November 1, 2014
We keep our land line for unknown reasons, mostly out of habit. It's set to ring twice, then the answering machine picks up with the message, "This is Al and Sheila, We are not at home, so please leave a message." and then almost always there is silence. The robo dialer at the other end may have been set to move on to the next, hopefully live response, or the human dialer optimized his/her effort by hanging up on messages.
Today, having just come back from a walk around the neighborhood enhanced by something rare in this Southern California town, the brisk feeling of Fall in the air, I was upbeat. Last night was also a rare event, as we went down to Main Street, where we found an empty table at the diner right next to the lady who was giving out Halloween candy. There were throngs of children with their parents walking by, the little ones being picked up to reach her big basket and say the magic words, "trick or treat." The lady, Sally, would say, "you can take one of the candies," and if the child forgot, the mother would remind her to tell the lady, "thank you."
For a few minutes when Sally had to take a break she asked me to take her place, and I had the honor of being the giver of goodies. The ages were varied. There was a very small smiling package dressed like a bee, complete with wings, whose Mom told how only two month previously she was still part of her own body (well those weren't her words, but that was the case) "If this kid can hold a piece of candy at about 60 days since birth, what will she be doing at five or maybe seventeen?, I thought When they returned after walking the length of this event, maybe an hour later I noted, to the crowd, "She is now about point one percent older than when she just passed by." And Mom responded with a smile, "and she's heavier too."
Then there was a stunning thin young woman whose costume dress and high heels made her look unusually tall. As she reached over for her candy. She told Sally with a smile, "It's O.K. I'm only seventeen." It was maybe an hour and a half we were there, and then the children started to thin out. Fun is fun, but they can only take so much. Towards the end, as the kids were mostly gone, a final act was a man in a long trench coat skulking down the street. He stopped, and picking out victims, with a villainous laugh flashed opened the coat, exposing a two foot long sequined parody of what could give the average guy either great pleasure or serious inconvenience. At the same moment there appeared two young women who could have been aspiring actresses dressed in police outfits. I did my best to get out my video camera and arrange a confrontation, but they the flasher and cops had gone in different directions. But the fun of it all lingered, as it was time to take our leave and head back home.
Now, after a peaceful night sleep and our walk, I decided to pick up the phone rather than let the answering machine do its job; at first there was silence, so I said "hello" a few times. A youngish voice with an African American tinge responded, with a "hello" to make contact and then a short canned introduction from her sales pitch. For some reason, I responded by asking her name, and when she told me, I asked her with an upbeat, "how you doing this morning?" She said hesitantly, "pretty good." and I came back with, "you would feel better if you got a few leads from these calls."
She started to loosen up a bit, and said how she sure would. I knew the drill, as her job was to get the name of prospects for the closers to follow up on; she would get a few bucks for this alone, and if an actual big ticket sale were made she would get even more. The down side, as I remembered from a week spent doing her job in a "boiler room" in New York city office building a half century ago, if you didn't get your quota, your desk will be given to the next poor soul who would handle the abuse to make a few bucks.
So Sasha and I had something in common, when I asked her about the responses she was getting from these cold calls; "not too good" she said. "Do, you get a lot of angry people?" She told me a bit plaintively that it seems like it's more and more so. I felt a connection, and closed with something like, "Well, hang in there, I know it's tough." And then with a faint smile through the phone, she said, "Thank you. You just made my morning."
Sorry I didn't get to tell her that she also just made mine.