December, 2018
Its five months after the mass firings and those of us that remained were barely able to manage our workloads. We’re now three-fifths of a team, as was the case when I started as an employee in the client services department five years ago. Three-fifths going on two-fifths.
Every morning I watched nervously as the youngest of us, a single mother of an eleven year old boy, waddled her way into the room, her enormous and distended stomach hanging below the tops of her thighs. The youngest of us is pregnant with one soon-to-be newborn babe, but she looks like she is carrying at least two. She can no longer sit up straight in her desk chair, so she slumps back into the chair instead, and her stomach eclipses the bottom section of her desktop’s computer screen. She is one of the best representatives that we have to offer when she is not in a delicate condition, hardworking, enterprising, ambitious, meticulous, smart, and indispensable. But she is approaching the end of the last trimester, which makes it physically impossible for her to perform at the level that we are accustomed. Truthfully, she should have been at home resting and gestating while she awaited the arrival of the new little man — it was another boy. Unfortunately for her, employees are not afforded any paid family leave. So she has to continue coming to work up until the point that her water breaks.
After the mass firing in July, I entertained the prospect of joining another hospital, but after a few weeks of scouring job sites for new opportunities, I abruptly stopped. For I’ve spent five years breaking this place in, and accumulated the psychological to scars to show for it. I wasn’t ready, nor was I inclined to start somewhere new, where I’d have to spend the next couple of years working my ass off to prove my value as a worker and human being once again. So I have consigned myself to a professional role in this hospital laboratory, one that I spent my twenties scoffing at and trying to avoid: the middle of the road office worker.
The work of a laboratory client services specialist is more difficult than one might think. My job requires that I spend eight unrelenting ours of the day fielding dozens of phone calls from an assortment of clients with an assortment of issues, forwarding hundreds of patient results to hospital and clinics, training and leading employees, and completing special projects for the management team. Most of the clients — patients, doctors, laboratory specialists, nurses, etc. — must know that I am busy to the point of being completely overwhelmed while I endeavor to sort through what seems like a dozen competing priorities. But these clients still need what they need, and they need it immediately or else they would not be calling me. Every one of my phone calls is an emergency.
Client services employees are hourly employees. I clock in and clock out every day with a badge that I wear around my neck with a blue lanyard. My rate of pay is serviceable, although below market value for someone with my credentials. Our yearly raises range in between one to three percent per year, a pittance when compared to the annual raises of the big bosses.
The bosses have always been penurious when it came to paying overtime wages, and even more so ever since they’d cited budget concerns as justification for the restructuring that took place during the summer. But it wasn’t too long before management had to a make a choice between pinching pennies and facing the prospect of the department’s imminent failure to accommodate an ever increasing work load, a failure which would have cost the company a lot more money than acceding to our modest requests for overtime. So we were allowed to work an extra one hour per day. And yet, the amount of work threatens to burst through the seams of the department. We’re still just surviving. Those planned initiatives that we going to implement to make the department better have been thrown to the wayside, where they will soon gather dust and be forgotten.
And then the inevitable happens on December 17, 2018, and a few weeks earlier than what was expected. Our very pregnant team member started wincing visibly while responding to a phone call from a client. After she is released from the call she immediately reached for the cell phone on her desk and called her obstetrician, who advised her to come to the hospital. I felt my head hang as she rushed from the room.
My remaining partner checked in regularly with our pregnant friend and co-worker. The update was that the obstetrician had fed her some steroids to stop the baby from arriving, but she was already too deep into pre-labor, and is eventually relegated to bed rest. That leaves only me and the other client services representative to perform the work of five people. We’re officially two fifths of a normal team, with no prospects available to replace the one we’ve lost.
*****
Late January of 2019
It’s been more than a month since our co-worker had to flee the department for maternity leave. She posts pictures of the little man on Facebook. He’s got his mother’s big eyes, full cheeks, and puffy lips; and he is healthy, which is what is most important. She informs management that she won’t be returning from maternity leave until the end of March.
