There, in those cheaply carpeted, hotel-wallpapered halls, I learned the "stealth hello." I'm walking down the long foyer to get to the cafeteria, when someone from another department sees that you're coming. Neither I nor they really care to converse, or even cross paths, but there's no turning around. So you get within an acceptable proximity, make terse eye contact, and more or less mumble a faint greeting, intended solely to wear off easily before you reach your destination. When someone newer than me started, my instinct was to take them aside and let them know that I can answer any questions they might have. This instinct went away surprisingly easily, once I realized that friendships do not form in this environment.

Take Ron, for instance. Ron and I shared a sense of humor, and an appreciation for the absurdity of our surroundings. We somehow ended up going to a downtown Raleigh bazaar on a Saturday afternoon together. It was a good time. Ron and I, along with two girls from other departments, would go out for Indian food every Thursday evening. I reveled in the easy conversation we exchanged, along with the diversity of our backgrounds, and all that.

Then it stopped. All of it. The dinners, the hanging out on weekends, the plans, all of it. No explanation. Nobody knew why, and by the way, why was I asking? Things like this happen. We know you want to form friendships, but this constant questioning has taken on a life of its own, and would you please stop.

After lunch I sit down at my cubicle, paperwork to my left and right. I work in customer service, and it's an anonymous struggle through phone complaints, paper complaints and management complaints. But I do not mind irate customers. The angrier they are, the more I like it. I can turn them around. I can affect their lives by giving them something they did not have before they reached me: peace of mind. It's possibly the only empowering aspect of the job.

I sympathize with all their grievances. Our warehouse screwed up? Well, sir, our warehouse, like most in North Carolina's Research Triangle, is staffed primarily by cheap Mexican and/or South American labor. These people do not speak English, nor do they have much motivation to. There is virtually no discourse, casual or otherwise, between these immigrants and the rest of the workforce. Simply redundant, backbreaking work for pennies an hour, gladly accepted in order to further the rest of the family's eventual flight to here. I see this one fellow every day, and we exchange warm smiles and greetings. It's like he's just happy to be acknowledged, worried that he was now a ghost in this new land of concrete and shaped shrubs, and a gringo like me has given his presence some validity. Strangely, I feel the same way about him.

This day, I'm near tears. It's self-pity, regret, and just feeling void of any sort of hope. I've been trying to expand my horizons. I have two part-time radio station shifts, and I write music reviews for a local Web site, as well as maintaining my own. I'm hoping a door will open, somewhere in the legitimate business world, where I can get off this treadmill. I don't want to take calls anymore. I'm afraid I'm going to die this way. The phone's "heavy queue" light is blinking. There are 14 calls on hold, waiting for us. For me. There aren't enough of us. Some calls have been on hold for as long as 10 minutes.

I enable the phone to ring. A cranky female voice barks at the sudden deprivation of the only classical music she's likely willing to sit through. "Hello?"

I just sit there. I don't say anything. I wait. I'm listening. I hear her begin to curse to her fellow office workers. "Goddamn it, I hate these people!" ... but she remains, breathing labored. I can hear papers being shuffled, incidental conversations just out of earshot, but there. She's been on hold for 10 minutes, and now she's on hold again, without the soothing presence of Mozart. I'm playing a cruel joke, but this is saving me.

I do this occasionally throughout the day, every day, from then on.

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