By Any Other Clock

“And when’s the earliest that will arrive?”

“Wednesday.”

“Wednesday? I’m only in Kansas.”

“And the warehouse is in New Jersey. That’s three to four business days of transport time.”

“That’s ridiculous. It wouldn’t take me three to four days to drive to New Jersey myself!”

“Would you like to pick it up from the warehouse then?”

“Look, smartass, I’m paying for this to be shipped. And when I pay for something I expect it fast.”

“Three to four business days is standard delivery time via FedEx Ground. If you’d like it faster we could send it out via their Priority Overnight, but that would cost more.”

“More? More?! You guys are robbing me blind as it is.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but we’re not the actual shippers. We’re merely relaying to you the shipping costs as per FedEx.”

“Three to four days is ridiculous. That’s too slow. Don’t you have planes or something? This is the twentieth century, for Christ’s sake.”

“As I mentioned sir, air shipping would cost more.”

“I’m not paying any more for shipping!”

“I am well aware of that, sir.”

“This is stupid. You’re stupid. I can’t believe it takes you guys so damn long to drive a truck. I know for a fact you can drive faster than that. Isn’t there anything else we can do about this?”

“Not with you only paying for ground, sir.”

“I AM NOT PAYING ANY GODDAMN MORE FOR SHIPPING!”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t believe you have the balls to keep trying to gouge me for more shipping. You work on commission or something?”

“No, sir.”

“You get paid extra if I pay extra, that’s it, right?”

“No, sir, I’m salaried; I really could care less what you do”

“You money-hungry son of a bitch. You know, commission is what’s wrong with this country. Everyone’s out for themselves now, they don’t care about us customers at all.”

“Sir, as I stated earlier, the shipping costs are through FedEx, not Parkman Publishing. There’s really nothing I can do to change that if you’re not willing to pay for expedited shipping. Which you’ve made very clear you aren’t. So, honestly, right now? I’m just trying to get your package out of the warehouse and you off of my phone.”

“That’s real nice, kid. I’m glad you take pride in your work.”

“A happy customer is my only joy in life, sir.”

“Look, Eddidyousayyournamewas? I need those books by Monday, but I am not paying a dime extra for shipping. I don’t see why you can’t make that happen.”

“Sir, today is Friday. And you’re paying ground rates for ground shipping. That is the slowest and cheapest form of shipping available. It’s going to take three to four business days.”

“That’s unacceptable.”

“Well, until magic becomes a viable method of transportation, you’re kind of stuck with it.”

“I want to talk to your manager.”

“Right away, sir.”

Eric put the call on hold and took off his headset. He had only been at work for forty-five minutes, but it felt like at least one hundred and twenty. Which, coincidentally enough, was how long it would be before he could sign out for a break.

Eric slumped back in his chair and stared at the blinking Hold light. Two hours, he thought. He stood up and stretched, his arms nearly colliding with the fluorescent lighting that dangled overhead. Good thing this guy’s a douchebag.



In the kitchen, Eric poured himself a cup of stale, burnt office coffee. As he added milk and lots of sugar he casually flirted with Molly, one of the cuter temps, trying not to make too much of an ass out of himself, then slowly shuffled his way back to toward his desk.

He walked right past it and into the opening of his neighbor’s cubicle.

“Hey, Shannon, you on a call?”

Shannon dazedly lifted her head from her desk. She looked at her phone.

“Uh... no, not right this second, no.”

“Wanna be my supervisor?”

“Maybe?”

“Some guy’s complaining about shipping.”

“OK.”

“Thinks it’s too expensive.”

“OK.”

“And I, uh, I may have... used the magic line again.”

“Eric...”

“I know, I know.”

“Has that ever worked?”

“Well, the first time. And a couple times they just hung up, so, yeah.”

“You’re an idiot. Send him over.”

“You’re the best, Shannon.”



Eric transferred the call and could hear Shannon through the slightly thicker than cardboard divider.

“Shannon speaking, how can I help y... Yes, I’m the manag... No, I’m... Yes, ye... Well, I’m sorry, sir, but our stand... Yes, I can see how you thought he was rude but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right... Yes, sir... No, sir... No, sir... Three to four business days, sir... Saturday and Sunday are not business days, sir... I’m not sure, sir, I didn’t have a hand in the creation of our nationally accepted business mores...”

