Role-playing with darting eyes the personas of furniture salesman and customer (I sell intangibles) Being told that I would earn $15 per hour Quickly told that I would endure 4 weeks of elementary training (me the experienced agent) Answering questions in a structured way (STAR) about imagined or real work scenarios, including recounting a conflict with a coworker (which doesn’t model reality in my work history)

Working against one’s self interest is alive and limping. From time to time, I enroll people in core and voluntary benefits. Recently, a fair number of people did not want health insurance. These were working-class natives and immigrants. People are mad about insurance costs. People do send money to their…

Have handed off Chick-fil-A rewards Am moving on Had a goosebump raise in the offing Am moving on Let gamification schemes molder Let the cowbells go missing May our surveyed souls settle Enough guff Zoom zombies, bye bye Am moving on.

Following are some of the issues that call center agents are dealing with as they pitch Final Expense policies. I present these issues as quantifying questions. How many customers are seeing false TV commercials about paying less than a dollar a day for a policy face amount of $30,000? How…

Respiratory antics A touch of COPD And daily smoking Isn’t an artichoke

I hear voices above 70 decibels, All around me: At stem, stern, and beam reach Reading the same script and ad-libbing: The grinding voice The stern one The aw-shucks guy A thistle salad Projected and caught Seizing my audio processing

In some possible world, You make yourself whole, Taking hold of skeins of destiny. With agency to activate your actions, You pick up the phone — ear-based hair cells numerous and intact — And your brain matter lacks plaque. In this life tho’ You are just a self, By the by, Getting by.

Pink noise and industrial carpeting PLEASE The sales boys are loud and reverberating The sales girls here, not so. We are serving sound pollution — less so, quelling objections Queue operatic choruses offstage. Let absorbents deliver!

Let’s not rinse and repeat. Let many good things replace The random, rude, and crude. After all, we’re all new moon babies And survivors.