Management has not been able to hire a temporary replacement for the single mother of two sons by then. It’s up to my partner and I to prevent the tidal wave of work from drowning out the entire department. Our current manager would step up to receive some phone calls, which I appreciated. However, she was unqualified to advise clients over the phone. She was often forced to transfer her calls over to me when she is unsure of how to advise a client, which leads to me feeling even more overburdened.
The hospital laboratory consists of eight separate laboratories, the significant amount of which are classified as esoteric, meaning that we are the only laboratory in the country that performs a good number of the assays that we run. The client services department is the glue that connects all of these laboratories together. All incoming calls to the laboratory are filtered through our skill — skill refers to the name of our phone line — and client services puts together a response to the inquiry, or triages the call to the individual who can provide an answer.
We answer more than twenty-six hundred calls per month. Couple the thousands of phone calls with the hundreds of email inquiries that two people have to resolve each month, and you can understand why I’m not always in a chipper mood. The worst days are when I am a given a project to complete with a concrete deadline. I’m working as hard and fast as I can to complete the project while the phone rings constantly. My teeth will gnash and my fist will clench when this happens. Still, I always answer the phone because it’s my job to do so. It’s often an insane work situation, made more so by the fact that it’s becoming a reasonable expectation for me to do the job of three individuals. Linda from the upper management team wants even more. “Try to smile when you’re answering the phones,” she breezily said one day. “It will improve you rapport with the client.”
Smile?
Of course Linda can afford to smile because she doesn’t have to answer calls from irate people for her living. She has one defined job, assistant laboratory director, and she is able to delegate responsibilities to people from her pristine corner office, located about a quarter mile away from where I reside. Her office is the Ivory Tower. It’s where she can garner access to articles from “experts” about the best way to serve a client, and then she can disseminate what she’s learned to the people who are actually doing the job. She probably read somewhere that it’s best to smile while you speak over the phone, or perhaps she saw it in a commercial.
I operate in the trenches. The phone calls come in quick session throughout the entirety of the day, like bullets from the barrel of a machine gun. I literally don’t have enough time in between each call to exercise the muscles required to put together a fake ass smile. And on those days when you are receiving calls nonstop, it can lead to you feeling beaten down and almost cornered. Ask any overworked client services person to describe the feeling and they will tell you the same.
I was being overworked every single day of the work week. Smiling for the sake of making the other person at the end of the line feel good makes me want to dry heave at my computer screen. I prefer to remain calm, polite, and ruthlessly efficient. My overarching goal is to make sure that all of my interactions — phone, email, and faxes — with clients contain as few words as possible. There are instances where I clip unnecessary sentences into phrases in order to save time. I call it The Economy of Language: say as much you can in as few words as you can while making the person at the other end of the line completely understand what you are saying. It’s a skill that I’ve spent five years honing and sharpening, and it has served me well. When I’m done I tell them thank you, goodbye, and then I’m on my way to completing my next task while I’m hanging up my end of the line.
My clients are never inclined to coo at me after we’re done speaking to each other, and clients don’t tend to mind my style of delivering service to them. I have succeeded at developing cohesive relationships with some of my regular callers over the years. You want to know why? Because I’ve developed a reputation for giving the client the correct answer. Every. Single. Time. And that tends to mean more to them than service with a pained smile. My partner, a middle aged woman of considerable girth, is more colloquial with the clients. She smiles, jokes, and asks about their families. And she ends up telling the client the wrong thing half of the time, leaving me with the responsibility of cleaning up the messes she’d made.
*****
January 30, 2019
My partner and I were under heavy fire from the phone calls, emails, and the faxes on Wednesday, our busiest day of the week. At about 3:30 pm, the phone trilled while I was in the midst of faxing a result to a client. I let out a huge sigh. For my ringing phone sounds so much more shrill when I’m busy performing another urgent task. I grabbed the receiver on the fourth trill, the last before it goes directly to voicemail, before plopping down in my swivel chair. “Good afternoon,” I said. “This is laboratory client services. How may I help you?”
