| 9/08/2006 |
HOW TO SAVE A LIFE
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My last post about my job at The Hotline was a little deeper and heavier than I intended it. Not that it wasn't true or a good release on my behalf. I started out writing with the intention of the story being a bit more jovial. You can see how it turned out. This one, I promise, will be a more light-hearted.
Does anyone remember the movie Mixed Nuts? It starred Steve Martin as a crisis line counselor working on Christmas. The movie boasts that Christmas was one of the crazier nights to work. Having worked on or around Christmas, I can attest that this is not completely accurate.
What? A movie that's inaccurate?!? Holy cow!
Traditionally, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve were pretty low key. It was the fallout from after these holidays that was busy. Even the people that are truly lonely and alone take a break on the holidays. Some of them would spend time with families and it was the breaking point of family-time that we'd get a call. Just when you thought The Holiday Trifecta had passed, Valentine's Day come around to clean up any stragglers.
In the movie, there are a lot of colorful characters that work at the crisis line as well as calling the crisis line. This part IS accurate. It takes a special kind of person to talk to other people about their problems.
One such person I worked with I'm going to call Redd. He had a southern drawl that would intensify when he was flustered. He'd lived in Nebraska for quite some time, but still retained his accent. He drew you in with his accent. He could say almost anything to a caller and because of his sweet southern accent, every word dripped with honey. It was quite charming, as was Redd. He had plenty of stories from his life that while sad somehow managed to also be funny. Which makes for a pretty good story. The overnights could be very slow. Redd was down on his luck and was doing all sorts of things to make money. He would occasionally fall asleep, but easily woke at the sound of the phone ringing. No time was quite as funny as when he decided that he was going to sleep on his break. Already sitting in an empty call room he somehow managed to squeeze himself onto one of the desk and went to sleep. If you've ever seen, worked, or lived in a cube farm desk you know the type of desk I speak off. Redd was not a small many in any sense of the word, to be curled up fetally on a desk. Unfortunately for Redd, he forgot to sign off his phone. So it was a good twenty minutes before he was woke by his phone ringing. We knew he heard it because in the other call room (where the rest of the night shift was sitting) we are alerted to his awake state by a loud bang and what sounded like a sack of potatoes falling off a shelf.
The phone woke him up alright. Woke him up and he fell right off the desk.
Now some may think... How can he get away with sleeping on the job? Technically he was on his break. And while probably not the smartest idea, sleeping on top of the desk wasn't the most bizarre thing to occur.
Another colorful character was Chuck. Chuck was a well intentioned man. He had a big heart. A heart so big that it actually had a hole in it and he wasn't getting the right bloodflow/oxygenation that he needed. What is unusual about this is that, you would never guess he had a heart condition by looking at him. Chuck was a very hyper man. VERY hyperactive man... if it would've been possible for him to take two calls at once he would do it. We often joked that we would get him a hamster wheel to run in and burn off some idle energy, while on a call. When Chuck's heart was repaired we expected a more sedated employee. Fools, we were. Now he had even MORE blood and oxygen pumping.
Chuck's "claim to fame" was having talked someone into having suicidal thoughts on an third party information call. Let me explain. He did not tell them to kill themselves. He did not encourage any dangerous behavior. As a call center, we would occasionally take calls for other various information-based agencies. This was a caller to one such agency. She did have some serious issues, but in the end all was well. She got both the informational and mental help she needed.
One of my favorite characters was Katie. She was a clown. No, seriously. She was a certified card-carrying clown. With a registered clown name and everything... I'm not sure how one goes about getting certified as a clown, but she was.
On Halloween it was common for parents who worked at The Hotline to bring in their younger children for desk-to-desk trick-or-treating. It was on this day that Katie would dress up in her clown outfit. Full regalia. Oversized shoes. Make up. Frizzy wig. Colorful mismatched patchwork prints on both her blouse and pants.
Have you already jumped ahead visually where Katie is also answering calls while dressed as a clown? Take a few moments to get there mentally. I'll wait.
Ok... are you there?
As Dribbles The Wonder Clown (or whatever the heck her name was) answered calls, it wasn't uncommon for the occasionally caller to be suicidal. I often wondered if it would help or hurt the caller to know that the person they were spilling their deepest emotions too was dressed like a Big Top attraction.
All these people are great. Don't think for one moment that I hold any ill-will towards them and that's why I write about them. There are just some people that seemed like the stepped right off the silver screen with Steve Martin and Mixed Nuts. How can you not enjoy them!? |
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I posted this @ 9/08/2006 10:43:00 PM.............Need a link?..........
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