The Washing Machine

I’ve worked in call centers over the last few years. There is a certain breed of people who can do that. It’s a skill, believe me. Whenever I worked in a call center I would always climb to the top of the heap. After eight months to a year I’d blow up and walk out.  That’s the way you quit a call center, just walk out. The one thing I drew from my years at those centers was the interaction with the customers. In all of the hundreds of calls, every now and then a jewel would pop out, and it would stay with you for ever. Most calls were the same. You’d answer, and everything you said was according to script. At Sears I was on what they called the “fifth tier,” which means that by the time I got to talk to a customer they’d been passed all over India and back for about forty-five minutes to an hour and they were at the upper end of exasperttion.  We were supposed to show “empathy” within the first two minutes of the call, and you’ve all heard it, “Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that,” but you know it’s phony. That’s why it makes you so mad when you hear it. The call center person doesn’t give a flip about what happened to you, they just want to get off that call in sixteen minutes or less so their stats don’t crash!

I was taking calls one late afternoon when I got one from “Edna” in Memphis. Edna was seventy-five years old, raising six grandchildren and her washing machine was down! Naturally, I expressed “empathy,” but then I began to work on her case. The washing machine was a lemon. It had had far more than the four “functional” failures required for replacement, but the call tree structure of Sears had done it’s job well and poor old Edna was holding this thing together with duct tape. I got a message to the “STAT” team in charge of repairs and began to put in the order for fix or replace, but during this process you had to keep conversation going with the customer so I did. 

I found that her daughter had been killed in a drive by shooting some years before. Wrong place, wrong time, and Edna had stepped in and taken all of her children to raise. Now old Edna was already on Social Security, which as you may know is NOT very “secure,” but no matter. The foods stamps and food banks would kick in and there would be enough to eat. When she had to purchase something like a washer, she always purchased from Sears because of it’s reputation for customer support. Well, that legendary support had vastly eroded over the years, but nobody told Edna, and at least his one time Sears was going to step up to the plate and do what it was supposed to do.

It took a while to set everything up and Edna filled me in on her day. We talked about everything from the president to corn bread. She was very happy that I was from Shreveport. I can’t tell you all of the southern phrases she used, but I will say that I’m glad I was versed in them because it was a whole “nother” language. When I finalized the deal I moved to the close of the call by asking if there was anything else I could help her with. Jokingly, she said, “If you could make that stove cook faster it would be nice.”

“Oh, can’t do that. Boy, I’ll bet it’s a real job just keeping up with all them babies.” I was trying to end the call cordially, but then Edna said something that was burned in my mind, and I will never forget. 

“Oh, Wilbur, they ain’t babies no more. Been ten years since I lost my little girl. First it was hard, very hard. I had a heart attack over it all. But slowly, over the years them babies grew. Now, the way I look at it, I took care of them, now they take care of me.”