Workin' at the Call Center Blues

    A "self-portrait" doodle I saved in my stuff...from 28 years ago 

when I was working at the call center...

  These days when I have to call customer service for a problem, you know, the credit card…the power company…whatever call center I have to call I usually begin the conversation by saying:  “Now if my tone gets a little angry or whatever it’s not directed at you.  I am frustrated with your corporate masters.  I’m sure you do a fine job, you should actually get paid double what they’re paying you, you should only have to work 30 hours a week and get paid holidays, full paid medical and a free bar in the break room for all the stuff you have to put up with all day…”

  I say this because I have walked in the shoes of those who work at call centers.

  It was one of those jobs that I worked once upon a time and I thought I could make a go of it when The Lady of the House and I moved to Pensacola in 2015.

  I had tried selling cars and got fired after 6 weeks….I didn’t sell enough cars…six wasn’t enough for ‘em.  I worked shuttling cars and pickups to and from the local auto auction and dealerships but that was basically just 20 hours a week at minimum wage.  I turned down a gig with a funeral home, being “on call” to go pick up bodies at any time of day and getting 10 dollars an hour…it was the “on call” part I didn’t like.

  So the local big call center was looking to bring people on board to earn “big coin”…for Pensacola:  $11.00 an hour.

  By the way, sidebar comment:  If you want to make a small fortune in Pensacola…go there with a large one.

  Anyway, back to the job at the call center…

  The deal was they put you through 6 weeks paid training and then you were on your own.

  The place was like a giant mutation of high school.

  During breaks many an employee would band together in their own little cliques and say snarky things about other people and cliques.  If that doesn’t bring back memories of high school I don’t know what will.

  I’d say on average the cops were called to the place about twice a week over hair-pullin’, nail-scratchin’, “cat fights” between female employees…I reckon because probably 80% of the call center operators were women.

  In week three they let us trainees take “real” calls instead of role-playing with each other.  I should say that by week three we were down to about 30 trainees.  We had started out with 60.  Some folks discovered that call center work was not for them.

  I had trouble navigating through all the stuff of this one customer’s account and the computers they had us on weren’t the fastest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Ms. Customer, “I’m new here and I’m having a bit of trouble with the system.”

  Almost as soon as I said that The Trainer comes to me and whispers, “When you’re through with that call put your system on hold.”  That meant I was to take no more calls.

  It turns out she had told that to everyone in the room.

  There was to be a “teachable moment” for the class…

  …about what I had just said to Ms. Customer.

  “Now class, Mr. McGee just told a customer that he is new here and he was having trouble navigating the system,” Ms. Trainer had just dished out that info in a calm, measured voice.  But then she turned a bit sterner and louder, “WE NEVER TELL THE CUSTOMER THAT WE ARE NEW OR PERSONALLY HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE SYSTEM.”

  Ms. Trainer looked around the room.

  “Our customers call here expecting to get top notch service.  Admitting that you are personally having trouble with the system does not convey the confidence we wish to portray to our customers.”

  “If you are having trouble it is acceptable to say, ‘I apologize for the delay, our IT crew is upgrading the system and it’s causing a slowdown.”

  I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Mr. McGee,” said Ms. Trainer.

  “So,” I said, “It’s okay to lie, to be dishonest in order to preserve appearances, for the sake of good marketing.”

  My statement was met by an icy stare and silence from the instructor and a few titters from some class members.

  Halfway into the next week I could sense that a career at the call center was not to be mine:  I had trouble dealing with the questions and the various products folks were calling about.  During lunch I called The Lady of the House and told her about my troubles in navigating the waters of call centerdom.

  “Just come on home,” said The Lady of the House.  “Come on home, have lunch and go right out to the auto auction and get that job back.”

  I thought I’d do alright at the call center, after all I hadn’t done half bad when I worked at one in Albuquerque in 1990.

  I was working for a temp agency and had done things like assemble giant-ass shelves for a warehouse, help move a department store from one mall to another and moving along the floor of a nursing home on my hands and knees wiping dried loogies and flipped boogers off the walls.

  It was that last gig that gave me the nerve to approach my handlers at the temp agency about getting a better gig.