It was a doctor at the other end of the line, one who talked like a man who had all the time in the world. He seemed bored, unlike the other hospital clinicians, who were always propelled by a sense of urgency. The doctor explained that he had yet to receive the results for a patient’s prostate exam, his own. “Make sure that the result comes to me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I can definitely get those results for you.” I took down his name and phone number, and scribbled a barely readable approximation of the request before ushering the voice from the phone. I slammed the receiver down, exasperated. The doctor’s prostate sample had been classified as a Send-Out test — the sample had been transferred to another laboratory. I was going to have to spend some five to ten minutes calling the facility, navigating that infernal automated phone tree, and then make a formal request for the results be faxed to our facility.
I pulled up the company website, typed in “prostate exam” in the search box, and clicked on the red lettered link. There was information on our website about a PSA exam, one that is routinely performed on patients who visit our hospital. I shook my head and said, “Why can’t he get the exam done at the hospital that he works for?” The phone rang right after I finished my sentence. I grabbed the receiver and squeezed before picking it up and placing it against the side of my face. “Client services,” I said. “How can I help you?”
About a week later that same doctor called again. He spoke in the same monotone voice, but with a little bit more edge. After informing me that he recognized my voice he said, “I remember speaking to you about sending me a test result. I still have not received it.”
Irate customers who lash out are wrong ninety-five percent of the time. I knew that this was not one of those times. I smacked the palm of my right hand on top of bald head and cursed my forgetfulness. I apologized to the doctor. “I’ll get that result to you right away,” I said.
“Are you sure about that?” he said. “This is the second time that I’ve called about this. This is not what I expect when I call this number.”
A rumble welled up in my throat. “I’ll for sure make sure that you get these results sir,” I said.
*******
What was left of the client services department would welcome two very important visitors the next afternoon. Our new laboratory director, a brunette woman in a white blouse and black skirt, entered first while scrolling through the emails on her cell phone. She looked up to smile and greet my co-worker and I as she walked past. Then she pointed southward and said, “Is this you all’s common room?” She spoke with a southern accent.
“Yes,” I said. “That is our common room.”
“Well alright then,” she said. “Are we ready to get this thing started?”
The assistant director, Linda — the one who urged us to put on the smile mask when we spoke with clients — came next. She stopped just beyond the department entrance to greet us both. My co-worker and I turned to meet her. She was holding a notebook against her right hip. My eyes fell to her ring finger as we engaged in small talk. A multicarat diamond engagement ring encircled it. She was dressed in an expensive shimmering blue dress and shiny black high-heeled shoes.
I’d known Linda for four years and have worked directly with her on many occasions, and I’d come to like her over the years. But after the layoffs happened — she was directly involved in the ambush — I couldn’t really look at her the same way. I was polite to her though. And the new director? Well, I referred to her as the harbinger. The mass layoffs happened a few weeks after she’d been introduced as the new executive director of the laboratory. A few weeks after that she’d arranged a mandatory meeting of all the remaining employees, and smiled while she bragged about achieving cost savings.
The meeting began with the laboratory director, Linda and me sitting around the table in the common room. The laboratory director sat to my left and the assistant director sat directly across from me. As we waited for the manager and my partner to arrive, the director placed her phone on the table and then turned to me. “How long have you have been working as a client services employee, Eze?” she asked.
I pursed my lips and raised an eyebrow. I wouldn’t have had to think this hard a few years ago. I’m getting older. When I arrived at the final answer I smiled at her and said, “So I’ve been working at the hospital since June of 2013, so about five and a half years. Five of them have been spent in client services though, but I did spend the first few months in scrubs as a pre-analysis technician.”
“Ah,” said the laboratory director. She shifted. “You know I’ve asked around about you and I have heard some really great things.”
“Well that is a really good to hear,” I said. I’m glad to know that my fellow employees think highly of me.”
