HANDLE TiME — the third novel by cult-pen, LiNCOLN PARK — is the saucy, searing story which unmasks the inner workings, deep dishes and policy wonkings of a nationwide call center.
Excerpt
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(This is LOGIN ” the first chapter, or intro, to the spectacular book, HANDLE TiME — about life in an American Call Center — by LiNCOLN PARK. Enjoy!)
“It took a long time for people to realize that the most terrible place one can be banished for all time is not the hell of mythology ” the hell Orpheus descended to in order to find his loved Eurydice ” nor the hell of the Hebrews or of the Old Testament, nor the hell of Christianity, but the hell of humanity, the hell made by humans for other humans.” — Jacinto Lageira
Call centers are hell.
Working in one for DELSTAR bank almost killed me, literally. The last thing I remember is how embarrassed I felt while they were hauling my ass out on a gurney to a waiting ambulance. Never mind that I could hardly breathe and my heart was racing like a NASCAR dragster; people were looking at me, ruining their daily adherence just to stare at me! I believe a few of them were probably jealous of me because I was leaving the building and they had to get back on the phones…
At the hospital, the morphine they gave me was not helping. The muscle under my left breast was swept up in a waltz of spasms and my mother was blowing up my cellphone every five minutes. The gummy glue, from the stick-on electrodes they’d plastered me with in the ambulance earlier, was decimating my décolletage with glops of drying, chafing goo. Who knew that answering one more call, from one more insatiable, discourteous, yapaholic customer would land me squat on a stretcher and in the Emergency Room ” just in freaking time for a lukewarm, lime-jello lunch? Trust me ” there was no fresh beef to be had, that afternoon; for I was wounded cattle. I had been corralled in the barn of a bank’s regional call center; and I’d spent the past nine months of my life chewing on the cud of a living wage and grazing on the grass of shift-diffed pastures. At the end, I’d reduced my stock of personal pride and professional integrity to a stewed, unsavory, morphine-laced mutton ” rolling the dough of my ass and the blood in my arteries into a confluence of coagulated fatty — flavored with the remaining teaspoon of my self-esteem and the pungent spice of my jaded spirit.
You know — not to get off the subject of my E.R. visit ” but I know something that you probably don’t: I know why the caged bird drinks.
It’s because he once flew (before his caged captivity) onto a sill, and peered through a random, plate-glass window at a DELSTAR bank call center.
If you’d like to read more, you can download the ebook edition, or purchase the print paperback of HANDLE TiME by LiNCOLN PARK at major online and offline booksellers!
Copyright 2008 LiNCOLN PARK. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
{ 3 } Comments
This excerpt is nice — but it doesn’t do the book justice. I LOVE THIS BOOK!
Out of all the office novels I have read so far, Handle Time is is my favorite of the genre. It’s short, and funny as hell! This author goes out of her way to illustrate her sarcastic points on numerous occasions. I can’t say enough about how much I laughed! Call centers suck — and she hit the nail on the head. It’s about time someone came out with a good, blue-collar office book; instead of the ‘marketing manager’ crap I’ve been reading, as of late.
HANDLE TIME ROCKS!! Forget all those other dumb books that tell you how to behave in a call center. Handle Time tells you what REALLY goes down! Customers rot, managers are lame and your paycheck is comical…but you stay there because it beats being homeless. IMHO, EVERY person who puts on a headset to make a living should have a copy of this crazy book! You won’t regret it. In fact, you’ll probably leave it right on top of your desk like everybody in my call center does. PS — Handle Time is the only book that the girls and guys in my call center are both reading AT THE SAME TIME We hate their chick-lit; they hate our horror and action — but we ALL love Handle Time!
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