She could have made the morning shift. But she had decided the mornings were slow so she would go in the afternoon. She had hurried back home from the daycare and curled into bed for an hour before waking up to coffee and Oprah.
She could apply for other jobs and could at this moment be poring over the newspaper looking at the “help wanted” column. Telemarketing was alright for now, but for how long? However, she could not bear the thought of wearing her ill- fitting skirt and shoes to an interview where she would be stared at rudely as though she were some strange animal because of the diamond nose-ring that she wore. The clothes, the lack of the red dot on her forehead and her confusion as to how she should wear her flowing locks so she did not look totally “immigrant-like” added to the utter unpleasantness of her experience. She stared down at hands that had often been coloured with henna, the toes adorned with toerings the ankles with anklets and felt barren, unfeminine, stripped of her glamour. For after all, had she not turned heads when she had walked down her street in her home town, the chiffon saree contouring her ample and sensuous hips, her hair in a long braid, her eyes glistening with kohl and her ears and nose showing off her precious diamonds? The bells on her ankles had tinkled as she walked an apt accompaniment to her lilting laugh, which had sounded like someone had strewn a thousand little shells on the cement flour. Now her face, which could barely summon up a smile, felt tight and strained. Her eyes had lost their sparkle and her movements were mechanical and functional. Dressing to go anywhere was a chore since it meant ensuring one was warm, with socks and gloves and coat. She could never get herself organized enough to get out on time properly dressed. She did not know what to buy so she could look graceful and casual like some of the women she saw on the subway. She marveled at how they were all coordinated, with their hair neatly coiffed, their finger nails painted, shoes matching handbag and coat. She went to the bargain counters and bought clothes without thought for what they would go with. The sweaters ended up being too bulky to wear under a coat and usually did not match the pants or skirts she had. Likewise the gloves were mismatched with her coat, hat and shoes. She bought cheap without visualizing them on her body. Besides, she was also clueless as to the clothes that would flatter her looks. She tried to imitate but with disastrous effect.
Oprah was a great escape. She made her believe that she too could get out of her rut. She gave her a short term “high” teasing her with possibilities but never really showing her how. When the “high” had passed Asha felt totally inept, wondering what would become of her in this cold and alien country, where she had to reinvent herself and where it seemed to her she would never amount to anything. Her Masters degree from India mattered not at all. She could type only with some difficulty and hence had no skill to speak of that would get her a position here. She had won numerous awards in public speaking and writing but nobody wanted those skills. Her verbal communication skills had landed her the telemarketing job, but nobody would hire her to work in an office, it seemed, because she did not possess the look. She found telemarketing extremely stressful, besides being unethical, intrusive and totally manipulative. Could there be a job out there for someone who had such limited “hands on” skills as her? Her interview experiences had been quite traumatic. In one, she had gotten the distinct impression people had a hard time following her train of thought and at another they kept asking her to repeat her responses because she spoke too fast. In yet another, where she had waxed philosophical, one panel member had actually dozed off.
Asha dragged herself into the shower willing the hot water to dull the pain of homesickness that she experienced in her underbelly and to wash away the total feeling of inadequacy, which made all her actions tentative. Today was a new day. She would make her list, follow through on her job search efforts, endure the insults and make something of herself.
She chose a grey skirt and a light blue top with puffed sleeves and a lace collar. She would don stockings and her black stilettos. She confined her hair in a pony tail, brushing it smooth, split ends and all, wore some powder and eye-liner, some lip gloss, because she could never decide what colour of lipstick suited her. Her eyebrows were poorly done with a pair of tweezers, since she did not know of beauty parlours that would clean them as they had done expertly back home.
The phone rang and it was the Manpower consultant whom she had met the previous week. Would she be interested in some packaging work, they asked? It was a cosmetic company and the work would be light. She took down the details and sat down staring at the floor bemoaning her fate. She was supposed to have joined the Administrative Service and become a high level civil servant. Or gone into politics. How had she gotten here from there? She had wanted to get out of home. In her mind she had fantasized about somehow miraculously becoming one of those women she had seen on television or read about in newspaper columns. Within a few months of arrival, the process of demystification began and the barriers to success seemed to loom higher than Mount Everest. The right look mattered and this meant cloning oneself into a being that was so foreign to her own true self. Even with that there was nothing she could do about the colour of one’s skin. Then one needed the right manner of speech – intonation and tone conveying a certain conviction and confidence, words enunciated with the right emphasis, appropriate and polite responses which sounded “intelligent” even if they did not mean a thing, use and understanding of cultural phrases such as “way to go” and “what’s up” at the opportune moments, all so one fit right in. Asha had to metamorphosize her very being she realized. She was shy and coquettish, having interacted with few persons except close family members, a quality that men at home had found very sexy, but which had her tongue-tied and tentative when she was thrown into company here. She also found because of the “look” she did not have instant credibility as her white counterparts who dressed with studied “casualness”. She had to work at being listened to.
