some of this is true

I should confess: I made up some of the answers.

Years ago, a couple months after quitting my job at the car rental company to focus on school and hanging out at the student newspaper, I needed some extra money and took a job over the Christmas break at a call centre with a Major Market Research Firm conducting surveys for the government about travel habits. The goal was to find out if, when and how much people living in Alberta would take holidays within the province, instead of going some place interesting like just about anywhere else.

And I made up some of the answers.

I’m not a bad person, but I very quickly grew to hate my new job, and I would become more cynical every time I showed up at this inconspicuous brown-brick office building downtown, settling in at my cubicle, putting on my headset and scrolling through hundreds of phone numbers of people who never asked to be phoned on a cold winter evening by some very-early-twenty-something who — carefully following the provided script — would tell them this will just take 15 minutes, but of course this was a lie, as it was almost unheard of to finish in under 25.

At first I pretended to enjoy it and convinced myself that it was actually of value to the world, since I wasn’t selling anything but rather gathering valuable information that could shape important public policy, or at the very least guide a future marketing campaign. And anyway, it paid 10 or 11 dollars an hour, which was more than I had ever made.

But it didn’t take long to wear me down. There were the hang ups, the yelling, the lectures on interrupting people’s lives, when all they wanted was privacy in their isolated, northern communities as they watched TV or stared out their windows at the wind blowing snow around outside. They didn’t believe that I wasn’t, in fact, selling anything, and some asked what was in it for them, a question for which I had no satisfactory answer.

Occasionally — although, I should stress, infrequently — I would just fill a survey out, based on the trends I had already observed, when I just couldn’t bring myself to punch in another number, or after an hour or so of hangups and not-in-service numbers, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. But nearly all of my fake answers would come when, usually after 15 or 20 minutes, restless respondents would ask me how much longer, would tell me this was taking too long, would tell me they were finished, and politely hang up the phone. An incomplete survey, even if there were only a handful of answers missing, had to be thrown out, and this was just about more than I could take. So I would finish off the remaining questions, guess the demographics such as age, sex and income range based on what I could gather from our conversation, and mark another survey donw on my tally. It kept me from throwing my computer out the window and calmly walking out the front door as horrified co-workers, some of whom had been working there for years, tried to make sense of the madness.

My time as a call-centre employee (I was loath to use the word telemarketer, but I also realize I was not fooling anyone) — which thank god is many years behind me, and perhaps I’ve even grown as a person in the time since– was not the same as the woman writing in the Globe today about her own survey-taking career, which has so far lasted seven months. She sounds like the kind of person who has never made up an answer, not once, and somehow finds in her job an interesting window into the lives of others. I did not find this, I did not like my job, so I made up some of the answers. And when my term at this Major Market Research Firm was over, I did not miss my co-workers or the people in northern Alberta who would bluntly tell me, when I asked if they’ve had a holiday in the past year: “We live in the middle of nowhere — where would we go? How would we get there?” And I didn’t know what to say to that, how to respond to a life that sounded even more depressing than my existence in this horrible call centre, so I just carried onto the next question and tried to summon the audacity it would take to make that next call.

* * *

also, here are some recent photos from the new city.

For more than two days the message on the Air Canada website couldn’t have been more vague and hopeless when it came to my two pieces of checked baggage that contained clothes to last a week or two: “Tracing continues. Check again later.” I did check again later, but it just repeated those same depressing words, almost stubborn in its refusal to change, almost sadistic in its false promise of hope, as if checking again later would ever change anything.

I would have settled for anything else. Of course, I’d prefer if it said: “Yes! We are pleased to inform you that we’ve found your luggage, fully intact — and, by the way, you should really replace that small red suitcase, but you probably know that already. The wheels are still on, but just barely, and you’ve clearly packed it too tight too many times, just as you have again. But anyway, it has all worked out, so you can relax in knowing that you’ll have a clean shirt to wear in the morning, finally.”

That would have been nice, but to be honest I would have even settled for the worst: “No, we haven’t found your luggage, and, truth be told, we’re never going to. In fact, we’re not even going to try. It was probably sent to the wrong airport — which one, how would we know? — and was probably picked up by another unsuspecting passenger who just so happens to own the same large navy-blue suitcase made out of tightly packed tweed, because you didn’t even bother to tie on ribbons or anything to set it apart, so now these people — a well-to-do family living in suburban anywhere — are wearing your clothes, which they will pretend are ironic, but you and I know the truth.” At least then I would know, and then the mourning could begin.

I returned to my hotel room today after an afternoon of lunch and errands and talking on the phone with the movers about logistics and problems fitting an 18-wheeler onto my street, and the luggage was there, it had been delivered. My two suitcases spent a few days in our nation’s capital, and I imagine them perpetually spinning around the luggage carrousel wishing that someone — anyone — would take them home and empty them out, the same feeling of relief when you take off three layers of winter clothes and feel the fresh air hit your skin, but they probably sat in a dark room somewhere, or in that sad pile of abandoned luggage that always seems to be just collecting dust in the terminal, making me all the more suspicious that no one ever traces anything at all.

The fate of my luggage is a boring tale involving delays and changed flights, but one that also involves flying in first class, eating chicken teriyaki and wiping my hands and face with a hot towel while drinking wine and talking to our “service director,” which apparently is what the flight crew are called in the front half of the plane. The point is that my bags are finally here, and soon — should have been today, maybe tomorrow, but sooner than anyone expected — the rest of my things will follow.