Calling the Common Good

Like most of America at one time or another in the twenty first century, Aaron worked at a call center. This call center was called Telephila because it directed it's attention towards philanthropic fundraising.

Philanthropy used to mean love of mankind but at Telephila, philanthropy translated into voluntary giving for the common good.

The telefunders at Telephila considered themselves the good guys and they were, most of 'em anyways.

Telephila raised money for non-profit organizations, namely hospitals, colleges and art organizations. The good guys at Telephila supported education, health and culture. What could be wrong about that?

All of the callers at Telephila, including Aaron, were part timers. All of the callers, Aaron included, were paid by the hour and had no health benefits.

They, including Aaron, could be terminated at any time for any or no reason. A couple of motnhs earleir, Vic the guy who did most of the terminating for no reason was himself terminated for no reason.

Many were terminated for many different reasons or for no reason at all, just like Vic but with somewhat less irony.

Most of those who survived quit and tried to forget all the good that they had done.

Aaron was a veteran. He had survived for four years. During that time, Aaron had seen many terminations and even more poofs.

A poof occurred when a worker all of a sudden failed to show up, falied to call in and was never seen again.

Before his Saturday shift began, while he was walking past a co-worker named Lisa, Aaron started singing "My Girl" under his breath.

Lisa heard him and said "Sounds like you missed your calling".

Aaron replied "You got that right. Look where I'm working"

Lisa looked around at the callers settling into their cubicles. She looked at her cube. She started to laugh.

"Matter of fact," Aaron continued "I think you could make a case that everybody in this place has missed their calling and that's why we're here in the first place. We all ought to wear a big name tag that says 'I missed my calling'."

"Maybe because we missed our calling, it's our fate to spend all of our work time calling people on the phone" observed Lisa.
 
"If all of us who have missed our calling suddenly found our calling and stopped calling would those folks who didn't get our calls anymore miss our calling" wondered Aaron.

"The common good would suffer" responded Lisa.

"Well how bad could the common good be if everyone showed up for their calling instead of staying home and waiting for us to call them" Aaron wondered.

And most of America, in the twenty first century was wondering the same thing.

As usual, a couple hours later, in the midst of his calling, Aaron became less certain that he had missed his calling.

Perhaps calling WAS his calling after all.

According to the numbers he was good at it. His dollars per contact were more dollars per contact than the dollars predicted per contact so as far as caller rankings went....Aaron was always much better than one hundred percent.

For Aaron, it was normal to double per contact the predicted dollars per contact.  This meant that Aaron routinely was twice as effective as the norm. 

As a matter of fact, a guy named Norm sat a couple cubicles down from Aaron and as usual, he was having an horrendous time getting anyone to contribute to the common good.

AAron was five times as effective as this particular Norm.

Abject failure was the norm for Norm. Aaron knew that Norm wouldn't be on the phones for long. Calling was definitely not the calling for Norm.

That didn't mean that promotion was impossible for Norm. Just as some folks were fired for no apparent reason, other people were promoted for no apparent reason. The people who were promoted for no apparent reason did have one thing in common, they were all very poor at calling. Most of them built phony rapport during the call because they were afraid to make an ask. They went on and on about themselves instead of listening to the prospect.When they finally did make their ask, the prospect, knowing that the caller would understand, made up a lame excuse for not voluntarily giving to the common good. The caller understood. The caller offered no objection response. Another refusal. Another step towards promotion or termination. 

Many of those who had been promoted for no apparent reason suddenly became great callers the moment that they stopped calling. They became the harshest of critics, the most feared and merciless of supervisors during their brief reigns of terror. They fired many a good caller for no apparent reason until one day for reasons that were usually very apparent, they themselves were fired.

Usually, the very apparent reason was anger management.

Since Norm had only been aboard a week or two, Aaron didn't know if Norm might turn into a poof or a supervisor with a chip on his shoulder. Even though Aaron encountered and observed Norm daily, even hourly, an uneasy curiosity fueled by a suppressed need to communicate existed between the two of them.

Aaron resisted that temptation.

Aaron wanted to remain an indifferent stranger to Norm for awhile until he started to get a better evaluation of Norm's supervisory potential. For all Aaron knew, Norm was a mouse studying to be a rat.