Eric’s phone rang.

“No, sir, s’mores are chocolate and marshmallow graham cracker sandwiches, that’s... that’s not what I said at all, sir.”

Eric’s phone rang again. He sighed.

“Thank you for calling Parkman Publishing, this is Eric speaking.”


***


“So, Eric.”

“So, Jessica.”

Jessica sat in the cube opposite Shannon. Shannon, as mentioned, sat next to Eric, thus making Jessica a diagonal neighbor of Eric. This is important because--due to the complete disregard for acoustics and decency most call centers possess--sounds only carried as far as the desk catty-cornered to the speaker. The end result is an awful lot of four-cube camaraderie and an office full of unfamiliar faces.

Jessica, Shannon, and Eric, however, were missing a fourth, and had to converse that much more frequently to make up the deficit. They may as well have been blood relations.

“You and Molly seemed to be hitting it off pretty well.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“The temp you were... Thank you for calling Parkman Publishing...”

Jessica’s voice dropped to a more professional tone. Eric had to strain his ears only the slightest bit to eavesdrop.

“Because it’s not yet published, sir. We can’t sell a book that doesn’t exist.”

Hardly worth the effort, thought Eric. He straightened a paper clip and began threading it through the lip of his empty Styrofoam coffee cup.

“The temp you were talking to this morning.”

“The blonde?”

“Yeah.”

“Her name’s... Thank you for calling Parkman Publishing...”

It only took a moment for Eric to track the customer’s package. Jessica occupied her time accordingly.

“Her name’s Molly? I thought it was Michelle.”

“Michelle’s the brunette.”

“Short hair?”

“Ass-length.”

“Then who’s the one with short hair?”

“Megan.”

“Megan...”

“She’s married. Thank you for calling...”

Eric took this opportunity to decide he no longer cared which one Megan was.

“Anyway, Molly seems nice.”

“Yeah, but she’s a temp, she’ll probably be gone in a week. Thank you for calling...”

Jessica hummed along with an unidentified song she had stuck in her head until Eric was finished.

“A week is plenty of time!”

“Not for me it isn’t. I need the better part of three months.”

“You picked up that last temp... Thank you for calling...”

Eric began drawing a face on the Styrofoam cup.

“You picked her up pretty quickly.”

“I was angry and she was... Thank you for calling...”

Jessica began making up lyrics for the tune in her head.

“She was extraordinarily gullible.”

“So, get angry again. Woman like assholes.”

“But I don’t like being an asshole.”

“You’re an asshole... Thank you for calling...”

Eric meticulously added stubble to his Styrofoam head.

“You’re an asshole to customers every day.”

“And I hate my job. Thank you for calling...”

Most of the words Jessica was coming up with weren’t really words in the conventional sense.

“I don’t need to add contempt for my girlfriend to my list of problems.”

“Just swap it out with your lack of a girlfriend.”

“Now who’s being an asshole.”

“I bet I’ll score with Molly before you do.”

“Hey,” said Shannon, “can you guys stop saying ‘asshole?’ I’m on the phone with a nun and she’s getting annoyed.”


***


Shannon, wearing her headset and tethered to her phone, put a knee on her desk and pulled herself up to the top of the flimsy cubicle wall separating her from the rest of the office. She peered over it and across the call center floor. She’d found that if she stretched her back and tilted her head just right, she could catch a glimpse of the corner of her supervisor’s office window.

It was gorgeous outside.

“This... this has got to be illegal thank you for calling Parkman Publishing, this is Shannon speaking,” she said, climbing back off her desk.

Eric looked at his wall and shrugged, not entirely sure if that had been the start of a conversation or simply Shannon growing restless and loopy. He went back to staring at the Hold light on his phone and sipping his third cup of coffee for the day, contemplating the various ways he could take his own supervisor call.

“Because we don’t own FedEx, ma’am.”

Shannon, meanwhile, was starting to get loud.

