Call Center Blues

“Right so we’re all paying attention? Everyone has put themselves on ‘Team Meeting’? Do it. Hurry up.”

    Marie let loose the sort of sigh that flaps your lips and deflates your shoulders, spine bending as if trying to sit down and a weariness so visceral and deep that everyone nearby could feel it in their bones and either straightened up for someone who was clearly close to losing it or les loose their own sighs. She was used to this kind of sigh and had felt that sort of weariness for a long time now except she heard neither the shuffling of chairs as subordinates tried to look good by making themselves annoyingly perky or those veteran employees who knew the game and were just waiting for her to shut up.

    This made sense to her because she was not the Team Leader of this bunch or their boss or even affiliated with their company. Instead she was just a person with a carmine blade standing over the, currently unconscious, form of a man who had frosted tipped blonde hair and dark sunglasses that he had worn while inside and a grayish suit that was almost shiny and it made her sick to look at his face.

“Hello everyone. My name is Marie Gold. I am a Senior Claims Specialist Grade Two with NNS Insurance and I am here today as a guest lecturer on why your Call Center is being terminated.”

    Her hands waved as if settling a crowd when the group before her, young men and women in their twenties to early forties and very attached to their chairs after witnessing the blitz of violence she had enacted.

“Sorry. Call Center is demeaning I’m sure, I meant that you are the claims department of…”

    She pursed her lips and took a moment to think long and hard on which Call Center she was even rampaging right now.

“StarMed Medical Supplies. Right. In spite of being a DME supplier and thus not actually meant to submit facility or medical claims you’re still doing that! I know you are! You call and ask dumb questions about why your claims are denied and get annoyed when we say ‘No! You cannot send this hyper-massive bill to the patient! You send it to yadda yadda!’ except no! You just hang up and try again like…like…some stupid turnip!”

    For a moment her anger got the best of her and Marie twisted around to slice through a line of computer terminals with a movement so smooth it took a moment for the devices to understand they had been cut and crumpled inwards. The sudden expression of Ki moving outward to the lines of tinted windows facing the city street and shattering several of them with an explosive ‘pop’ that whipped the air.

    There was a collection of screams and frantic shuffling as several of the employees had fallen to the floor and were quick to scramble away in the sudden violence. A stampede formed even as she huffed and let them flee without a fuss given how none of this was really their fault to begin with and she was just taking her anger out on years of receiving dumb calls.

“Your hair is stupid.”

    Marie said this to the unconscious manager as she walked to another row of terminals and smashed them as well with another smoke filled explosion ripping through the window panes. Over and over she created a tiny tornado of racket while dismantling the Call Center.

“You should be bald! And dumb! And you should file your disputes and appeals within two months of denial! And you should adhere to timely filing!”