Not the Calling I Was Really Looking For

My wife and I are both fans of The Office. Who isn't? It's a good show, well written, thoughtfully directed, and beautifully acted. I would heartily commend it to any of the sixteen people under the age of 90 who haven't seen it.

I do, however, have a quibble with it. I have a suspicion that no one who works on the writing staff has ever had a real job. Now, this is in contrast with the British version. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant got out of their corporate prison by creating the original The Office, and it shows in the writing.

The British version can be somewhat uncomfortable to watch because it gets things so right in a bleak and funny way. (And don't get me started on their follow-up series, Extras. The bleakness of its vision, its unblinking understanding of all the petty and self-centered traits that people hold in common, its unwavering nihilism make it all but unwatchable for me. It is brilliant and unbearable in its brilliance. It makes me wonder how Ricky Gervais gets through the day.) Gervais's David Brent pushes the lines of what is permissible and what is the basis for a lawsuit. On the other hand, Steve Carell's Michael Scott (and I admire Mr. Carell's performance enormously) consistently bounds into areas in which a lawsuit would be the only logical recourse. In the real world, Michael Scott would have been fired long ago. The David Brents, however, are everywhere.

The most recent episode of the American The Office ("Money") involved Michael getting a part-time evening job doing telephone sales. Now that's fine. That happens. However, I'm pretty sure that not only have none of the writing staff ever held a real corporate job, I'm almost certain that none of them have ever done telephone sales. I can say this because I have.

One of The Many Jobs of Len™ was approximately 12 hours spent trying to sell Time-Life Books over the phone. It was my job to sell The Civil War series of books to an unsuspecting public using only a phone, my dialing finger, and the script I had been provided.

My first day was a half day. Three of the four hours were spent "training." The last hour was spent on the phone. I had a good hour--made three or four sales--and went home convinced that I was king of this particular universe. Day Two went a little differently.

We had quotas for how many numbers we were to dial in each hour--sixty, if I remember correctly. (Today, of course, it's all automated. A computer dials number after number and kicks any phone that's answered over to the next available sales rep.) There is little chance for the kind of lounging around that was shown on the show, and we did not gather in a conference room for our top-of-the-shift sales meeting. The supervisor stood where everyone could see him to announce what the goals were for the day. It took all of about 85 seconds.

The sales reps do not chat with each other. There's no time for that. We were supposed to ring a bell after each sale so that the supervisor could place a mark next to that person's name on the white board at the front. To steal Eric Idle's phrase, the number of marks next to my name at the end of the day was "nearly one."

Most of the numbers called were busy (remember that? busy signals?) or no one answered. Of those that did, interest in the Civil War was almost nil. I did, however, have two memorable calls. One was a lady who, after I got about a sentence of my spiel out, screamed, "We don't want to hear about no Civil War!" and slammed down the phone. The other was a gentleman who taught history at a university and specialized in the American Civil War. He patiently explained that there couldn't possibly be anything in the Time-Life series that wasn't already exhaustively covered in the hundreds of books on the subject he had on his shelves. I agreed with him and thanked him for his time and hung up.

I went home that night a physical and emotional wreck. It's funny in retrospect, but was a tragedy at the time, which is, of course, the basis for a great deal of comedy. And I wish that the producers of a certain TV comedy would realize that those of us out there in the world--the viewers--actually have jobs and show us enough respect to get at least some small idea of what they're talking about.

Not that I'm going to stop watching it. I can't. I love it.