“What do you want me to do, ma’am? If you want your books they have to be shipped to you and that means they’re going to need to be packaged and sent out on a truck or on a plane and that means you’re going to have to pay the shipping company for th... Look, lady, until magic becomes a viable method of transportation, that’s your only option.”

Eric couldn’t stop himself from cackling with delight.

“Did you just cackle?” asked Jessica.

“What’s wrong with cackling?”

It was then that Shannon growled. It was adorable and kind of effeminate, but it was definitely a growl.

“Oh my God; I hate everyone.”

“Rough call, Shannon?” asked Jessica.

“People are idiots. All of them.”

“That sounds about right,” said Eric.

“God, I want to go hooooome.”

“Only another four hours.”

Shannon climbed up on her desk again and craned her neck toward the window once more.

“This mid-shift sucks.”

“Thank you for calling Parkman Publishing,” added Jessica.

Shannon continued to stare out the sliver of window available to her, watching the leaves fluttering on the wind, imagining that same warm breeze drifting across her face and through her hair. She sighed.

“You ever get the feeling,” she asked, resting her chin on top of the cubicle wall, “that something’s going on out there and we’re missing it?”

“All the time,” said Eric.

“I always feel so isolated in here, cut off from the outside world.”

Shannon’s phone rang.

“Well, OK, no, that’s not right,” she continued, “but...”

“It definitely feels like this place forgets it’s a part of everything else or... something...,” said Eric.

Shannon’s phone rang again.

“Like being in a casino in Las Vegas,” he added.

“Yes! Yes. Holy crap, exactly.”

Shannon’s phone rang once more.

“The world could be ending out there and we’d never even know it,” she said.

“I can’t say I’d be surprised if they tried to make us work through Armageddon.”

Shannon’s phone did not ring a fourth time.

“Huh. That’s weird,” said Shannon.



It had been fifteen solid minutes since anyone’s phone had last rung. Even the guy Eric had been keeping on hold had hung up. The entire customer service department was beginning to get worried. But, more than that, they were bored. Fifteen minutes in a call center is an eternity by any other clock. The muffled sound of ambient, idle chatter was growing in volume.

“Holy crap,” said Eric, “I can hear people other than you two.”

“I know,” said Shannon, “it’s spooky, right?”

Eric and Shannon stood in their cubicles and listened as the sound of distant, indistinct speech slowly began to change into discrete, defined voices and words and conversations.

Shannon shuddered.

“That is so creepy.”

“What do you think’s going on?” asked Jessica from her chair.

“Phones probably went down is all,” said Eric.

“Wouldn’t they tell us?”

“I’m sure we’ll get an e-mail or something about it soon enough.”

“E-mail’s down, too” said Shannon.

“Well, there you go then.”

“I don’t get it, what’s that have to do with the phones not ringing?” asked Jessica.

“They tied that one system into the phone lines, remember? So that a customer’s info pops right up on our screens? Network goes down, everything goes down now.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

Eric knew that was patently retarded. He knew that their e-mail being down didn’t mean a thing; the server went down a half dozen times a day. He also knew that Parkman Publishing had set up each system independent of the others specifically to keep just such a calamity of service from ever happening. In fact, Eric knew enough about those systems that he could have run a few tests and discovered exactly which one it was causing the problem if he wanted to. Eric knew all of that, but, more importantly, he knew that fifteen minutes of downtime was a stunningly rare occurence, and therefore he wasn’t actually thinking about any of it.

Jessica, on the other hand, was clueless as to how anything in the office worked beyond the handful of actions she needed to perform her daily tasks, and, even then, wasn’t exactly a font of confidence on the matter. Given that she had, on more than one occasion, needed Eric’s assistance reconnecting to the department’s printer after inadvertently and mysteriously disconnecting herself from it, she was more than willing to blindly take his word on anything even vaguely resembling technology.

Shannon was thinking about bunnies.



Twenty minutes passed before Sheila--Shannon, Jessica, and Eric’s direct supervisor-- grew tired enough with filling dirty words into crossword puzzles that actually doing her job began to seem like a fun idea. She wandered from cubicle to cubicle, making small talk and just generally checking in with her employees, one of whom she couldn’t remember having ever met. Eventually, she made her way over to Shannon’s desk.

