Employee of the Year

Tuesday, June 14. The day of the murder.

My dad always told me you can’t win in this world. It’s just a question of how bad you’re going to lose. I hated to agree with anything he told me. But on this point, I was in no position to prove him wrong.

Growing up there were no victories to savor, just a long string of concessions, compromises, and outright failures. In junior high I auditioned for the class musical The Wiz and couldn’t even get a background spot as one of the Flying Monkeys.

As a senior I back-benched the worst basketball team in the LA school system. After dropping out of Carson High, I did three years in the kitchen at Bongo Burger while I was getting my GED. I was the only short order chef who never once got the Special Recognition certificate for a free Wonder Meal. I think the store manager had a thing against guys who were half-Irish, half-Mexican.

I bounced from job to job through my twenties without a single success until I met Suzy. After we fell in love and got married, I finally figured out the reason I could never win before. I could never win because I never had a reason.

But Suzy and I wanted a family. We wanted the perfect life together, the life our parents never had. That would take money. So I focused on my job in the phone bank at Passion Financial. I learned to get real good at what I had to do.

Finally, I had a reason.

I was coming in to work when I found him. I was on the early shift, getting ready to dial out to the East Coast. It was still dark out when I scored a spot by the stairwell in Garage 3. This was the lot where all the phone reps parked their clunkers and trudged over to start their day in the call center.

He was flat on his back, his chest soaked in blood that spread out beneath his jacket across the concrete floor. His eyes gazed intently at the ceiling, watching a movie that only plays for the dead.

Roland Shavosian was the best agent in the call center, my main rival for the Employee of the Year award. For the past twelve months, I worked harder than ever before in my life. I was completely focused on winning the prize. Now my only real competition was eliminated in the most horrible way imaginable.

 I called 911 right away on my cell and the cops arrived in minutes. They sealed off the garage and took away the body. A detective introduced himself as Elliot Kowalski and asked me to come to the police station for further questioning. 

“So you’re Mr. Temo McCarthy from Passion Financial?” The detective sneered. “Is that how you introduce yourself on the phone? Ever since the divorce, I get calls from assholes like you all the time, always pestering me about this bill and that bill.”

Kowalski was short and cocky with a face like an insect. I could see why his wife left him. What woman would want to wake up with him on the next pillow over for the rest of her life? He kept going at me with the snide remarks. He was trying to get a rise out of me. If he could get me angry, then he’d have a reason to put me in line.

“Collection agents. You people are worse than leeches. The lowest of the low. What a miserable way to make a living: hounding strangers, violating their privacy.”

Of course, most people feel that way. Nobody respected the work we did. All day long we sat in our cramped cubicles overlooking the freeway.

Dialing deadbeats. That was what we called it. Young and old, married and divorced, sick and healthy, working and jobless, black, white, Asian, Latino. They all had one thing in common: they were behind on their credit cards.

We had figure out how to make them pay.

I’ve been insulted over the phone so many times I can’t even feel the hurt. But the hurt is still there. Just like when I was beat up in school as a kid. They kept hitting and after while you can’t feel it. But the damage is still being done with each punch. You just don’t feel it until later on.