  “Guys,” I said one day with a smile, “Don’t you have an office gig you can get me into?  I can type.  I can wear a tie.”

  The answer to my question was being assigned to the credit card division of Megabank’s** offices in Albuquerque.

  For eight hours a day I was placed in front of a pre-Windows green screen computer with telephone headphones I bought with my own coin at Radio Shack and took calls randomly thrown at me from various parts of the country.

  My job was to connect with Megabank credit card customers who were just over 30 days past due in a payment on their account.  The department I was in was called “Bucket 1.”  The “buckets” ranged from 1 to 6, that means from 1 month to 6 months past due.  The higher the number the more hard-assed the call center operators.  After Bucket 6 it was off to hard-core collections peeps.

  One day I was passing by the Bucket 6 room and heard one of the operators having a chat with a customer…

  “Yes ma’am,” said the voice from one of the cubicles, “I understand your husband died and your personal finances are in disarray.  Yes ma’am, I understand you are two months behind in your house payments….”

  Then the call center fellow raised his voice and added some sharpness, “BUT THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS MRS. SMITH YOU USED YOUR MEGABANK CREDIT CARD TO MAKE PURCHASES AND YOU OWE US MONEY.  NOW WHEN CAN WE EXPECT YOUR CHECK FOR 275 DOLLARS?”

This was long before computers could measure how well a call center operator was doing.  Your success was based on how many “PTPs” you could get per hour…PTP standing for “promise to pay.”

  Get above 15 PTPs on average and you were doing okay.  Get an average of below 15 PTPs per hour 3 months in a row and you were out of work.

  So there was no time to listen to sob stories, no time to chat about the weather in wherever the cardholder might be…we were on the phone to get the cardholder to say, “Yes, I’ll send that payment to you right away.”

  It was a pain in the ass job, working to steer a conversation about someone’s personal finances.

  But I learned a few things about people.

  I learned that most folks in the Rocky Mountain states, more specifically the Mountain Time Zone states, were generally easy going and polite….at least in 1990.

  On the other hand, it seemed like every person I called in California thought they were lawyers.  Hell, maybe they WERE lawyers.  “I KNOW MY RIGHTS,” were words that eventually came from many a California cardholder.

  Texans didn’t seem to care.  I can’t remember the exact wording but it seems back in 1990 there was really no way to recoup the company’s money if someone in Texas didn’t have a mind to pay.  The cardholder’s credit would be shot to hell but Megabank wasn’t getting its money.

  Oh, it was from a Texan that I learned a new way to be an asshole.

  “Hello,” I started the call one work day morning, “May I speak with Mr. Wickerbill**please?”

  “This is Mr. Wickerbill,” came the reply over the phone from some town in the Dallas area.

  “Mr. Wickerbill, my name is Grant.  I’m with Megabank.  I’m calling to remind you you are 30 days late with your monthly payment.  We’re calling to ask when may we expect your payment.”

  There was silence on the line.

  “Mr. Wickerbill?  Are you still there?”

  “Yes I am,” said Mr. Wickerbill, “What’s your name again please?”

  “Grant.”

  And with that answer Mr. Wickerbill’s demeanor changed from that of just a guy on the phone to a Grade-A, US Prime angry-sounding asshole.

  “You listen to me, Grant.  Are you listening to me Grant?  Let me tell you something, Grant.  Grant, don’t you or anyone else from Megabank EVER call me at my place of employment, do you hear me Grant?  Grant, I’m talking to you.  ANSWER ME, GRANT.”

  “I’m listening, Mr. Wickerbill.”

  “I will pay this bill when I’m God-damned good and ready, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME GRANT?  But NO ONE from Megabank better ever call me where I work, ARE YOU TAKING NOTES GRANT?  GOOD BYE, GRANT.”

  And he hung up.

  I sat there for a minute then took a break to get my blood pressure down.

  The dude had just verbally beat the hell out of me with my own name.  It was different.  It was unique.  It was a weird feeling.  I wondered where the hell he learned that.

  It was a little thing I filed away for future use. 

  There were some lighter moments too, like the time I called Detroit early one morning.