After discussing the therapeutic merits of a glass of red wine and an episode of Grey’s Anatomy with Shannon for a good five minutes, Sheila suddenly felt compelled by her salary and title to reiterate, in person, what had previously been sent out in a mass e-mail to the department: No one in the building was actually sure why the phones weren’t ringing. All the equipment, as far as anyone could tell, was working fine. It would appear, she said, that customers simply weren’t calling.

“That’s ridiculous,” said Eric. “People always call. Even when they shouldn’t.”

“Especially when they shouldn’t,” added Shannon.

“Agreed,” said Sheila, “but that doesn’t change things. They’re just not calling.”

“You think they’ll let us go home then?”

Sheila raised an eyebrow and scoffed. Shannon frowned and slumped to her chair.

“Something must have happened,” said Jessica.

“Probably something pretty terrible, too,” consoled Shannon.

“You’re being awfully cavalier about this.”

Shannon shrugged.

Jessica couldn’t see the gesture from her desk.

“Shannon?”

“Huh? Oh. I shrugged.”

“Ah. OK.”

“Nothing’s happened, Jessica,” said Sheila, in her most managerial tone. “It hasn’t even been an hour yet. It’s just incredibly slow.”

“It is never this slow.”

Sheila had walked over to Eric’s cube. She leaned on the edge of wall that would most directly equivocate to a door jamb.

“Well, it is today. Why don’t you just relax and enjoy it?”

“Something’s going on out there, I know it.”

“If anything was happening, someone would find some way to tell us something about it.”

“Hey, they could very well be trying,” said Eric, spinning in his chair. “This place is a cell phone dead zone.”

“Moms and husbands and girlfriends might be frantically calling right this minute,” added Shannon, “and we’d never know!”

“You guys... you really aren’t helping,” supervised Sheila. “At all.”

“Oh my God, what if they’re right?” asked Jessica, the panic noticeable in her voice.

“Goddamn it,” said Sheila, rolling her head and then speaking directly to the corner of Eric’s cubicle. “We’re fine, Jessica. So very, very fine. We are so unbelievably interconnected with the world, it’s scary. If anything happened or was happening or whatever, we’d get a call on one of the eighty billion landlines we have here, or someone would send an e-mail, or something. If we needed to know what was going on out there, we would.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“Because that’s the way it always happens, Jessica. Every terrorist scare, every plane crash, every global disaster. Word gets out. Nothing’s going on.”

“Well, it’d still be nice if they could at least unblock the internet or something so we could know for sure.”

“You just want to look at your crazy, eighteenth century clown porn,” said Eric.

“That wasn’t porn, that was an art book.”

“There was definite clown-on-clown sex action going on. That in no way constitutes any kind of art.”

“Tech support,” said Sheila loudly and abruptly, “is working on it.”

“The porn or the internet?” asked Eric.

“The internet, jackass. Jessica’s not the only one getting spooked. That, and we’re all getting incredibly bored.”

“That,” said Shannon, hopping back up on her desk and now ornamented with a highlighter-yellow, copy paper tiara, “is because you’re not trying hard enough.”



Another thirty minutes passed. Judging from the sounds of unconstrained speech and genuine laughter periodically carrying across the call center, it seemed as though people were almost beginning to enjoy themselves.

Through it all, an air raid siren could dimly be heard.

“That can’t be good,” said Jessica.

“Why are you still sitting at your desk?” asked Shannon, still in her tiara and now adorned with a matching yellow Post It note scarf. “Come over here. I’m teaching Eric to dance.”

“Not very well,” said Eric, wearing a paperclip tie and a crown made out of old invoices.

“Hey, I’m teaching just fine; your feet aren’t learning properly.”

“I don’t think it’s so much my feet as my hips.”

“You are remarkably rigid, yes.”

“Well, you’re holding me pretty close.”

“Hey. I’m engaged, mister.”

“Yeah, but you never talk about him...”

“Neither of you is even remotely concerned about why no one’s calling?” asked Jessica. “Or why that siren is going off?”

“There’s an air raid siren on the roof of the school down the street from my apartment. Goes off every Saturday at noon. Sirens don’t mean anything, Jessica.”

