerald told me it was pretty much a big cube where they boxed up the trade sheets to be shipped to another building where they were scanned into the system

He said a couple of the boxes had fallen down and spilled all over the floor, and he had to reorder the sheets by date. I bet he would have traded that for another day of giving out fake answers to irate callers.

When we were walking out of the bar, Gerald invited me out tomorrow night. He said he and Matt were going to cook a spiral ham and go bowling.

I thought I'd sit that one out.

The Angry Haitian picked us up at the lot again. This time, he parked the van way on the other side so everyone had to walk across to get in.

Everyone seemed pretty irritated, but I think they were all too scared to say anything after hearing him yell into the phone yesterday. He was listening to this Carribean radio station and had the volume turned up really loud on the ride in.

Paige walked in first thing and told us they needed our help on the phones this morning. She said account holders would be receiving their statements over the next couple of days and a lot would be calling in with questions, so we had to help handle the volume.

All we had to do was tell the caller our systems were updating, take down some information (name, SSN, phone number, etc), and tell them someone would call them back later on.

The first caller I took got mad when I told him this and said all he wanted was his balance. Then he asked what we were updating.

I told him we were uploading vast amounts of market data to the server, and he seemed a little less irritated after that.

I had no idea what I was talking about.

At one point I looked over at Gerald. He was dealing with someone really irate. He kept saying, "I know sir, but I can't help you. Our systems are updating."

When the guy was giving him his phone number, Gerald gave me a look and started moving his hand like he was writing the number down in the air. Later on I heard him giving someone else an imaginary account balance.

I don't think I saw him write one thing down the whole time.

After about an hour and a half, Sue came and collected the message forms from us. I saw them piled up in a recycling bin not too long after.

When we got back the the classroom, Angela seemed kind of upset. Her eyes were red and puffy as if she'd been crying.

I guess a caller had said some real nasty stuff to her.

Paige said people will do that now and then, and one of the toughest parts of this job is not letting it get to you. There's a lot of not letting things get to you at this job.

We spent the rest of the day learning the computer system we'd be using. Reynaldo ended up performing an actual trade during one of the exercises, and Paige had to call the trading desk and get them to cancel it before it was executed. Then he clicked some button that jammed up a printer on the third floor with a 40 page spreadsheet.

I kind of wish Reynaldo's cube was closer to mine. This guy is going to be a disaster.

A new guy was driving the shuttle from the remote lot today. He stopped way before the garbage can and totally screwed up the order of the line. I didn't care much as I was last anyway.

The woman with the big ones was first in line and ended up having to sit shotgun. The driver didn't seem to care too much about her big ones. He was having a pretty heated conversation on his cellphone.

The driver was Haitian, and the whole van stayed quiet as he yelled Creole into the phone. The guy in front of me tried to start a conversation with the person next to him, but the driver just yelled louder.

When I got to the office, everyone was already in our classroom except for Gerald. Angela was telling a story to a few of the other folks about how she works weekends at Starbucks to pick up extra cash.

She was saying how she doesn't like people adding sugar or milk to their coffee. Apparently true coffee lovers don't.

I guess Starbucks must stock cream and sugar so they know which customers to hate.

Gerald came in right at 9:00 and totally stank of booze. He told me later that he and Matt drank a bottle of gin and watched "The Wizard of Oz" last night. He said he was probably going to bag out sick before lunch.

We had a consultant named Rachel come in to teach us phone etiquette. The first thing she told us is we should always smile when we're talking, because the caller can hear the smile on the other end. I thought back to yesterday, and began to wonder how someone would react to hearing a smile from someone they just called a cum dumpster.

Reynaldo asked what they should do if the topic of the conversation was sad. She must have thought it was a joke, because she laughed and tried to move on.

Then Reynaldo told her that he was listening to calls yesterday, and a man called up and said he wanted to cash out his account because his cat needed dialysis treatment. The man got very mad when he heard he couldn't take money out of his account for pet surgery, and Reynaldo didn't think it would be appropriate to smile during such a conversation.

Rachel said it was OK not to smile if the conversation was sad, and told us to use our discretion.

We were in between exercises when I saw a couple tow trucks drive into the lot. Gerald had told me he was turning the steering wheel when he parked so it would crash into the car next to his if they tried to tow it. He said tow truck drivers are opportunists, and would skip his car for one that would give them less hassle.

Rachel told us she was going to leave the room for the next exercise and we would have to close our eyes and keep completely silent while she was gone. We were probably thirty seconds into it when I heard a smash and the sound of car alarms outside.

I took a look out the window and saw a tow truck with what looked like Gerald's car hitched up smashed into the rear of the neighboring SUV.

I whispered to Gerald to get his attention, but he fell asleep before the car alarms went off. I gave him a nudge and asked if that was his car out there.

He just got this real defeated look on his face, and sat through the rest of the exercise staring straight forward.