  “Hah-low?” it was a kid answering the phone.

  “Hi there,” I said in my cheery Megabank voice, “May I speak with Mrs. Anderson**?

  “Jus’ a min,” said the kid.

  There was a loud clattering as the phone obviously fell on the floor.  I could hear kid footsteps running through the house.

  And then the kid’s voice.

  “MAMA,” yelled the kid, “THERE’S A WHITE MAN ON THE PHONE.”

  I leaned back in my chair and laughed a bit.

  As time went on with my big bill collector’s job with Megabank I saw no future in it.  My PTP average was 13 per hour for two months in a row.  They always posted the standings on the office bulletin board at the end of every week, like finals grades in college.

  And there were meetings.  Meetings for meetings sake.  It was a culture I was unfamiliar with.  Meeting to meet.  I hate meetings.  They make me sleepy.  It’s why I won’t go into politics.  I’d probably fall asleep during a key meeting and then reporters would be all over my ass, front page news, “MCGEE SLEEPS THROUGH KEY MEETING.”

  I went back into radio.

  While it wasn’t wiping dried loogies and boogers off the walls of nursing homes, call center work wasn’t my cup of tea.

  As a matter of fact, now I wonder why the hell I decided to go after the call center job in Pensacola in the first place.

  Like the late, great writer Raymond Carver once wrote:  “Who knows why we do what we do.”

-30-

** Fictitious name.

Tales of the Southwest: The Art Truck

The actual factual Art Truck at a beach campground on The Gulf of California 

at Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico...June 1998.

  My buddy Ken* drove from Roswell, New Mexico to visit me out west in Bisbee, Arizona about 20 years ago.

  We spent an evening hanging out at a couple of the bars in the town’s famed “Brewery Gulch” before calling it a night.

  We were headed back to the hacienda when we came to a stop sign.

  Here came a car from the left.

  It had the right of way so it sailed through the intersection right in front of my headlights.

  It was one of Bisbee’s art cars.

  This particular one was a Nissan station wagon with all kinds of dolls glued to the car’s body and top:  Cabbage Patch kids, Kewpie dolls, run of the mill dolls, Barbies & Kens, Betsy Wetsy, GI Joe….all glued to the car.

  “What the hell was that?” Ken practically yelled as he watched the tail lights fade off into the distance.

  “Art car,” I said.  “Town’s full of ‘em.”

  “This is a weird damn place you live in,” Ken said.

  Well that’s why I moved to Bisbee from Phoenix.

  I had gotten tired of the traffic, the intense heat and the angry vibe in general in “The Valley of the Sun,” that’s what they call the Phoenix area.

  I really wanted to move back to Roswell but I had heard there was a hippie utopia about 200 miles to the southeast of Phoenix, just a rifle shot from the Mexican border:  Bisbee.

  I was still at that stage in my life where I thought SURELY there was a place where everyone lived in happiness, peace, music, art and harmony.

  And while Bisbee had the art and Bisbee had a different vibe going on, it still wasn’t utopia.

  But that’s another story.

  I don’t know, maybe there were one or two dozen “art cars” that called Bisbee home.

  Unlike my buddy Ken, I wasn’t shocked by the first art car I saw.

  It was covered in some kind of spongy material and shaped to look like a flying eye.

  I thought it was cool.

  I wanted to make my own art car.

  The thought that came right to mind was to take a bunch of CDs (compact discs) and silicone glue them to the exterior of my little red Subaru.  The radio station where I worked got in all of these excess CDs….music we didn’t play….non-hits, Mexican music that wasn’t our format.  We had boxes and boxes of ‘em just waiting to be glued to my car, label side down, shiny side up.

  I thought it was a good idea.

  But like a lot of stuff I think of in life I didn’t think the idea through.

  “I bet the first time an Arizona State Trooper sees it they’ll give you a ticket,” said a Bisbee pal.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “All those shiny compact discs glinting in the sun?  They’ll say you’re a road hazard.  And will the CDs stand up to the heat?  Will they turn into little warped circles all over your car?”

  So I nixed the CD “art car.”

  But I had a truck.

