Telephone Foot Soldiers

It's like trench warfare, or any warfare for that matter. My current job consists alternately of helping fellow employees with computer issues and handling directory assistance calls. It's the latter that I'm referring to here.

Many of the calls I receive are from other call centers. Most of the time, these callers are impolite, rather rude and rushed. Every now and then, though, I get a kindred spirit. You can hear it clearly in their voices; "this is not my first choice for work". I suppose they are all like that to a degree, though some truly excel at it (years ago, I did). For those of us to whom it is simply "work', though, it seems beneath us. "Truly, is this the best I can do?" seems to permeate your psyche when you're in that position.

It is almost akin to those stories we've oft heard about, where opposing sides in warfare call a momentary ceasefire to exchange in goods, or goodwill for that matter. Aside form truly hardened, professional soldiers, most were simply there for the duration and hoped to return to their previous careers as farmers, bankers and what have you. They were not interested in going out and killing each other, but they answered the call of duty (or were simply drafted). Until the Second World War, the enemy was almost always in sight, a few yards away quite often. As awkward as this sounds, that had a humanizing effect on combat; you saw who you're shooting at, and quite often they looked like our neighbors. You knew they were human, which is why our leaders in the field took so many pains to remove the humanity from combat. If you perceived that you were shooting at monsters, it was easier to do the task; you were less likely to empathize. Yet we all knew too well that that man huddled in the trench nearby may have a family, anxiously awaiting his return home.

It was those wonderfully short little moments, where the gunfire would cease and the shelling stop, that humanity would make a brief reappearance. Sometimes it was to allow the injured or dying to be removed from the field. Sometimes, it was to exchange rations. And every so often, it would be for a moment of peace during those most holy days. During those times, we remembered that the opponents were just men, mere mortals.

Likening trench warfare to telemarketing is probably a stretch. But in both instances, those that run the operation view those on the receiving end as something other than (or less than) human; for them, they are simply numbers; goals to be achieved and not people to be bothered. As with warfare, there are skilled practitioners, professionals who take to their jobs with a certain aplomb. Then there are those who are simply there because it seems to be the best they can do, though not by choice. You can hear it, in their voices, the weary sound of a common foot soldier doing a job that they do not desire but still have no choice but to do. The alternative, unemployment, is worse. Too often they know that an unsuccessful contact is a hit on their quota, that the numbers that have been set out before them are not being met. Their failure to pull the trigger or hit the target resounds through the effective kills of their platoon. And this is a "kill or be killed" environment. They know this. Their targets, however, are never as sympathetic, something that I too admit to.

But I have no problem hanging up on the go-getters, the die hards, the pros. It's the others I feel for, and usually apologize to.

They're just foot soldiers.