Her soft-spoken husband meekly went about his work, dreading being laid off. He was a misfit, overqualified but ironically not possessing the skills of a shop floor supervisor the job he had been hired to do. He was an R & D engineer with post-graduate degrees and yet this was the only job he could land and that too only because his interviewer had been impressed with his command of English. That he had a couple of graduate degrees did not matter. At interviews for other positions, more in his line of work, he had been pronounced overqualified, a.k.a “a threat” to people who would supervise him.
Asha was caught between a rock and a hard place. Continue in telemarketing, which she hated or take up this factory job? She needed a mentor she realized. She needed someone who could tell her the career she was suited for, that she could aspire to.
She set out at noon after eating a plate of curry and rice, not washing her hands with soap so she could inhale the smell of home as she rode the subway. At the telemarketing place she felt a sense of homecoming. Immigrants of every stripe and local Canadians who were social misfits, or filling time in between jobs inhabited this unique world. They sold stuff to unsuspecting gullible persons, enduring “hang-ups” and insults along the way. The turnover was high, with some people giving up early, others enduring but getting fired due to their inability to make the sale and yet others coming and going as they pleased. The job offered flexibility, paid well if one was successful and provided a certain buffer for persons in dire need. She had gotten off to a shaky start but in week two had made her sale and had since never looked back, climbing to the top of the sales charts. She was not proud of her accomplishment since it only meant she could manipulate better than the next person. She waved to her close buddies, “John”, “Jack” and “George”, all telephone identities of persons who did not look like their assumed names and who were really Jagannathan, Jivaratnam and Go Chok Tong. Then she assumed her post, put on her headphones, physically and mentally preparing for the difficult six hours that lay ahead, as she engaged in her deception game. People assumed different identities for different calls and let the customers guess their accents even tell their story. Often a woman from the deep South in the United States had no clue that there was such a country as Canada and dug into the far reaches of her brain and came up with “are you from New York?” or another with a little more knowledge of geography “are you German?” John, Jack and the rest went along with that fantasy whatever it was and weaved a story that their listener wanted to hear about a wonderful world of bounties that awaited them if only they would take the step of providing them their credit card number. Of course a long and friendly conversation ended abruptly when the guileless person disclosed to them that she did not have a credit card. Asha tried to be scrupulous within bounds. She never intentionally lied, always stuck to her script, thereby not taking ownership for the deception, and made the sale often by listening to people ramble on about their life’s trials. She did, however, capitalize on the opportune moment to introduce the purpose of her call and her victims succumbed every single time. However, in this business one’s job was only as good as the sale one made the previous day and over the last couple of days, bouts of conscience had severely impeded her ability to perform. She had spoken to Jay about it and he appeared to empathize, although she had serious misgivings about having done so, now.
Today, “Jack” the dentist from his country of origin said he had decided on a career change and was studying accounting. His wife also a dentist was training to be a dental hygenist. “John” a leading cardiac surgeon from his country of origin, having come here in his early forties, had decided he would sell real estate. It appeared to Asha that these close pals of hers were conveying something to her with their news. That she too make a decision about a career path. Telemarketing could not be a life long avocation, why not even for another year. Jay, her supervisor, an Indian from Fiji, the man with the golden tongue and a demi god in telemarketing circles, who could get credit card details from the hands of a dying man or one taking wedding vows or in the middle of a sexual orgy, called her aside and said “Can I talk to you?” Asha’s stomach sank. She was going to face the ultimate humiliation of getting fired from her telemarketing job, she thought. Jay began by saying “I have to go back to Fiji to tend to my father who is very sick, and I have asked for a leave of absence. I am going to request that you manage the shift when I am gone. I have spoken to Anita (our supreme boss) and she is ok with any decision I make. These guys get along with you and I know I can trust you to not take over but to keep the seat warm in my absence. All you need to do is confirm the deals by calling the customers back and verifying their credit card information and logging in and out. At the end of the day you just tally the sales. I will show you everything this week”. Asha was stunned and could not contain her joy. She clasped her hands and held them to her chest, profusely thanking Jay for his offer. She knew that she did not deserve this benevolence. She was just the wise choice in a “dog eat dog” world, soft, respected by the guys because of her gracious manner, and for being a tad ethical. So those conversations with Jay about her stabs of conscience had paid off in spades. It had bought her time. This had to mean something. She only had three months now to decide her fate. She had to make that call to the University to pick up her application for the Masters program commencing this fall. She would save up for it. That seemed the only way out.
No comments:
Post a Comment