  My truck was a good ol’ dependable 1983 Ford F-150 pickemup truck.

  I wanted to do SOMETHING “cool” with it but nothing crossed my mind.

  I’m really not a decorating kind of guy.

  For instance, my interior decorating skills were still stuck in college.  Give me a bean bag chair, some cinder blocks and boards for shelving and some random posters to slap on my living room walls and I’m good.  Artistic decorating visionary I am not.

  Then then art came to my Ford F-150.

  It was time for one of the many festivals held in the hippie town of Bisbee.  The town dance teacher approached me with an idea.

  “What if during the Spring Festival you park your pickup truck at the dance school’s booth and people just paint what they want on the truck?” she proposed.  “I have the paint.”

  “I love it!” I said.  “I dig the randomness, the spontaneity!”

  And so one Saturday in April during The Bisbee Spring Festival my truck sat parked with buckets of paint nearby along with brushes and festivalgoers…mostly kids, some adults…randomly painted upon it.

  When I came back to pick it up in the evening it was glorious…yellow streaks, fuchsia strokes, white wavy lines, sky blue stars, an orange sun and a topless mermaid.

  “I didn’t know if you could handle the topless mermaid,” said the dance teacher.

  “Well…I….I don’t know what they might say at my work,” I said.  I worked 30 miles away at a radio station in Sierra Vista, an Army town.  I could just see my boss calling into question the wisdom of driving around the conservative burg with a topless mermaid…a BUSTY topless mermaid…painted on my truck.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  Dance teacher reached into a box and produced some silicon glue and some quarter-sized spangles.  One by one she pasted the spangles over the mermaid’s boobs and….VOILA!  The mermaid now had a spangly bra…or bikini top…or whatever.

  From time to time my pickemup truck got driven around town.  In Bisbee nobody gave the wildly painted F-150 a second glance.  In Sierra Vista or Tombstone, well, folks just knew that I must’ve come down the mountain from Bisbee.

  Like that time I was headed into work in my pickemup truck.  My speedometer was broken so I just stayed with the flow of traffic….it had worked for me so far.

  Except for this one time.

  I was the last in a line of about 5 cars rolling toward Sierra Vista.  It didn’t SEEM like we were speeding.  Then an Arizona State Trooper passed going the other direction.  I just checked in my rearview and saw the trooper slam on the brakes and make a u-turn.

  “Oh hell,” I thought to myself, “My day for revenue enhancement.”

  Sure enough the trooper was soon on my ass with lights a-flashin’.

  I pulled over, turned off the truck, put the keys on the dash, rolled the window down and sat awaiting my fate.

  “Good day, sir,” said the lady trooper.  “Do you know why I stopped you?”

  “No ma’am,” I said.  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “You were doing 65 in a 55 zone,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I was just going with the flow of traffic.”

  I wasn’t going to admit to having a broken speedometer, that probably would’ve gotten me in even more trouble.

  “You’re from Bisbee, aren’t you,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She cast her eyes on my truck body, looked from front to back then looked at me.

  “I could tell,” she smiled.

  Ms. Trooper took my license and registration, went back to her car, did whatever they do back there then came back, handing my stuff back to me.

  “I’m just giving you a warning, slow it down,” said the trooper.  Then she smiled, “And good luck selling this thing when the time comes.”

  Then the time came to go to Roswell to visit my friends.

  It was summertime so my Subaru wouldn’t be making the trip…it had no air conditioning.  The “art truck” AC worked.

  I would be driving my “art truck” to southeast New Mexico.  I would be amongst ranchers, a few oilfield workers and such.  No longer would I be amongst the artistic types of Bisbee.

  I was more concerned about the lousy gas mileage I’d get driving a full-sized pickemup truck than I was about the reaction I’d get in Roswell traffic.

  As it turns out there wasn’t much of a reaction at all.

  Some old guy who looked like he was made up of tanned leather and spring steel turned by me at an intersection and said loud enough for me to hear:  “Damn waste of a perfectly good truck.”

  Another guy spoke when he pulled up beside me at a traffic light on Main Street Roswell:  “Why’d you cover up the mermaid’s boobs?  That’s just sad.”