The air raid siren could faintly be heard again.

“Well, I’m sure that siren means something.”

“Maybe some third world country exploded itself.”

“That wouldn’t keep the average American consumer off the phones,” said Shannon. “Something domestic must have been exploded.”

“I’m more than willing to crawl under your desk with you if you’re afraid of being exploded, Jessica. That goes for you too, Shannon.”

“That is remarkably chivalrous of you, Eric,” said Shannon, twirling away from him, “but I highly doubt you or that desk is going to keep me from being all exploded. I appreciate the gesture, though. The thought that counts and all that.”

Eric pulled Shannon closer again.

“I like to think I’m indestructible. And that I can set things on fire with my brain.”

“You two are unbelievably callous,” said Jessica. “And, for what it’s worth, neither of you used the word ‘exploded’ correctly.”

“Look, if you’re so worried, why don’t you just call your husband and ask him if it’s the apocalypse or not,” said Eric.

“Well, he’s working, and I don’t want to... I mean, that would...”

“Seem kind of foolish? Especially when it turns out we’re not all about to die?”

“I don’t know if I’d say foolish...”

“Morbid, pessimistic, unfathomably paranoid?” suggested Shannon.

“What? No, no, that’s not what I... I mean, yeah, it would be, all of those, and it’d be pretty foolish, too, I agree, I was just... I don’t think I’d have actually used the word ‘foolish’ to describe it.”

“That was an unnecessary clarification...”

“I was just letting you know where I stand.”

“But you’re sitting.”

“That does it,” said Eric, dipping Shannon with great enthusiasm and significantly less skill, “I am burning the next six dictionaries I see.”



By five o’clock the population of the call center had thinned out considerably. The finance and Nationals departments had closed at four-thirty, with the majority of the customer service department following soon after. The only employees remaining were the unfortunate few scheduled to work a middle or closing shift on what had turned out to be the slowest Friday in the history of Parkman Publishing.

At five-fifteen, Sheila--the sole remaining supervisor at this point—was roused from her shallow slumber by the gentle ‘ping’ of a new e-mail. The message was full of typos and poor grammar and looked as though it had been hastily written by someone unfamiliar with the idea, much less the mechanics, of a Blackberry. It was from one of the vice presidents of the company.

Well, there you go, she thought.

As she sifted through the contorted English, she began to wonder why a vice president, in a division that had nothing to do with customer service, would have sent out what amounted to a general information e-mail to such a sporadic grouping of managers. Then she got to the part that said she could leave early.

Sheila was up and out of her office before her computer had finished shutting down.



Shannon was sitting on her desk, wearing her tiara, a full, flowing cape of Post It notes, and bracelets that looked as though they were once coffee cups. Eric was sitting on the floor opposite her, leaning against the wall. He had created an entire vest out of paperclips.

“That,” said Sheila, “is highly impressive.”

“Thank you.”

“I just wanted to let you guys know that you can leave if you want. Corporate sent over the OK.”

“They finally realized it was costing them more to keep us here than it was to let us go?” asked Shannon.

“Uh, no, actually. There was a fire or something over at the main building. They said that due to the ‘extenuating circumstances’ everyone could go home if they so desired.”

“What if we don’t want to go, though?”

“Why wouldn’t you want to go?”

“I’d kind of rather get paid to do nothing here than not get paid to sit in traffic.”

“I’d kind of rather just not be here myself,” said Sheila, “but you do whatever you want. The e-mail didn’t say anything about a mandatory shutdown so I don’t see why you can’t.”

The wail of the air raid siren could be heard again.

“Any idea what that is?” asked Jessica.

“Nope. Don’t really care, either,” said Sheila. “See you guys Monday.”

“You are an amazing supervisor, Sheila,” said Eric.

“I know.”

And with that, Sheila was gone.

“Well,” said Jessica, “I think I’m gonna take off, too.”

“Quitter,” said Eric.

“You’re staying?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Why not, indeed,” said Jessica, shutting down her computer. “I’m sure you two’ll find some way to entertain yourselves for the next two hours.”

