I'm always bright and cheerful, when I'm not bent over my computer keyboard, my head in my hands, cursing the darkness. I'm quick with a joke, but few notice that the humor is designed to deflect. I occasionally flash back to how open and friendly I was during my first months here. This was an attempt to change my stripes, to not be so cynical or acerbic. But it did not work. I reverted to my old self as soon as the bubble burst on my new panacea. Now, if someone should hand me a card to sign, usually to wish a longtime employee "happy trails," I'll sign exactly the way I feel. For example, when Jeanne left, I signed her card: "We acknowledged each other in a pleasant, professional manner ..." For Mary Jane: "We borrowed cigarettes from each other ...", and for Carol, who I never really knew at all, I circled the salutation above mine, and wrote "Monica (for example) wishes you the best."

No guilt, either. As strange as it is, what I'm doing is small potatoes compared to what others in my department are doing. I was told early on that one should not try too hard, as it will go unnoticed, and tax you needlessly. I refused to believe this. But Paula, one of the few North Carolina natives working here, does something worse. She promises services to customers and ignores the promises she's made. The foolish part of this is that she gives her name. Inevitably three or four calls a day come in from irate customers wondering where their books are, where their credits have gone. Who did you speak to? "Paula" is the answer we will hear, over and over. And we must clean up her mess, because she's often absent. But she hasn't been fired. She answers the phone.

If I were to promise to do something I didn't feel like doing, I'd give a fake name like Joe or George or Jill or Gail.

We are all sent an e-mail asking if the smokers would please confine their smoking to the appointed break time. I laugh and delete. Memos like this are meaningless prattle, often with embarrassing misspellings and typos and initiatives that the management simply lacks the will to enforce. If I have to confine my breaks, so does everyone else, and that means people who have been at the company longer than any manager here. They just cannot, will not tell these veterans when to smoke. Or not to make personal calls, not ship personal items through the mailroom, not use too many sick days.

The phones don't stop.

Like most things here, there is no rhyme or reason to how discipline is meted out. Paula would have to drag a child's rotting corpse into the office, replete with her own teeth-marks, to receive even a reprimand. Once I pointed out one of Paula's foibles to Ron, in bewildered exasperation. Why does this happen? Ron says, "It's not my job to worry." He is correct. It's a laissez-faire philosophy of management. It's as if management is afraid of the primitive pack of biting, whining, phone-answering animals they watch over. And it seems the first to go are always the black, female high school graduates that the temp company sends us. These young ladies are ill-prepared to do a job with so many mindless details, when they're trained so poorly.

Greg, Mary and I were trained for two weeks. New hires are now trained for four days at best. There used to be a designated trainer, Val, but she left. Terry trains now, and she hardly has time to oversee the department as it is, much less train new people who cannot read or write very well. It's not Terry's fault, except that she has asked many times if I'd like to be the official trainer, and I was always eager, but it never got farther than that. We would often discuss new training tools and methods. But she forgets. And before you know it, the next class has begun.

They will be the ones who get fired. I do not know if Mary is right about rampant racism, but I do know that one young black girl, a new hire with a relative in the data-entry department, had to take 150 calls a day to get her raise, a new, unattainable standard. She was let go in quick order. In fact, her entire training class disappeared within a month. All the same demographic. Terry did not hire them, the agency did.

Today, two new promotions are announced. Kyla and Mo, two white women who started in orders four months ago, have ascended the ladder faster than anyone I have seen, and are joining me in customer service. Most of my peers did not know these women existed before today. Mary's disapproval has changed to resignation and sadness. She feels that she'll never escape. She's too good at her low-paying job. The women they promoted are intelligent and do a good job, but lack somewhat in many obvious areas, all because they had no training. They are learning the job around me, asking a question during every call.

Every day I check my messages to see if any potential employers have called. None have. I feel like I'm drowning. Trapped. There's now nowhere for me to go. There are no promotions above me, unless a manager should leave, and they're not leaving. Each is in her mid-30s, married with children (except Terry, who is in a constant state of ex-boyfriend flux), and fairly well-off. The senior manager, Dierdre, is a puzzle to us all. She sits in her office, laughs and giggles all day, puts on her one-size-too-small-for-her-face sun glasses, and goes to lunch. She comes back, laughs some more, and goes home.

If we pass each other in the hallway, she asks the one question I cannot bear to hear. "How are you?" I hate that. It's like reading off a delicious menu and then walking away. She is so plastic that it's hard to believe she runs our department. On the other hand, it isn't.

Paula has been absent for a week. No one knows where she is, or if she still works here. Her desk is piling up with paperwork that the rest of us will inevitably inherit. When I first started here, a man named Justin trained me. He was a nice man whose good-natured sense of humor made him a favorite in the department. The story goes that he just got tired of lying to customers about when to expect shipments, and our policies in general. He got up, walked out, and never came back. This made him a kind of folk hero with all of us. After all, he had a baby girl, and had just bought a new house. He decided to own his life, as hard as that life was now going to be. I hope he landed on his feet.

The company has decided to ship packages through the mail instead of using UPS. UPS allows tracking packages, but costs more. The company has decided that the cost of missing books and customer anger is less than the money that will be saved by shipping cheaper. They fail to take man-hours into account. Each time a shipment is lost, a seemingly endless procession of paperwork must be executed. This takes about 15 minutes every time it happens. No one seems to know why this shortsighted policy has been enacted. My new manager, Bonnie, just shrugs.

I have a cigarette with Annie. Annie was hired into customer service directly. She never had to take orders. She's younger than most of us, and she has a 2-year-old daughter. She tells me she has had no customer service experience before this, and that she worked for an airline reservation center. She says that this company is "screwed up." She has noticed the subtle differences between the way white and black employees are treated (she is white), and the impotence of management. We revel in the fact that the "smoke only on breaks" edict will not be enforced. In fact, this is our second illegal smoking break of the morning. A few minutes later, Janet, a new-order rep, comes to my desk, complaining of a headache while asking me a question. She thinks it's because of stress. She thinks our company is discriminating against black people, and is tired of the way people are promoted. All open positions are supposed to be posted openly, but not all are, by any means. Kyla and Mo were promoted without having to compete for their jobs. Neither was posted.

I answer the phone on a Friday morning, but do not speak.

"Hello ...?"

"... Come on, dammit ..."

"... Hello ...?"

The phones do not stop.

End of part one. Read part two.

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