  A year or so later the time came to leave Arizona and return to New Mexico.

  And the art truck?

  I gave it to the dance teacher.

  After all, the truck really belonged in the little hippie burg just a rifle shot from the Mexican border.

-30-

*Name changed

TALES OF THE SOUTHWEST: A Country Station Not Worth Its Salt

  It was 25 years ago today that “The Best Friend a Song Ever Had,” Mr. Conway Twitty, legendary Country singer, died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.   

  I liked ol’ Conway, his music was pure Country soul.  Listen to “Hello Darlin’” and hear the yearning.  Listen to “Linda on My Mind” and hear the human condition.  Listen to Conway’s cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” and hear pure Country soul.

  I was working at a Country station in Texas at the time.  This was not your standard issue “Country” station, nosireebob, unh-unh, nope…this was the “Hot Country” format full of uptempo dance numbers targeted for a younger crowd.

  A week into the gig I realized I had made a horrible mistake moving from an easygoing Country AM station in Roswell, New Mexico to this FM powerhouse in Texas. 

  The dude I interviewed with seemed friendly enough when he took me to breakfast.  When I got the gig I don’t know what happened to the guy who interviewed me but he had been replaced by an asshole who looked just like him.

  There would be no spontaneity, there would be no “organic-ness,” basically nothing would be unscripted. 

  This was NOT my style of radio.

  So when I heard Conway had died I shouldn’t have been surprised when I switched over to the station and didn’t hear any Conway being played.

  I called the station.

  “Dude, it’s Grant,” I said.  “Conway’s died.  Why aren’t you playing any Conway in tribute.”

  This was the way…BACK THEN…of any good Country station worth its salt.  If an icon died you played his or her music in tribute, like, RIGHT AWAY.

  “Kevin* said not to,” said my co-worker. “He said if I did he’d fire me."  

  That was the General Manager’s answer to everything…cross him in the slightest bit he’d fire you.  A radio Nazi.  He never fired anyone, I don’t think he had the guts.

  "He said there'd have to be a meeting," my co-worker continued, "And if we do it will have to be his most recent hits, no old shit.”

  As it turned out the station didn't play any Conway in tribute.

  The Hot Country place was shut down by the IRS a couple of years later.  The building is now a Somali grocery.

  I gracefully left that radio gig a couple of months after Conway died…loaded up a borrowed school bus that had barely any brakes and moved to Phoenix. 

  Never had I ever been so glad to get the hell out of a town.

  That was until I moved away from Pensacola, Florida last year.

  But that’s another story.

-30-

*not the guy's real name

A Roach in the Soup

The Lady of the House and I went road trippin’ to a town off to the north of us in the vast open-ness that is Harding County.

                One of the things we wanted to do was eat at a small restaurant we liked in the “downtown” section of this little burg.

                The place was out of business.

                A bit later at a nearby shop I asked the woman behind the counter about the restaurant.

                “Oh, the Health Department shut them down a few months ago,” she said.

                “Why?” I asked.

                The woman looked from side to side.

                “I’m not the gossip police, really, I’m just curious,” I said.

                “I can’t say,” she said.  I had failed to win her confidence.

                People get weird about stuff in their food.

                Some of the wariness is deserved.  A good friend got his tooth cracked from a piece of broken coffee cup that had ended up in his salad.

                Twenty-or-so years ago a fast food joint in an Arizona border town was totally shut down and boarded up after an employee used poop as a filling for a bean burrito sold to a Border Patrol officer.

                And yet some folks use the “something in my food” as a way to call attention to themselves or hassle the people at food joints.

                For instance, there was that time I was at a submarine sandwich place in town.  I was waiting behind some chick who suddenly blurted out at the sandwich maker.

                “Throw that away,” she said pointing at the sandwich in progress.  “I just saw a fly land on it.”

                Oh I so wanted to say something like, “Don’t go out on many picnics or cookouts, do you.”

                But I didn’t.

                But then, on the other hand…

                I was at a fast food joint in Sierra Vista, Arizona a few years ago and I got a burger and a small salad.  I pulled the top off the salad and started to pour dressing over the greens while I stirred…and there was a big ol’ cold cockroach.

