Call centre blues

I am sat at my desk – sorry, workstation – utterly bored. They call them cubicles in the States. Cubicles. That makes me think of changing rooms at public swimming baths, toilets in airports (don’t ask why) or even that skin that slowly creeps over your fingernails. I know that’s cuticles, but that doesn’t stop me thinking cubicular thoughts. I presume the word comes from cube, a six-sided box, although mine thankfully has only four, including about five and a half carpet tiles, the other half shared with my neighbour.

She sits in her cubicle, almost as bored as me, but at least she has work to do. Since I finished my last phone call, I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to fill my time until the next. Thanks to my computer, all my work is carried out on screen and via the abominable headphones. I lose track of whether this is called real-time working or just-in time working, not that it matters. It still drags.

There is no possibility of being discovered doing nothing. Since Joyce won her appeal, my supervisor can’t just walk in and question me without emailing first. Joyce jumped out of her skin every time he tapped her on the shoulder. She has a lot of skin to jump out of, Joyce does. She reckoned it was doing her nerves in, and the company couldn’t afford to have people off with stress, not in our line of work.

Besides which, success for our managers is measured by the amount of staff you control rather than by the amount of work they do. Jason really is a success – he has a great many bored women of a certain age and a lesser amount of hopeless blokes to pander to his negligible needs. Randa says it’s the Arab way, where status and face count for everything. I don’t think the owner is an Arab though, not with a name like Clive.

Anyway, I am still bored. Oh, yes. Cuticles. Just what is the point of cuticles? All I can presume is that they are part of a job creation scheme thought up by The Almighty. Perhaps before beauticians were invented we didn’t even have cuticles. Is there any evidence of cuticles in antiquity? I don’t recall seeing them on Greek vases, marble friezes or Renaissance frescoes, not that I have ever looked. But as they didn’t even show pubic hair on Greek vases when everyone know Greeks are among the hairier of God’s people, I think the chances of them carving cuticles is pretty slim. Jeez, your mind wanders when there’s nothing better to do.

The company doesn’t let us decorate our workstations. Jason says it would interfere with hotdesking – and there’s an expression. They’d be better calling it a warm chair than a hot desk. We could do with some heat, some personal passion to enliven our poxy cubicles. Actually, pox, or polka dots at least, would be an improvement, but they don’t allow “any degree or essence of personalization” and I quote from the staff handbook there, complete with American Zee. But wouldn’t it be nice to sit at a different desk, surrounded by postcards, smiling loved ones and out-of-focus pets, just to be reminded that this job is really all about human beings? People. Persons. Customers. Clients, if you insist. All the targets, the margins and even the sales are just ways of helping people, not ends in themselves.

If I were allowed to decorate my workstation, I’d have fun. Just think of the options. I could do a full interior makeover. Or we could all do one, with a different theme for each workstation, perhaps reflecting our personalities. That would put a stop to talk about hotdesking. Just imagine – “I can’t sit there – I’m not a belligerent fairy!” Or you would come in to find the person on the previous shift had left you a surprise, perhaps just a post-it note reminder to turn the screen off at the end of the day, but maybe something special, individual. Wouldn’t it be good to have even a slight sense of anticipation when you started your shift?

Joyce would no doubt decorate her workstation in a migrainous mix of purples and pinks. She even called her daughter Magenta, but she said that was after that woman on telly who always wears black. The funny thing is that Joyce wears so much colour that she herself is almost invisible. And if she sat in a brightly coloured workspace, the least obvious feature would be Joyce herself. That would be weird. Like suddenly being surprised by a hippopotamus in the African bush. Very like it, in fact.

Maurice would just pack his workstation with pictures of traction engines – to match his ties. I know – because he tells me – that they were amazing bits of machinery in their day, but really. It’s the 21st Century. There must be obsessions that don’t condemn you to a life of bearded rallies and memorising parts numbers.

My workstation would be a bit Jackson Pollock, just because I like saying the name. But perhaps, from the gallery where the managers sit, if we all had our separate stations painted a distinct colour, it would look like a Mondrian. That would be cool. Or we could each arrange for a scarlet highlight – a cushion or penholder – that spelt out messages to Clive in semaphore. I suppose management would call that thinking out of the box. And then they’d call a stop to it.

Just imagine if everything in your workstation was the same primary yellow. At the end of your shift, your eyes would be craving reds, blues and purples. The trip home would be, well, a trip. I wonder if you’d be more prone to jaundice in a yellow workstation? Or depression in a blue one? I suppose even the management here may draw a line at that though. Psychological experiments on the staff wouldn’t be a good ploy, not in our line of work.

If Maurice is so interested in machines, perhaps he could do something about these sodding headphones. How about adding a light to them so that you could see if it was ringing when it was on your desk? Then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about taking it off to scratch my head or comb my hair. A small light would do it, an LED perhaps. But if the light went on when you were wearing it, perhaps that would set Joyce off again. See, it’s developing into a full-blown project already, and I haven’t even mentioned it to Maurice.

God, I am so, so bored now. Is there anyone out there with an inkling of the level of waste running through this place?

Oh, a customer. “Har-hem. Hello. You are through to the Inspire TV Mental Health Hotline. My name is Clarice. How may I help you?”