“That’s very true,” she said as she nodded to agree. “They really respect you.”
My intuition hinted to me that we were in the midst of an extraordinary event. Perhaps I was going to be offered a new position within the company? Was I on the verge of getting a promotion? Or was it a pay raise? Because I knew that I definitely deserved at least that. I have five years of experience in the department, have trained and onboarded everyone who’d been employed in the client services department since 2014, and was a health services administration master’s graduate. It was about time for me to take the next step.
The director and assistant director exchanged greetings with my immediate manager and co-worker as they approached the table. After the both of them sat in their chairs, the director grabbed her cell phone from on top of the table, scrolled through email messages with her right index finger until she happened upon the one from the director of physicians.
She tilted forwarded. “So I got an email from the director of physicians today, and I want to read it to all of you,” she said. She bowed her head down to read. “He said this: I called client services to get some test results. I spoke to a gentleman and he said that he would make sure that I got the results. A week later when I hadn’t got the results, I called back and spoke to the same gentleman. Let me just say that it worries me greatly to think that this man is the face of our organization.”
She looked up from her phone and then at me. “He said that he’d talked to a gentleman. So I am going to assume that he talked directly to you.”
I felt the hope seep out through me like water through a funnel. Of course I remembered speaking to the good doctor. And now I knew that this encounter wasn’t going to end in a promotion for me. This was a reprimand and perhaps a warning, a sneaky, lowdown, and underhanded reprimand from a man that did not know me. “Yeah. I talked to him.”
My co-worker inhaled a breath. “Oh my goodness,” she said, sounding shocked.
My eyes wheeled around and over to the right. My abnormally big-boned partner looked as if she was in the midst of hyperventilating. My internal body temperature was rising.
“Okay,” said the new lab director. “Let’s talk about the first necessary thing. Did a copy of the results get sent over to him?”
I wheeled my eyes back in the direction of the speaker. “Yes I did,” I said. “I sent a copy of the test results over to him yesterday.”
“All right. So now that we have got that business out of the way, I’m going to say this. We know that some doctors, especially doctors who are of a certain status, can be very hard to work with. Unfortunately, you weren’t able to successfully satisfy this doctor at that particular time.”
I opened my mouth to offer a retort. The director placed a placating hand on my shoulder. “I don’t think that it is your entire fault, “she said. “We’ve been neglecting your department. Client services is the most important part of our facility, but we haven’t been treating you like you are a necessary component of the laboratory. That is going to change.”
The director went on to discuss her plans for the department, which included the hiring of a new client services manager — my current manager was offered another position within the hospital. I would have considered myself as the most viable candidate for the position before that day, but I now knew that whatever chance there was for me to secure the job had been damaged by one unnecessary phone call. The director spoke of her ambitious plan as if it were a pleasant day dream, one in which I would ultimately play subordinate to some individual that she believed would shepherd this dream into fruition.
And I was being fucked over twice in one day.
After the meeting arrived at its conclusion, the department supervisor, assistant director, and I formed a sort of semicircle behind my work station for a debriefing session. I was dejected and anxious to take my seat so that I begin to catch up on the work that was accumulating.
Linda looked to me. “Please don’t take what the doctor said personally,” she said. “Think of this situation as something that will foster growth and improvement going forward.”
Nope. It’s too late for that.
“Sure, I won’t take it personally,” I said as my lazy right eyelid twitched. I waved my hand as if to bat away a buzzing insect. “It’s already been forgotten.”
******
I arrived at work the next morning, a cold fury melding itself onto my blood and bones. The last time I felt like this was nearly nine years ago while in the wake of my unjust dismissal from the charter school.
It proved difficult for me to concentrate during the first few hours of the day, though I was able to push through answering the phone professionally and perform all of my essential job duties. When the clock finally struck 1:00 pm, I allowed myself a long exhalation. My lunch break had finally arrived, and I had enough time to perform some research on the man who’d sought to put me in my place the previous day. Earlier in the day my boss had told me that the Director of Physicians is even more powerful than the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer. I didn’t care.
