It took me all of about two minutes of driving to realise I was still far too drunk to be behind the wheel of my metallic corpse-maker. Make no mistake, the Hyundai was a death-trap at the best of times. It was car The Birdman affectionately named ‘The Hiv’ due to it being a series of horrific problems waiting to happen; you’d have an easier time counting the number of things that worked properly than those that didn’t. Topping the biblically long list of flaws were faulty brakes, broken tail lights for which I’d used coloured cellophane as an intermediate solution, and power steering that would randomly and arbitrarily decide when it wanted to work or not, often spluttering in and out of life several times in any given trip. The simple act of driving in a world that included corners made every day a thrilling new adventure.
I did my best to not draw attention to myself as I drove, having no desire to have my vehicle declared defective and receive a DUI in one foul swoop. This was no mean feat considering the vehicle couldn’t have been more conspicuous if I’d painted ‘VOID’ across the sides in bright red letters. Lex and the Birdman had once been pulled over while driving it and questioned for a good 20 minutes before the police allowed them to be on their way. I guess that the cops figured that anybody driving a car like that had to be dodgy. Why they hadn’t impounded the car there and then I’ll never know.
I was trying to use as many back streets as possible to avoid any potential legal issues, but the amount of corners involved were beginning to present concerns of their own. All the sideways momentum was starting to make me feel ill, and I was being forced to choose between a soundtrack of either loud music or a loud hole in the exhaust. Neither was agreeing particularly well with the violence happening behind my eyeballs.
My phone started ringing, sitting in the centre console. I took my eyes off the road for as long as I dared and saw that the call was once again from a private number. As desperate as I was to give Jeremy some much deserved payback in the form of unwelcome sex-pests, I couldn’t keep The Hiv on the road without the solid cooperation of all my limbs. Whoever was calling was just going to have to wait.
I eventually made it to work without vomiting or killing any pedestrians. It was nearly 10:00am and the heat was already climbing towards unbearable. I was hungover, sweating, irritable, and nearly an hour late. This was compounded by the fact that the employee carpark hadn’t been built to accommodate the actual amount of employees Advantage had on the payroll. Each frustratingly full row of spaces was leading me further and further away from the offices, and my temper was growing more foul with each passing moment. The sun was beating down with a ferocity I’d forgotten it was capable of.
Finally, I found the last vacant parking spaces; the furthest point in the complex from any of the covered offices, naturally. With all the strength my arms could muster I fought with the steering wheel. I nearly collided with the cars either side of me as the power steering activated momentarily, putting me briefly out of control of the vehicle. I cursed in shock, taking a moment to steady my frayed nerves before taking the key out of the ignition. I slammed the car door as I exited the vehicle, kicking it for good measure, and began the long, hot walk to the office.
At least the office is air-conditioned, I thought to myself. That was something to look forward to, at least. The stairwell of the fire escape was mildly cooler than its surrounds by virtue of being out of direct sunlight. I took the stairs two at a time, feeling the burn in my lungs, that shortness of breath that comes from too much smoking and too little exercise. By the time I reached the third floor I was sweating heavily, anticipating the rush of cool air that would greet my entrance. Instead, I was assaulted by an unexpected wave of humidity and heat.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I nearly collapsed in disappointment.
A sharp voice cut through my despair. “Jake? Where the hell have you been? Do you know what time it is? You’re over an hour late! You know how busy we are this week! What’s wrong with you?”
Susan was a middle aged woman with an axe to grind. She had the kind of voice that would carry across a crowded bar, with the raucous laugh and humour of a truck driver. Her hair was the kind of blonde you get at a cheap salon for the change you’ve got rolling about the car floor. Divorced, childless, and armed with a wicked temper; her tiny eyes and gap-toothed grimace of a smile were, I suspected, instrumental in keeping things that way. The misfortunes of her life was plastered across her face like clown paint, leaving me to wonder if she actually owned any mirrors at home or if she simply applied her makeup in the dark. Life had not been kind to her thus far, and it seemed she’d be damned if she was the only one who was going to pay for it.
Susan was also the manager of my department.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I managed, out of breath from the effort of running up the fire escape. “My alarm didn’t go off this morning and there was...”
“I don’t care why you’re late, Jake. This is the fourth time this month you’ve been late. I told you last time that the next will earn you a written warning.”
I was certain it was only the third, but I wasn’t about to argue. Susan looked like she was ready to put my head on a spike, and the infernal heat inside the building certainly wasn’t improving her disposition. I nodded my acquiescence, hoping to get out of this roasting as quickly as possible.
“Hurry up and get to work. Your files are piling up as we speak.” Susan glowered after me as I slunk off towards my cubicle. In my backpack my phone began to ring again. “And turn that fucking phone off!”
I’m going to let you in on a little secret of every service industry in the world. We hate you. Yes, you, the customer. You know the old adage, ‘the customer is always right’? That’s a Hallmark sentiment, invented to placate your misplaced sense of entitlement. It’s all bullshit, though. Management screams it from the rooftops, but down at ground zero it’s the first rule we ditch. Dealing with actual people, day in, day out, you quickly discover that, in fact, the customer is not always right. In fact, the customer is, more often than not, an idiot. I mean, what do you expect? These are the same people who think Fox News and A Current Affair are legitimate sources of news. Customers ask stupid questions, have unrealistic expectations, and feel entitled to much more than they’re willing to pay for.
