LITMIR.BIZ

      June 5

      I barely got a chance to say, “Thanks for calling your psychic adviser,” before the guy started freaking out in my headset: “You’re going to hell, Antonio, if that’s your real name. You’re going to hell!”

      He spent his whole twenty minutes reading me Bible verses and telling me how evil I am for daring to divine God’s will, or some crap like that. On and on and on and on.

      “Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing.”

      What is that even supposed to mean?

      I used to love it when the callers did all the talking. You don’t have to worry about saying the right thing to keep them on the line, or the wrong thing that’ll make them hang up. All you have to do is kick back and say, “Mmm hmm, mmm hmm,” every few minutes while you space off about unicorns or whatever. But now, not so much.

      I tried to tell Angry Bible Guy that it’s just a job and, besides, it says FOR ENTERTAINMENT ONLY on the bottom of all the ads, but that just made him more pissed. How dare I use that as an excuse? That’s what the Nazis did. That’s what those idiots in Washington are doing.

      The only time he shut up is when he thought I went to look for my Bible. I told him I was going to mark down all those passages as soon as we hung up and he was like, “Why don’t you do it now?”

      “It might take me a while to find it.”

      He said, “I can wait,” which is the absolute worst thing to say to somebody whose job is to keep you on the phone for as long as possible.

      Like a dumbass, I said, “Really?” which is negative, instead of, “Okay,” which is affirmative.

      But he still said, “Of course, son. I’m tryin’ to save yer soul.”

      The last thing I really wanted to do was defend Appalachian TeleServices, but, I mean, what did that guy expect? It’s not like I can quit my job and forget about my credit card bills and my student loans and my rent and everything else. I’m already buying the cheap bags of fake cereal and the generic Toaster Pastries because I can’t afford the real Frosted Flakes and the real Pop Tarts. If I could find another job that paid me eleven bucks an hour to sit on my ass all day, I’d take it. But it’s not like people are pounding on my door every day, telling me, “L.J! We need you to come answer the phones for us at NASA!”

      So, yeah, I’m pretty much stuck here being an abomination unto the Lord. Taking verbal abuse from religious jerkoffs who say they want to save me from God’s everlasting reproach and perpetual shame.

      By the way, dude, here’s a tip: if you really want to save somebody’s soul, try being something other than a complete ass about it.

      About fifteen minutes into my next call, or maybe it was the call after that, Smeagol put my phone on MAKE BUSY—ATS code for, “Come back to my office after this call.”

      So I was all psyched, right? All I could think about was how he was going to tell me he liked the way I handled that angry caller, following the LEF steps—Listen, Empathize, Fraternize—and now he was ready to make me the new Floor Supervisor. All those months of clocking in on time and laughing at his stupid jokes and pretending to care about soccer have finally paid off. Before I know it, they’ll move me up to QA. A few months after that, they’ll make me a trainer and, maybe a year or two after that, I can be a Floor Manager and then an Operations Manager. I totally had this little I’m-going-to-get-promoted happy dance going on in my head.

      When I got back to his office, though, Smeagol didn’t want to talk about the Floor Supervisor job.

      He started in with the twenty questions: “Lucas, how long have you worked here? Are you still in college? Are you planning