First a little background:
Many of you know that Carmine, my boss and my friend of the past 12 years, passed away in January. That's him there on the right, captaining his boat this past October.
Many of you may also know his lovely wife has made our company into a living hell because she wants to run it, against Carmine's explicit--but apparently not airtight--wishes. Let me just say that the last time she worked here was over 25 years ago, as a temp. She fucked the boss, quit her job, and never looked back. As my friend LoLa says, apparently she received her expert business qualifications by injection. The past three weeks have been particularly rough because the widow deigned to hire a person to "oversee" our company. Never mind that this dude hasn't worked at any small roofing companies, but rather at the megalopolises, the bigboxes, the walmarts of the roofing industry. Never mind that hiring someone at that level takes money out of a perfectly well run company, and until he is producing any sales, his salary comes right off the profit. Never mind that the profits (over a certain percent) go directly into the trust which pays the widow. Business acumen like that makes my head hurt.
Carmine's name is pronounced Car-mine. Like Carmine Ragusa on Laverne and Shirley. It isn't Carmen like the opera. You should also know that Carm's last name isn't Papadopoulos, but for illustrative purposes, it is exactly like Papadopoulos. People who are good with names--in fact people who are just plain good readers-- find it easy to pronounce, because despite being multisyllabic it is, in fact, pronounced exactly as it is spelled. Try it out loud: PAH pah dah puh lus. Papadopoulos.
One of my many hats, is being the voice of the company, which is to say: I answer the phone. Telemarketers have many tricks up their sleeve but I am canny and can catch almost all of them. I do have to say the people from India suck in the cleverness department, in large part because of their accent, but also because while they may speak English like troupers, they lack the necessary American idiomatic English to avoid any traps one might lay. Being proud of thwarting them is a little like being proud of passing 6th grade. They will ask for Car-meeen, with a precise separation as if they were speaking phonics like a language. This is, unfortunately for them, an epic FAIL. Almost invariably they are calling to sign Ms Carmeen up for some trade publication absolutely for free. When I have a little free time, or when I am just working off some hostility so as to prevent drinking it off and compounding any liver damage, I will have some fun with them. Last month I had a conversation that went like this:
Salesperson: CarMeen Pay pay --Ms CarMeen?
Me: It's Mister.
Salesperson: Sorry?
Me: Carmine is a he. Not a Ms.
Salesperson: May I speak to CarMeen?
Me: No. He's dead.
Salesperson: Oh. (pause) Sorry. (pause) Are you his assistant?
Me: I was. But he's dead.
Salesperson: Oh. Are you authorized to make decisions on his behalf regarding free magazine subscriptions?
Me: I was. But he's DEAD.
Salesperson: (flustered and yet unstoppable) I'm sorry, I didn't realize. Perhaps there is someone else that--
Me: You didn't realize? I've told you twice already!
I had to end that call. In the way that fishing in a barrel might be satisfying, but after the first one, you just know you're cheating, I felt I couldn't continue.
That was last month.
One step up from the outsourced telemarketers are the "if I can't say his name right, I'll just say it really really fast" types. These people are stoppable almost instantly, they are almost always sitting in a boilerroom somewhere, and I generally deal with them by making them repeat the name. These folks are almost always selling something, and often, when they realize they aren't getting anywhere, will hang up on me.
The smarmiest telemarketers are from investment firms. They think they are slick. They think I am stupid. They are wrong. They are wrong on both counts, and they probably have little dicks for which they are compensating. I got one of those yesterday. Yesterday, perhaps the worst day at work since the day after Carm died. Yesterday it probably wasn't a good day to be my friend. It was a really really bad day to be a pencil-dicked telemarketer calling me.
Me: Allied, good morning.
Needledick: Uh, yeah, Cahmine please.
Me: Who's calling?
Petitpud: Oh, yeah, it's Joe.
Me: Joe who?
Joe: Joe Swindell.
Me: From?
Joe: Scuse me?
Me: From what company?
Jerk: Oh yeah, Frank Shysters.
Me: Which Carmine?
Slick: What? Oh, the third. (thus avoiding the whole pronouncing the last name trap.)
Me: Regarding?
Stupit: Oh, he'll know. We were talking a while back, I'm just following up.
Me: Really? When was that?
--Can I just interject here? Clearly, clearly this guy knows he is not going to be speaking to anyone but me. Now, he is just plain pissed off and will carry it out as long as possible just to waste my time. He thinks he is winning. He has forgotten that winning at the very least is getting to talk to Carmine. Real victory is selling him something. Triumph is NOT merely annoying the receptionist, but this compensating, stumpyschlonged, smug sadsack has changed the goalpost in order to gloat. Whoops.
Sadsack: What? Oh, last week sometime.
Me: I don't think so.
Him: What? Oh, it mighta been a couple weeks ago.
Me: I ought to get your phone service.
Him: What?
Me: Carmine died in January, but I sure would love to talk to him.
So while the telemarketers are generally the pesky gnats in a walk through the meadow, sometimes, some days, they are better than anger management therapy. And unlike my current health plan, it was paid for by my company.
