Flyover City! A Novel (with Superheroes)

18. Work Life!

Diet Log for today (so far):

Breakfast: Oatmeal with raisins and honey (the real stuff, not that sugary instant mush you can spackle your bathroom with), large coffee-with-a-shot (aka The Bullseye / Shot in the Dark / Fire in the Hole / Keith Richards-in-a-cup), 3 prunes.

(Ahem... Ka-POW!)

Snack: Megatech brand Protein Shake (courtesy of Dr. Rex), one Fuji apple.

Lunch: The Joel Wyatt Power Salad of Destiny (TM) - spinach, red onions, carrot shavings, cucumber and tomato slices, chopped walnuts (4), red pepper, avocado ("good fats"), dressed with the juice from a lemon wedge.

Dinner: Not sure yet. I need to go to the grocery store.

Those first three are more or less set in stone. Dinner is where things get a little wonky, where I'm more likely to fall off the wagon. For every bowl of brown rice and vegetables at Taki's, there's a double with cheese and chocolate shake from Griff's Burger Bar. Duly noted - but still, I'm pretty damn healthy the rest of the time (though a mother of a charley horse has laid me up from running the last few days). It begs the question: where are my Goddamn washboard abs?

I haven't been able to pin Kyle down on a time to go to the gym - which sucks, yes - but the bigger question is: how does he do it? Seriously, you could play the xylophone on the guy's stomach. I go to the gym every single day, and my one claim to fame is the fact that I can shoot the top button on my business casual dress shirts across the room by flexing my Adam's apple.

So I'm presently at my desk, surfing for diet information (diet pills, diet plans, "Diet Secrets Your Doctor Doesn't Want You To Know About", etc.), but I can't even concentrate, because I've got Mr. Charlton on the phone.

Among customer service agents - the folks who spend their time while you're on hold, swapping war stories about your inability to get your Blu-Ray player to stop flashing "12:00" ever since your cable was installed - there is a mysterious, perhaps supernatural phenomenon known as "The Gooch". Vaig Communications has 12 million broadband customers; on a daily basis, somewhere on the order of seven percent of those customers will call in to one of our 5 service centers. Among those 600,000 or so people, there are a few individuals who are legends in their own right: bodiless entities who spend eternity haunting the automated phone trees, until the cruel fates eventually deliver them to a single representative - more than once.

Mr. Charlton is a dedicated Vaig customer for seemingly no other reason than the fact that he can reach out to one of our friendly voices 24 hours a day. In his 90 days of service, he's accumulated 102 notes on his account - no less than six of which written by yours truly. Including my first novel, a dramatized account of the day that he asked me to describe the programs on every single channel. Not the sort of programs, mind you, but the actual programs themselves, including air times and a brief synopsis.

Last month, I baited him long enough that he threatened to cancel, so I was able to transfer him to the "Disconnect Team" to get him off my hands. Bad idea: the brilliant "Loyalty and Retention" agent managed to not only talk him out of it, but they up-sold him to the Hypeport Deluxe Package, tripling the amount of programming available to him. So while he's been ranting to me for the last fifteen minutes, I consider myself lucky, at least, that he hasn't received his new bill yet.

"I don't know Joel, I just don't know. I'm trying to change the channel, but all I get is a bunch of garbage I can't even understand."

Probably using the wrong remote. Again.

While he's on a politically incorrect rant about "Mexicans and midgets", I'm checking the programming database. Jesus, what channel even airs that shit?

"...and I'm using the long silver one, this time." (Remote. Ohh-kay.) "And my phone connection has been all -"

The call's breaking up! Please drop please drop please drop...

"...LOVE BOAT!"

Crap.

***

Okay. That was just weird...

And not just the usual, run-of-the-mill "trying to change the channel with the garage door opener" Mr. Charlton/Gooch-weird.

Over the course of our 45 minute (!) conversation, I discovered that Mr. Charlton has spent his afternoon watching the entire ABC Saturday-night lineup - circa 1984. ("...and it's only Friday...")

I shit you not. I made him hold up his phone to the TV at one point, and I heard a commercial for the McDLT.

But that's not what's weird.

I'm cracking up. I'm losing it. Seriously, I've been on the phones for too long.

What's weird is that after his reception started to break up - "Love Boat" - and a few of the other exclamations Mr. Charlton made... I swear, I think they were answers to questions that I asked - a full 30 seconds before I asked them.

But that's still not the weirdest part.

"...and it's only Friday." he kept insisting.

Friday.

Folks, in case you don't have a calendar in front of you... today is Thursday.