I downloaded his photo from the company website while scarfing down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at my desk. Of course he didn’t resemble the monster that he’d proved himself to be. He was just another older white guy with white and gray hair. He looked to be standing in front of a window that provided a view of my home city’s skyline. His smile was of the unassuming kind, he was dressed in a blue shirt and a white lab coat that I assumed covered his knees. It was a very good photo. If a stranger had come across this particular image of the Director of Physicians, that person would have assumed that this individual was kind.
I leaned forward and sneered at the obviously photo shopped image. But you’re not kind. Isn’t that right, sir? You are one of the people who approved the mass layoffs that decimated my department, making it nearly impossible for me to do my job well. Aren’t you that guy? You’re not nice. I fucking know who you are. Upon closer look I was able to discover something else in the photo that is invisible to the naked eye of most people. Only those of us who are practiced in the art of discovering can see it. It was privilege, and it was draped over the Directors’ shoulders like a cape, protecting and keeping him warm and insulated from the travails of an economically insecure black man’s life.
******
Fuck you if you think that this essay is an overreaction. I’m only forty-two years old and have been fired or asked to resign from a job four times, and it was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise each and every time. Four times I’ve been made to feel like I was useless, disposable, and an imposter. Some of the images from those disasters may have faded from my memory because the firings happened a long time ago, but I can still recall the faces of the people who threw me out on the street. I remember what it felt like when I became certain that they’d already moved on a few minutes after wantonly destroying my life. Those memories will never leave me. They are also psychological scars, still fresh and corrugated, and they feed my economic and personal insecurities like blood cells do a malignant cancer.
After I finished reading the extensive profile of my new bully, I felt compelled to do something drastic. I wanted to know if I was definitely on solid ground with the company, while also letting the directors know that I deserved better treatment from the hospital. The best way for me to do that would be to apply for the just opened client services managerial position. I uploaded my resume to the jobs website the next morning before work, and prepared detailed answers to a list of twenty “behavioral” questions that I might be asked during the interview.
I interviewed with the human resources generalist first, followed by a series of interviews with five different managers over the span of an entire day — this while completing my regular job duties — exactly one week after putting forth my resume. I performed well in all of the content related interviews, projecting charm, competence, and a good sense of humor. My interrogators all came away impressed…and concerned. Their concern was expressed through a common question: “Are you going to leave the company if we offered the position to another candidate?”
Would I leave if the job was offered to someone else?
I would lean back in my chair as I ruminated on how I should I answer this question. Should I be insulted because they were thinking about offering the job to an outside candidate? Or should I be content since I knew that I was valued somewhat by the company, and a part of their future plans. Would the company that I currently work for attempt to sabotage my chances with another company if I did decide to leave?
“No,” I said firmly. “No, I’m not going to leave if I’m not chosen. I just want the company to do well.”
My last interview of the day was with the director of the laboratories, and by then I knew that I was definitely not going to be offered the position. I walked over to her office in the late afternoon. I partially undid my tie as I stepped across the threshold. Space was constricted, the air inside was warm and humid, and I was exhausted from having been pulled in all kinds of directions during the day. The director of the laboratories was fanning herself as I sat down in a chair directly opposite of her.
She smiled. “How are you doing today?” she said. “You must have had a whirlwind of a time.”
Though I was wary and distrustful of this individual, I maintained a good-natured vibe which I hoped she picked up on. “It’s been good,” I said. “I’ve had some pretty illuminating conversations with a lot of people today.”
“I want you to relax,” she said. This is going to be your easiest interview of the day.” She placed the fan on top of some books that were perched on her desk.
I exhaled a breath, sank into my seat and smiled back at her. Relief flowed through me until I felt like I did after I stretched in the morning. Despite my success, the previous interviews of the day had been grueling endurance exercises for the mind and spirit. Thankful for the reprieve, I said “That sounds good to me.”