                I know it was cold because it was moving real slow.

                I laughed to myself.  I took it back up to the counter.

                “Yes?” said the young counterette.

                I just held out my salad and pointed to the roach.

                “You want your money back?” she asked.

                I did.  There was just something about the counterette’s nonchalant attitude that made me think that roaches in the joint’s food was a regular occurrence.

                I reckon I shoulda grabbed the roach and tossed it out into the warm Sun but it didn’t cross my mind then.

                I went from that memory back to the present, road trippin’ with The Lady of the House in this small New Mexico town and it’s restaurant that had been shut down by the health department.

                “Was it a cockroach in the soup?”  I asked.  “You know, I found a cockroach in my soup one time.”

                The woman’s eyes opened wide and she did this twisty thing with her mouth.

                “Yeah, it was at this Chinese buffet restaurant back east.  I had a bowl of Won-ton soup.  I love Won-ton soup.  So I went back for seconds.  I stirred the stuff up to try and get more won-tons from the bottom and up comes this big cockroach, legs folded, dead as can be.”

                “I started laughing,” I continued.  “I mean I’d just had this whole bowl of soup with essence of cockroach in it so it didn’t matter.  I went and got the owner and with a smile on my face I stirred up the cockroach for him to see.”

                “OH!” The guy jerked his head back at the sight.  “Your lunch on the house!”

                “Well,” I said.  “I’ll take you up on that.”

                “So the guy grabs the soup tureen, walks fast back in the kitchen and starts yelling in Mandarin, Cantonese or something at somebody in there.”

                The woman behind the counter just stared at me.

                “So it wasn’t a cockroach in the soup that got this restaurant closed?” I asked again.

                “I-I really can’t say,” she said.

                I suppose I’ll never know why that little restaurant got shut down.

                Maybe it wasn’t a cockroach, maybe it was a hair.

-30-

Tres Relatitos

A WOMAN IN THE MEN’S ROOM

  It was in The Southland a few years ago. 

  I was driving along on I-81 in Virginia when I needed to visit a tinklelarium…if you don’t know that word it means a bathroom…I needed a bathroom break.

  I pulled into a Stuckey’s.

  You know what a Stuckey’s is…it’s a travel store.  There seems to be fewer and fewer Stuckey’s these days.  They were a big thing back in the day, full of snacks and tchotchkes:  Rubber alligators and spiders, tourist travel mugs, t-shirts, stuff like that.

  Anyway I parked my ride and moseyed inside and headed straight for the bathrooms.

  I had been looking up and down at the stuff on the shelves so I really wasn’t looking up when I opened the door to the men’s room.

  The first thing I saw was a skirt.

  “Whoa!” I thought to myself and immediately backed out.

  I checked to make sure I was in the right place.  Yup, sign said “Men’s Room.”

  What the hell was a woman doing in the men’s room?

  I had half a notion to open the Women’s Room door to see if it was packed with waiting women but I thought better of it.

  What was a woman doing in the Men’s Room?

  I thought I’d make a joke about it when she came out but I thought better of that too.  What if she was a grumpy woman?

  The conversation might go something like…

  Me:       “Women’s Room overcrowded, eh?”

  Grumpy:  “Does it really matter?  Think I’m gonna be shocked in the Men’s Room?  I heard a saying one time:  If it’s something I ain’t seen before I’ll shoot it.”

  My imaginary conversation was interrupted by the opening of the Men’s Room door.

  Out strode a man…

  …in a Scottish-type kilt.

  A kilt, not a dress.

  I waited for him to pass and I walked right in to the Men’s Room.

A used condom by the side of the road.  Rudeness!  

Someone passing their load on to the rest of us.

Oh well.  It brought back a memory....

RUBBER ON THE ROAD

  I saw it a couple of years ago.

  I was out for a morning walk with the “dawgs” in West Pensacola, Florida.

  There it was, laying by the side of the road.

  A used condom.

  Or as we used to call them back home in the mountains, “a rubber.”

  It was the first time in a long time I’d seen one of these things by the side of the road.

