Tales from the office

I work at a company that sells things. The kinds of things I like. Mostly, I spend my day fixing the royally fucked-up situations that crop up in every sort of sales. However, the last hour or so of the day I occasionally hop on the phone and take inbound calls (we don't make outbound sales calls).

I took one this evening.

"ACME distributing, this is Abby. How can I help you tonight?"

After a little discussion, we established that Mr. Guy was a return customer, and wanted to place an order. As I waited for the Evil DOS-based sales system to pull up the "new order" screen, I made a little small talk, since Mr. Guy seemed friendly.

"How's the world treating you tonight?"

"Oh, it's alright, considering I have a daughter I don't ever see," he sighed.

"Oh. Gracious. That's too bad, sir." You know, the idea behind small talk is that it's not supposed to be anything soul-baring.

"Yeah. I've never seen her. She lives in Texas."

"Oh, my. Can I get your first item number?"

"Yeah, I'll take #123XYZ. You know the singer Jewel?"

"Ummm..yes, sir. One of those #123XYZ's?"

"Yeah. One each. And two ABC789's. I'm Jewel's biological father. I tried to go see her once when she was a baby, and I ended up in a straitjacket. That was the year I dropped out of high school."

I'm not sure how I managed to finish that one, but I did. 'Cause even crazy people deserve to order our shit, I guess.

Oh, yes. This job is so on borrowed time.