The First day of Fall is:
Whatever feels like Fall
Wearing a sweater
Seeing the leaves cleaned off my back patio
Studying Spanish
Thinking about the presidential race
Taking a photo walk
Telling people, “It’s the first day of fall!”
Drinking a mug of chai tea while sitting in the grass
Hot lentil soup for dinner, and cold root beer floats for dessert
I’ve finished my job at the call center, but I just want to recall (haha!) for you some happenings there.
Let me give you a setting for these stories. It’s a small call center with only 2-7 callers there at a time. We’re calling households in Bellingham, WA about the Smart Trips program which is a program designed to decrease car traffic by promoting alternative transportation. So our job is to find out their household’s transportation uses, ask for comments about transportation issues, and then to tell them that we’ll be sending an order form where they can order more information about riding the bus, walking, and biking. Whatever they order will be delivered through a bicycle currier. There would also be some free bus tickets, a reusable grocery bag and some coupons in there.
-I was called by a call center at work! While sitting in my cubicle I picked up the phone to make a call, and someone was on the line talking to me, wanting me to take a survey about TV shows! I told her that she was calling a call center and she thought that was pretty funny. Ah, how cute, we identified with each other.
- When asking a man about transportation issues, he complained about blind spots for bikers at a certain rail road track. Then he revealed that his wife died a month ago from from being hit on her bike while trying the cross those tracks. He’s still riding. What else could I say after that. I didn’t ask him questions, I didn’t tell him about the information we’d offer him. All I could do was express my condolences and let him be.
-I called Stephen King! He was British, and had no time for me.
-I over heard one of my co-workers on the phone. He said, “You don’t speak English? Only a little? OK, I’ll see if I can have someone call you back in Spanish.” He hung up and then asked everyone in the room, “Does anyone here speak Spanish?” I meekly said I did. I was nervous to make the call. I ended up have a delightful conversation in Spanish with an especially gracious man. It went well. I felt amazing afterwards.
-The first worst answering machine in Bellingham was one of those fake “Hello” ones. It was the longest fake hello greetings I’ve ever heard. I was really faked out by it. The second worst was little dogs barking. Oh I hated it!
-I was supposed to ask everybody “Does anyone in your household use a bike for transportation? There were many older folks who I called that scoffed at me when I asked that question. I’m 70 or 80 years old they would say. Obviously I can’t ride a bike. I thought they would be insulted if I assumed they couldn’t ride a bike. Of course this is coming from someone who has grandparents that are more fit than anyone else in my family. But there was one 80 year old Chinese man who I talked to that said he would like to ride a bike but he didn’t have one. He asked if I could help him get a bike. He followed with the statement, “I’m 80 years old but I’m a healthy man!”
-The last story is about the most enthusiastic man in the whole world! I had the pleasure of doing follow up calls. I called people who had ordered information from the Smart Trips program, and asked them if they received everything they ordered and were they satisfied with it. This man who the story is about answered the phone by saying in a (what I imagined to be) Greek accent “Greetings and Salutations!” I was taken back by this. I thought maybe he was being sarcastic. “Oh, hi.” I said. “My name is Lydia. I was just calling to see if you received the package from Smart Trips.” This is basically what he said, “OH Yes! We did! When we got that package at our door it made us sooo happy! We were just going around like nothing, and then we received this big, huge package, and it made our day! Then we used the bus to go to the fair. They whole family went! What you did was wonderful thing. You have made us so happy! We’re going to remember you’re name, Lydia. We’ll put your name on one of our walls and dedicate the wall to your name!”
I’m not joking. He really said that.