“So," interrupted Shannon, "corporate just went ahead and burned itself to the ground. That’s a pretty lame catastrophe as far as I’m concerned.”

“I’m a little surprised no one told us earlier.”

“I’m not,” said Eric. “Almost every other department in this company is over there. If the building was evacuated, which I’m assuming it was, how, and why, would anyone tell us anything? I’m pretty sure they were more concerned with saving the company and not dying than they were with giving us updates on the status.”

Jessica shrugged. “I guess that makes sense. It just seems strange that it took so long to get word out to us.”

“Not really. Have you seen how pretty and shiny corporate is? We’ve never been more than an afterthought to them.”

“Still doesn’t explain the phones, though,” said Shannon.

“True. But if you turned on the news and heard some company was on fire, would you really call up and try to order from them?”

“No, but I’m intelligent.”

“Touché.”

“Maybe somebody in corporate put some sort of message on the phone lines, telling anyone who called what was going on?” suggested Jessica.

“Maybe,” said Shannon, “but if someone did take the time to do that don’t you think they’d have told someone here?”

“You seem to be forgetting the fact that our company is massive and evil and run by monkeys.”

“Why are you working here, again?” asked Jessica.

“I think I was a monkey in a former life,” said Shannon.

“Shannon?”

“Sorry. I’ve been eating sugar packets all day.”

“So that’s where they went,” said Eric.

The air raid siren began again, but was silenced by the sound of a colossal explosion. A violent tremor shook the building.

“What the fuck was that?”

Shannon adjusted her position on the desk and looked out Sheila’s window.

“Guys... There is an awful lot of smoke outside all of a sudden...”

Eric got up off the floor and went to Shannon’s computer. He opened the browser window and aimed it toward CNN.com.

“Well, at least tech support lifted the... Holy shit.”

“What?” asked Shannon, leaning over to see the screen. “Well. I’ll be damned.”

“Hey, Jessica, it looks like you were right all along.”

Jessica walked over to Shannon’s cubicle and was now standing behind Eric, staring at the same headline.

“I don’t believe it,” said Jessica.

“It’s just crazy,” said Shannon.

“It’s fucking awesome is what it is,” said Eric.

A commotion began swirling around the three of them as every last one of the remaining inhabitants of the call center packed up their belongings and ran screaming for the exits. Not a single member of the fleeing mass was even pretending to remember what ‘calm,’ ‘cool,’ or ‘collected’ meant.

“How are you possibly excited about this?” asked Jessica.

“How are you not?”

The sound of a fax machine being hurled through a window momentarily cut through the panic.

“It is kind of awesome,” admitted Shannon.

The clamoring panic made its way back to the forefront.

“What is wrong with the two of you?!” asked Jessica.

“What? You’re saying your heart isn’t racing?”

“You’ve never gotten that rush,” asked Eric, “thinking about being a part of some spectacular catastrophe?”

“No, mostly I’ve just been thankful it wasn’t me,” said Jessica.

“Then you must’ve been doing something wrong,” said Shannon.

“And, besides,” said Eric, “this time it is you.”

“And me!” added Shannon. “And you, too, Eric.”

“I am not involved in this!” said Jessica. “And I’m not going to be.”

“Yes, you are,” said Eric. “We all are.”

There was another bang. The building shuddered.

“Look, Jessica, this isn’t just some isolated incident,” he continued. “This is the end of the motherfucking world. The moon just exploded. Pieces of it are crashing into cities and towns and roads all over this hemisphere.”

“Exposition! Proper grammatical usage!” blurted out Shannon inexplicably.

“Armageddon is no time to be vague or inarticulate, my dear.”

“Oh, certainly not.”

“You guys are fucked up,” said Jessica. “I’m leaving.”

“Suit yourself,” said Eric.

“Have fun getting smooshed by space rocks,” added Shannon.

“That was kind of mean,” said Eric.

“She was kind of a bitch.”

There was another explosion. The lights in the building flickered twice before going out.

Eric and Shannon sat on Shannon’s desk, dressed in office supplies, as the sound of screeching tires and assorted profanities drifted in through broken windows.

“So,” said Shannon, “what do you want to do now?”

“Any sugar packets left?”