  My first thought was how daggone rude for someone to just pass their load, a used condom, on to the rest of us.

  Then a condom memory came back to me.

  When I was just a wee lad of 8 years old growing up in Roanoke, Virginia me and my buddy Catfish would find these things, still in their sealed packages, out behind our elementary school. 

  When you’re 8 years old there are things you don’t understand.

  For one, why would we find these things behind our elementary school.

  Well, I would realize years later it was a good place to go “parking.”  “Parking” is when you and your girlfriend go to a place where no one might bother you and “canoodle.”  But I was 8 years old and had no idea about “canoodling.”

  The other thing I NEVER understood is why they were still unopened.

  I remembered the first time I ripped open one of the little packs.

  I had no idea what it was. 

  I asked my source of knowledge of everyday kid stuff, my buddy Catfish, what it was.

  When Catfish told me I WAS SHOCKED!

  As I looked at the rubber with an 8 year old brain I had a great idea:  "THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT WATER BALLOON!" 

  So I filled it up with water.

  It got bigger and bigger and bigger…bigger than any water balloon I’d ever handled…big as a WATERMELON.

  I whipped it 'round and 'round my head like I was Little David who'd picked up a smooth flat slick river rock for my slingshot and was about to SLAYETH Goliath....and FLUNG! 

  KOOSH!

  Oh HO!  I had discovered a secret weapon to use in me and my buddy Catfish’s frequent “battles” with the neighborhood girls.

  That was a simpler time.

  When a good time was sitting on my grandmother’s back porch having a fried bologna sandwich and washing it down with a Grapette.

  And throwing water filled condoms at girls as they ran away screaming.

OH COME ON, JUST ONE PARTING SHOT

  I got an email from the state employment agency that handles the Pensacola, Florida area.

  They were having a job fair.

  My blood pressure went up a couple of ticks.

  “Pensacola, sheesh,” I muttered under my breath.

   I opened the email and looked for where I could unsubscribe to their mailing list.  I clicked on the link.

  I clicked “unsubscribe.”

  “Why are you unsubscribing” asked the email.

  It gave me some options.

  I chose “other,” because, you know friends, when they give you that “other” choice they usually give you a box to elaborate on why you want to unsubscribe.  Being control freaks they seem to HAVE TO KNOW why you want to unsubscribe.

  And elaborate I did.

  With what space they give you.

  They gave me space for 150 characters.

“I have returned to New Mexico.  I will always remember Pensacola for low wages, age discrimination and quantifying job candidates versus qualifying job candidates.”

  The Lady of the House and I moved to Pensacola back in 2015. 

  I was glad to get the hell out of there 2 years later.

  I think I’ll leave it at that.

  Ma and Pa Kettle go to The Big City and found it wanting.

  I’m skipping a lot of details.  If I wrote them down I might sound like some grumpy old fart.

  Oh well.

  As my buddy Duane said, “Let it go.”

  I doubt I’ll hear back from the state employment agency that sent me the email.

  I’m sure someone will chalk it up as just another letter from some sour-grapey old dude.

  If they read it at all.

-30-

Stopping for Roadkill

 You couldn’t miss the dead dog out on the county road. 

  I eased over to the side of the road and got out.  The canine’s fur was blowing in the breeze.  The coloring looked like some kind of mixed breed mutt, then I saw it’s face:  Someone had cut down a coyote.  The eyes were fixed straight ahead…its teeth were bared.  I grabbed it by the tail and pulled it off the road. 

  I have this thing about roadkill.  I feel kind of bad about the dead critter, the indignity of being smooshed by passing cars and trucks over and over again.

  In my day I’ve pulled bunches of dead critters off the road:  Dogs, cats, roadrunners, squirrels, turtles and such.

    I don’t do this for skunks and I probably won’t move a javelina off the road again.

  Javelinas are critters that look like pigs but aren’t pigs…they’re a peccary.  A peccary is a critter that looks like a skinny pig.  They range in the southern parts of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.  Some years ago I came across a dead one on the highway between Bisbee and Tombstone, Arizona so I pulled over to get it off the road.  I was doing it for my usual reason but these buggers are so big, maybe 80 to 100 pounds, so it was kind of a road hazard too.  I grabbed the carcass by a back leg and started to drag it off the road.