“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked. Water? Orange juice? Your throat must be dry from all of the talking you that you had to do today.”
I held up a bottle of Dasani water. “I’ve got some water to drink,” I said. “I’m good.”
“All right,” she said. “So I only have a couple of questions for you. The first being where do you see yourself in five years.”
Flummoxed, I paused to think. I had not been expecting that question from her. I’d been so wrapped up in preparing answers to behavioral questions and I’d completely forgotten about one of the most common questions. Of course I couldn’t tell her that I want to be a full-time writer in five years. No. I’d have to save that for when I was finally able to resign from the corporate world to pursue my newest passion.
“I do have an ultimate goal,” I said. “I would like to become a director someday. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of client services, but I do know that I want to be responsible for more in the near future. I’m forty-two now and time seems to be accelerating with each birthday that arrives.”
“Well, you do have a great deal of potential and everyone that I’ve talked to will swear by you.”
Oh here we go. There’s the “potential” word again. A few months after I’d first entered the workforce in 1999, my then boss told me that I had a lot of potential, which basically means that we know you are talented, but we don’t really believe in you. Its twenty-years later and I have still haven’t moved passed the “great potential” stage of my career arc.
“Thanks a lot for the compliment,” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now I want to you ask you a few more questions. What do you need in your department to make it thrive? Is it more people? More equipment? And also, what are your goals for the department?”
“We could definitely use another person. I know that we are under a budget constraint right now, but the amount of staff that we’ve been left with is unsustainable.”
I went on to inform her of some other things that I knew our department needed: better training, streamlining of duties, more and better communication, and advocacy on behalf of the client services department from our superiors.
The director smiled. “I appreciate you saying this,” she said. “You know, I managed client services for a long time. I know how integral a good client services team is to the health of the organization. It starts with good and competent people. Eze, we need articulate, intelligent, hardworking, and experienced people with an engaging voice and calm demeanor. People like you.”
I felt myself smile, the spontaneous and genuine kind that made my eyes dance with delight. She’d probably read my resume by now — it contained evidence of a master’s degree, a stint as an elementary school teacher, and experience as a lead student for the capstone project at my latest university. Once she’d been put on notice by my choosing to apply for the supervisory position, and thereby forced to mentally amalgamate my extensive work experience with the exemplary feedback from my fellow employees, she had to start looking at me a little differently. I was more than some cog in the wheel that the director of physicians could bully and dismiss.
“Now, you must know that we are interviewing other people for this position,” she said. “And I’m not saying that this is going to happen. If we were to go with someone besides yourself, I know that there is a chance that you may be disappointed. I wouldn’t want you to be.”
I sighed.
“What are your thoughts?” she asked.
“Of course I’d be disappointed if I wasn’t picked,” I said. Her reaction told me that she knew that I was being genuine. Still, the prospect of rejection wouldn’t be enough for me to pack all of things in a box and quit the following day. After five years of arduous work — I estimate that I’ve provided customer service to more than one-hundred thousand people as an employee — I’m finally earning enough money to pay for a life that no longer exist on the margins. “But I will be onboard if you think that an outside hire would be best for the company. I do want the company to succeed.”
“I think I’m going to shed a tear,” she said half-jokingly.
“Yeah, It’s been a pretty good five years here,” I said. I’ve gotten to know some good people over that time.”
“Hold on now. Don’t say that in the past tense,” she said. “What you want to say is that you are enjoying your five years here and you looking forward to spending the next five years with us.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I said through a grin.
If only Dr. Shitstain would have been in the room while the director sung my praises.
I left that last interview knowing two things for sure. Firstly, I wasn’t getting going to get offered the supervisory position. Secondly, after nearly two decades of searching for the peace of mind that comes with job stability, I was pretty confident that I’d finally found it at the hospital.
Sometimes being told that you are valued and have a home is all that you need to reluctantly stay.
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