I speak on the phone every day. Often for hours.
When I pick up the phone, the individual on the other end is divorced from the context from which I speak. While this is true for every conversation, the cues a conversational partner has to go on over the phone are stripped down to the purely aural. They do not see my face, they do not see what they have interrupted on my end, they do not know what has happened in my day, what my physical condition is, who I am. They hear my voice.
Working at the front desk of a hotel, I am an object to people who call me. As an object I am two things: 1) a source of information or labor; 2) both an obstacle and an expedient to some desire. I may grant myself a name for them, but this is to give the caller a more effective handle on the situation rather than to establish my humanity: my name provides a handle for them to grab me by, and a perceived mechanism of accountability.
As I am essentially an object, part of the mechanism of “a hotel”, very often people launch into their explicit needs while I am mid-conversation with a customer directly in front of me or on another phone line, or mid-action at the front desk of the hotel. As I am supposed to respond to a phone call within the phone’s first three rings, I am subject to a Harrison Burgeron-level of cognitive interruption. Certainly people are calling for service, certainly I am being paid to provide service. However wrangling with the expectations of the general public while facelessly representing a corporate entity has taught me many things about communication efficiency, deficiency, the average individual’s capacity for planning, and exactly to what extent human beings are willing to consider other human beings as human beings.
One of the most popular modes of beginning a phone conversation is launching into an explanation of an individual’s life story: what brought them to call me and ask me the question at the end of their story. They might start with their birth and end with a question mark. These questions could usually be resolved within five seconds if they had formulated the entirety of their desires before they picked up the phone and called me. “How far is The Venue from your hotel by foot?” is expressed as “My mother died three weeks ago and her will was locked in my uncle’s attic behind three layers of magical riddles due to unfortunate familial propensities for both schizophrenia and wizardry. I have been killing mice for food each of the last fifteen years because I like the taste and their souls keep me modest in spirit as I quest to find the answers to each puzzle life presents me with. These riddles only are only the three recentest mysteries gracing the mountain of inquiry I’ve been climbing since the moment I severed my own umbilical cord. Strong limbs in my family, you see. It was therefore inevitable I would call you today and ask, upon the occasion of my great-niece’s arranged marriage, which will be taking place in 13 years, the distance your hotel might be, by foot, from The Venue.”
Sometimes people will phrase a desire or a story without asking any question at all, which prompts me to ask them directly, “Ah, sir, what was your question?” Sometimes this startles them. They’re not sure. They must turn it over in their mind.
Often people call others when they’re confused about things they want or when they wish to be talked into something without it being known to themselves. I become an agent in an individual’s process of self-talk, or a therapist working on the clarification of a person’s own desires, guiding them to the vacation they know they want, but haven’t been able to put into words yet.
In these ways, my role as a customer service agent at the front desk of a hotel is nebulous. Ostensibly I am at the desk to dispense information, to help people solve technical issues, and to coordinate the services of my institution with any caller’s desires, hopefully in exchange for their money. Often, however, I end up helping people narrativize their lives and whims, clarifying their own wants and thoughts for them, then processing them into actionable sets of goals and outlets. People are broadly unsure of themselves. As a person designed to capture their attentions, desires, and money, it is my job to concretize their uncertainties and be a midwife to their experiences.
Separately, I often get phone calls from our centralized reservation service. This is an offsite, generally out-of-country helpdesk that staffs, I assume, desperately underpaid ESLs with a better grasp on English than one would expect, but not good enough to grapple with American provincialism. Naturally these callers develop tactics for conversation, which I’ll refer to as “defensive conversationalism”, designed to combat some of the tendencies I have outlined above, while communicating efficiently with employees of the hotels that they aren’t commanded to coddle. Whenever they call me I’m immediately made aware of the fact that neither one of us wants to be on this call. The phone calls start with a scripted recitation that is both sighed and rushed, often in a particular accent. It is possible I have been speaking to the same three employees 7 times a day for the past 5 years, but I cannot know.
These reservationists are so used to being cut off and hectored that they invariably start each of our conversations by presenting me absolutely zero opportunity to tell them I am in the middle of something, I’m on the other line, I have a guest in front of me, please hold on. They take the exact opposite approach of the meandering caller, which is refreshing in its own way, but also demands my time and attention without allowing myself any input until they’ve had their way with me. After an opening soliloquy about a guest or “mutual customer” (for third party reservations companies like Expedia or Hotels.com) I either put that reservationist on hold, or help them. Oftentimes if it’s a conversation I am having with a reservationist within our own company, I get questions on the nature of our property, what our rooms are like, what our check-in times are, if guests can check in early. These are questions that could be promptly answered by the reservationists themselves if they simply read the website before their eyes, or could be brought to accomplish a moment of research. I can understand if the reservationist wants to be certain of their answers, however I get calls similar to the one that follows (which happened almost-verbatim) at least daily:
“Hello this is Albert from central reservations I have a guest on the other line who is trying to understand if there is a tub in the one queen standard room can you help me with this.”
“Of course. Have you read the description of the room?”
“Yes there is a description that says ‘one queen bed with TV, fridge, walk-in shower.”
“Alright. It did not say ‘bathtub’ on there?”
“…No.”
“There is not a bathtub in this room.”
Perhaps this is smarmy of me, however after receiving this phone call several times weekly for 60 straight months I’ve tired of answering these questions. I like to think I’ve helped at least three reservationists improve their competency, and think of myself both as a hotel employee and a proud teacher of literacy.
What I’m getting at here is that human beings very often call other humans in customer service roles for more than an answer to a specific question. They need help finding their question, or are incapable of understanding information directly before them. They are lonely or incapable, losing their patience and feel the need to be heard. So they call me, and they put me in the role of more than “service agent”. I become an interpreter. I cannot simply listen to their words because they often do not know exactly what they are saying. They often have a vague notion of what they want, and it is my job to clarify that for them. They might have an exact notion of what they want, but are otherwise incapable of finding answers or means on their own. I am the source of their intellectual or menial labor, the coordinator of their desires, and their avenue to Google. They are asking for help with their lives, and I get to fill in any deficiencies they may or may not realize they have.
Because I am an object. I am a stopgap for the problems people have in their lives. My time is cheap, and theirs is fleeting. I am an obstacle when I cannot immediately provide the caller with whatever arbitrary desire they may have, and I am an expedient whenever I can do so with the maximum possible efficiency for them. I wrestle with the problems of the everyman, and I solve them or not at the expense of whatever is directly in front of me.
I hang up, and somehow we’re both relieved.
- 11.13.2021