  That’s when all its guts spilled out on the highway.

  I kept pulling the dead javelina to the side of the road anyway.

  I figured some guts on the highway were less of a road hazard than a carcass of bone and muscle.

  Sometimes I can’t do anything about roadkill, sometimes I won’t.

  One time when I was driving truck across the country with my Trinidadian co-driver Frank we encountered a big dead critter.

  We were eastbound on Interstate 40 near Flagstaff, Arizona.  I was driving, Frank was riding shotgun.  Up ahead in the median there was a headless elk carcass….bloated…its legs sticking in the air.

  “Well I wonder what happened there?” I said.

  Frank looked up.

  “Ooo, ooo!” he exclaimed.  “Pull over!  I shall have the haunches off that.”

  “First, Frank, it’s bloated and has been in the sun…”

  “That just means the meat’s aged, pull over!”

  “Frank, I’m not pulling over.”  I chuckled a bit with the image of two truckers pulling over, hopping out of their 18-wheeler and hacking on a bloated elk carcass with Swiss army knives.  “As far as I know it’s against the law to hack on a big game carcass along the interstate.  Besides, where would you put the haunches?”

  “Under my bunk,” said Frank.  “I do not understand why you will not pull over.  That is a waste of perfectly good meat.”

  “Dude,” I said.  “It’s just not done.”

  “In Trinidad that would be considered wasteful.”

  So we continued our trek east.  Frank was quite convinced I was wrong and did not speak to me for a couple of hours.

  It was okay.  I enjoyed the quiet.

  And I was just glad Frank hadn’t been driving when we saw the dead elk.

 Now I’m not saying I clear off roadkill regular-like, I’m not saying I’d fight the vultures off a carcass to get it off the road or block traffic or anything.  I’m just saying every now and then when I see some dead animal on the highway I take a notion to get it off the road.  Then the vultures can do what vultures do.  Nobody’s ever hassled me about it, one time two guys even wanted to help, though for an unexpected reason.

  A few years ago I was heading down a long stretch of Arizona highway between Bisbee and Douglas when an animal carcass caught my eye.  Now I’ve seen a lot of dead animals along the road but not a spotted one.  As I sped by I couldn’t tell what it was.  I was curious.  I made a u-turn, drove back a bit then pulled over near the thing.  It was a dead bobcat, not a mark on it.

  This cat was a magnificent thing, probably three or four times the size of a big house cat.  The eyes were fixed and there were those teeth, big cat teeth.  The paws were huge, each one easily as big as the palm of my hand.  It was probably just easing across the road, got smacked and died.

  I grabbed the cat by a paw and was dragging it off into the desert when I heard tires squeal on the highway.  I looked up and saw a pickup truck make a u-turn and pull up behind my car.

  Just when I was thinking I must’ve broken some kind of wildlife law or something, expecting a game warden hop out, the doors flew open and two cowboys came running at me fast, holding their hats on their heads.

  “Hey buddy, whatcha got there?” said the guy in the lead.

  “It’s a bobcat,” I said.  I wondered what these guys were up to.

  “Woo-wee,” yelled the second one, “Lookit that thing.  Can we have a look?”

  “Sure,” I said.  I realized this wasn’t about hassling or laws or anything, these guys were really interested in this dead bobcat.  “Is it a big one?”

  “You bet,” said one.

  “Biggest one I’ve ever seen,” said the other.  “Can we have it?”

  I paused for a moment.

  This was a first for me, someone wanted an animal carcass I was pulling off the road.

  Were they going to eat it?

  “Well sure,” I said.  “I mean…it isn’t mine, I was just getting it off the road.”

  One guy looked up at me and squinted, “You’re just getting’ it off the road?  You ain’t from around here, are you.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Skin it.  We can get big coin for this pelt.”  And with that they each grabbed a paw, ran back to the pickup truck, tossed the dead bobcat in back, hopped in and took off.

  At least they weren’t going to eat it, I thought as I watched them fade off in the distance.