I go into people’s homes for a living, from suburban McMansions to dumpy apartments. I see their family photos on the mantel; I smell what they’re cooking in their kitchens, and what they’ve let rot there. I wriggle through their crawlspaces and behind their furnaces. I go behind their couches, dressers and beds and see what they’ve let accumulate. I see who has FOX news on TV or Limbaugh on the radio. I see the guns; locked up safely or lying around. I see who cleans up after their pets and who doesn’t, who let’s their dirty laundry pile up in great mounds and who leaves old dirty dishes in the sink to grow fuzzy.
I also smell the lingering pot aroma they though was long gone and I finally understand how my parents always knew. I find their hidden porn stashes. I see how many meds they’re taking, and what kind.
I hear the ways in which families speak to each other; with obvious respect and love or barely concealed antagonism. I can tell which kids will grow up just as ignorant as their parents, and which parents are clueless about their kids.
I see the things that accumulate in people’s homes, the forgotten things in the forgotten corners. Puzzles, books, guitars with missing strings, toys, Christmas decorations, crutches from some long ago injury, photo albums, picture frames. Some of these things make me sad sometimes, especially the toys. And the guitars, of course.
I’ve gotten to know these people more than I would have ever imagined and I think I can tell some pretty interesting stories about them, about their lives. There are people in suburbia trying desperately to keep up the pretense of prosperity but who are obviously in financial trouble. Neighbors who for some, probably forgotten, reason hate each other. So much so that they’re willing use the phone man as a pawn in their feuds. That’s what they call me when I show up at their door; the Phone Man. They don’t know, nor care probably, that my actual job title is Customer Service Specialist, Cable Repair and Maintenance Technician. “The phone man is here.”, “You gonna fix my phone?”, “Are you here to cut on my internet?” Yup, that’s me and that’s why I’m here and in some ways I know you better than you know yourselves.
How many homes do you think the average person will go into in a lifetime? There are some people, salesmen and the like, who undoubtedly have gone into many more than I have. But, when a salesman or the Avon lady comes over he or she only sees the façade; the living room or the kitchen. When people expect that kind of visit they usually, you know, straighten up a bit.
For some reason they don’t do that when the phone man is coming, they leave those dishes piled up in the sink and that dog shit piled up in the yard and that dirty laundry piled up on the floor and, sometimes, that cocaine piled up on the coffee table. They don’t bother to clear away the spider webs accumulated at the wiring box or the weeds and vines and picker bushes and poison ivy in the yard. They leave large pieces of furniture in front of the exact spot they want me to install an internet port and then get pissy when I say we need to move it. They don’t offer to back their car out of the driveway and watch impassively while I try to wrestle a ladder around it without scratching anything.
Some of them want to give me things; soda, coffee, food, vegetables from the garden, beer, sex, money. Lots of people offer me money. Some people are nice, some are dicks and some are just plain crazy.
Many of these people are already pissed off at (my company) for one reason or another and, increasingly, I can sympathize. They've been getting the run around long before I get there and they decide to take it out on me. Believe me I understand. I deal with the same frustrating phone trees they do, trying to speak to an actual human being, only to finally reach some rude know-nothing asshole. I know what it’s like to be put on hold, as if my time was unimportant, only to get a non-answer or be transferred somewhere else to go through the whole thing again with some other dipshit.
When I get to the house people are ready to explode and they finally have a real, live person in front of them to unload on. When this happens I have to stand there and take it. The phone man is expected to always be polite and knowledgeable. If I’m asked a question regarding stuff I know nothing about, I’m expected to be able to find the answer. I’m supposed to be able to do a whole lot of things not in my actual job description.
I’m supposed to make right all the myriad mistakes other branches of my company have made due to downsizing and outsourcing and plain old incompetence. I’m supposed to figure out confusing, incomplete, contradictory or just plain fucked-up work orders. I’m expected to never show my own frustration or exhaustion or discomfort. I have to let customers vent at me, let them get personal and insulting.
Management guidelines tell me to use phrases like “I understand your frustration.” I’m never ever supposed to argue with or insult a customer, even though some could really use a verbal smackdown. I cannot tell them that the reason they’ve had such a bad experience and have had to wait so long for service is because of top-down decisions at the corporate level made by accountants and managers; people who have never worked in the field they are now running, and profiting from. People who wouldn’t make it through a good day doing my job let alone a bad one.
I can’t say any of those things for I am the Phone Man, still standing despite round after round of layoffs and cutbacks and outsourcing and penny-wise pound-foolish decision making. Still expected to maintain a massive, and massively neglected, infrastructure which the money boys have evidently decided is only good for profit extraction, not investment.
In the almost fifteen years I’ve been doing this job, I have seen a lot. Funny things, sad things, infuriating things, weird and amazing things. I’ve kept a journal and I’ve taken pictures. There’s something about going to people’s homes to conduct business that is fundamentally different than having them come to you. You see a lot. Good, bad and ugly.
You also see that, despite our superficial differences and disagreements, we are all basically the same. We all want what's best for our families. We're all just trying to get through the confusing, frightening, stressed out mess that modern living has become in the United States.
I hope we do the right thing by electing progressives November 6th. They deserve it. We deserve it. We need it. GOTV!