Now, obviously this attitude is a blanket statement of the highest order and not every customer is deserving of our spite, but insurance as a product is basically sold as coverage against your own stupidity, or the stupidity of those around you. When that’s what you’re dealing with on a daily basis, it’s easier to assume that everybody is an idiot until proven otherwise.
It’s my job to be the bad guy in all of this. I review all the statements, all the proof of ownership, weigh up the cost of replacement, and put the big red tick or cross in the box that says “approved”. Throughout it all, I get the delight of constant customer harassment by way of phone calls. I call them, asking for whatever documentation I need to make sense of their special little clusterfuck. They call me, asking questions that I answered for them the day before. We have a call centre to deal with the basic inquiries, but most of the people who flow through that department couldn’t find their arse with both hands. Everything eventually makes its way back to me. It’s a tiring, thankless job that earns me a lot of verbal abuse and can rack up some pretty impressive stress leave. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who still has faith in humanity.
The day had taken a turn for the worse with this phone call. Raquel Finley was a difficult woman to deal with at the best of times. She spoke with the manner of somebody with money, completely accustomed to getting her own way. There was always an edge of accusation in her voice, and behind every word was the unspoken assumption that she was better than you. Over the weeks that I’d been working on her file, every conversation had left me with the unsettling feeling that I’d just lost a battle I hadn’t known I was fighting. She had this air of self-righteous anger which would have been bad enough if it wasn’t for one thing; I was certain the whole thing was a fraud, but had no solid basis on which to act accordingly.
Raquel’s house had been burgled in circumstances that the police report had described as ‘suspicious’. The report wasn’t more specific than that however, because apparently the phrase ‘suspicious circumstances’ is a magical password that substitutes for actual police work in this town. There was definitely something wrong with this claim, but I couldn’t quite work out what it was. It was looking like we were going to have to pay her, but I wasn’t ready to give her the satisfaction of knowing that just yet.
“I sent those receipts in last week,” she was saying. “They had the price of the television printed on it right there. What on earth is holding it up my payment?”
“We’re still waiting to hear back from our suppliers with regards to the replacement costs of all the items, Mrs Finley.”
“It’s right on the receipt, that’s how much it cost me.”
“I’m aware of that,” I replied wearily. “However, the receipt was to establish proof of ownership, not the cost of replacement. We use our own suppliers to organise the replacement of any electronic goods.”
"What if I’d prefer a cash settlement?”
“We use the suppliers to figure out what the replacement cost would be, yes. That is, we would pay you whatever it would cost us to replace it.”
“That’s not good enough,” she snapped. “I paid a lot of money for that television set, I expect to be reimbursed for it.”
“That’s not how this works.” My head was pounding. I placed my head on the desk, unconsciously reaching for my wastepaper basket. The whirling in my stomach was threatening to make its way back up. “Why would we pay you the same amount of money you paid for a television three years ago when we can get you the same thing for a third of the price? We’d be losing money hand over fist if we were that stupid.”
Shit. I probably shouldn’t have said that.
“What if I want to upgrade?” she huffed. “Or what if I don’t want to have a new television, what if I would prefer something else instead?”
“Well, you’re more than welcome to make up the difference in cost yourself. We’ll cover up to whatever it costs us to replace it, not whatever you feel like at the time.” I’d had enough of this, and cut her off before she could counter. “If you want to complain about it further you can feel free to speak with my manager, but I’ll tell you now, she’s just going to tell you the same thing I have.”
“Put him on then.”
“What?”
“Don’t you ‘what’ me. Your manager. Put him on.”
“Her.”
“Don’t talk back to me, young man.”
I gritted my teeth. I don’t enjoy having to presume that everybody else in the world was born a chromosome short, but conversations like this had long stripped me of my better nature.
“Won’t be a moment,” I growled, pressing the hold button on the phone and spinning in my chair to face Rebecca in the neighbouring cubicle.
“You won’t believe this fucking bitch I have on the line,” I spat, shaking my head. “I swear to god, it’s like Cruella DeVille and Hitler had a hate-child and then beat the comprehension gene out of her. How many times do I have to say the same thing over and over? Is it even possible to be that ignorant by accident? I’m starting to think she’s doing it on purpose. I know the bitch is lying through her teeth about something, but I don’t know what it is. We’re going to have to pay her anyways, but fuck me if I’m gonna make it easy for her.”
The earpiece of my phone hissed. “Excuse me?”
I froze. I glanced at the phone; where the little red ‘hold’ light should have been flashing. There was no such light.
She was not on hold.
Shit!
In a moment of blind panic, I hung up the phone. Shit! Shit!
“Oh god, I’ve fucked it now.”
Rebecca raised an eyebrow in my direction. “What’s that?”
“I thought she was on hold,” I managed, mortified. “Turns out she just heard all of that.”
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