Before we broke for lunch, Paige came in and asked Gerald if she could speak with him. Apparently, Paige told him they don't give any sort of written warnings to employees in training, but if he couldn't conform to the company's parking policies they were going to ask him not to return to work.

I guess the other car was a senior manager with the company, so he had to go and work things out with him as well.

Gerald told me that he wasn't sure he'd still be able to drive his car after this, but he figured he'd play it safe and park in the remote lot either way.

After lunch we did some role playing and then spent the last couple of hours listening to calls. I sat with Manny again. He got a call from a women who spent a half an hour talking about how her sister was a lesbian and how she caught her peeing standing up.

I'm beginning to think they should charge admission to this place.

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.

This weekend I went to check out a room in Gerald's apartment. One of his roommates was moving out at the end of the month, and he needed to fill the spot quickly.

Gerald's place is in a real congested neighborhood with zero parking. I drove around awhile looking for a spot before parking in front of a crosswalk with my hazards on.

Gerald lives on the second floor of a three story building with no lights in the stairwell. A Chinese family lives on the third floor, and a couple of bodybuilders live on the first.

I could hear one of the kids on the third floor playing the violin as I walked up.

Gerald said the room I'd be moving into was the smaller of the three, so I'd end up paying less rent if I took the place. The only way to get to my room is through a closet in the bathroom.

Gerald said he knew it was kind of a shitty arrangement, but I could use the bathroom closet to keep my stuff in and they've got a system down so I wouldn't get trapped in my room when someone was taking a shower. He also said there was a fire escape outside my window I could pee off if things got grim

Gerald said his roommate Matt's girlfriend sleeps over a lot, so I'd probably want to get the system down.

I told him I'd have to think about it. He told me he'd be showing the room to a few more people today, and said I should call him as soon as I knew I was interested.

Something tells me this room will be open on Monday.

We got our desks today. Gerald and I got cubes across from each other near a window that looks out over a graveyard.

The cubes are about chest high, so you can see across the whole floor if you stand up. Gerald said he was hoping for a more "private situation", as he isn't hooked up to the internet at home and was hoping to get some surfing done here.

I guess he's been barred from the local library.

Fitzy sits right behind us, along with this girl with jet black hair who wears tons of eyeliner. She was arguing with a customer when we were moving in.

When I was done getting set up, I looked around the floor and saw Sue in a big cube a few rows over yelling at people to get back on the phone. Fitzy said that cube's called "The Watchtower", and it tells the managers who's on a call and how long people are off the phone.

I guess being off the phone is bad, as people calling in have to wait longer to have their call answered. Sue seems to think yelling helps.

Everyone in my training class was pretty glad to get rid of those binders, except for this one guy named Keith who was leaving his binders under a table in the classroom every night. Apparently, someone came in last night and took them, although Keith seems to think the janitor might have thought they were trash and carted them off.

Given that the same Twix wrapper has been sitting on the windowsill since I started, I don't think the janitor thinks much of anything is trash.

Paige said it was OK and she'd get him some replacement binders by Monday, but she seemed pretty pissed about it. She kept ignoring Gerald when he'd raise his hand up, and only let Angela ask one question.

I don't think Keith is going to last too long.

At lunch, Reynaldo told us he was psyched about his seat, because they put him right outside Sue's office, and he'll be able to build "rapport" with her. He said rapport is very important in business, and looked very eager to start building it.

This morning it was freezing, so everyone was waiting in their car at the remote lot. I got out of my car as soon as I saw the shuttle coming down the street, so I ended up getting a seat towards the back of the van.

As the last person was getting on, I saw Gerald running for the van. He ended up sitting shotgun and hearing about how the driver's mom just got a new Harley.

It figures Gerald gets the story about the Harley.

As we were walking towards the office, he told me how he got really hammered with his roommate last night and was shocked he got up in time.

Gerald has a habit of interrupting Paige in the middle of our training sessions. He usually says something like "So ... is this a good time for a break, or should we just press on?"

He did this a couple of times today, and I can tell it's starting to get on Paige's nerves.

Angela has a habit of asking a lot of questions and making our classes go extra long. It's pretty annoying, as most of the time people usually have to go to the bathroom by the end. I can tell it really gets on Gerald's nerves, as he'll butt in and try and answer the question before she finishes.

Then Paige gives the correct answer, Angela asks another question, and the cycle continues. The whole thing would take a lot less time if Gerald just shut up, but I think Paige does it to get back at him for the interruptions.

It's a war of attrition that has our bladders in the crossfire.

We also had a meet-and-greet with some of the other phone reps and found out who was going to be managing us. One of the guys I met had a black eye.

I couldn't remember his first name, but everyone kept calling him 'Fitzy'.

I found out my manager was going to be Tom Oday.

Fitzy works under Tom, too, and said he has a metal plate in his head and has to stay away from running microwaves. I guess they cause him to go into these fits where he swears uncontrollably.

Fitzy said whenever he swears people start looking to see who's making popcorn.