Pamela Doesn’t Live Here

Pamela doesn’t live here. Stop calling for her. Really. I mean it.
Oh, hi. Didn’t know you’d clicked through and started reading already. You see, I just got off the phone with this foreign-outsourced collection-agency phone-bank drone who calls my house every day. So you kind of caught me off guard.
Before I go any further, this isn’t really meant to be a catch-all indictment of foreign outsourcing. Though I will say that this increasingly common practice is something I find increasingly distasteful. I understand that outsourcing labor lets corporations bring their labor costs down. But when that labor is the task of communicating with your customers, it begins to get counterproductive.
Which brings me back to Pamela. This guy’s always calling for Pamela.
Pamela doesn’t live here. Pamela is not my wife. Pamela is not my girlfriend (ssshhhhh, don’t tell my wife). Pamela is not my cat, nor my dog, nor my horse. I have no idea who Pamela is. I can only surmise that her phone number is close to mine. And I can surmise that because this fellow is calling for her every goddamned day of the week except for Sunday.
I’m going to refer to this fellow as Victor. As in Victorola. As in skipping needle. He has the strangest elliptical speed pattern – sort of like those Hot Wheels race track loop-de-loop cars I had as a kid, he starts out speaking rapid-fire and in a higher, sing-song voice with quite a detectable Indian accent (which isn’t a problem in and of itself); and then he slows down, his voice seems to drop an octave (I’ll note this by stretching out select words accordingly)…and he speeds up again. That’s Victor.
The phone rings, and so it begins.
“Hello.”
“Hello, Mrs. [name omitted]?”
“Sorry, wrong number.”
“Hello, Pamela [name omitted]?”
“Sorry, no Pamela [name omitted] here. No such person lives here.
“Mrs. [name omitted], I am with [name of credit card company omitted], and you have an outstaaaaaanding baaaaalance of [amount in the upper hundreds omitted]. How would you like to paaaaaaaay that todaaaaaaaay?”
“I’m not Pamela [name omitted]. Pamela [name omitted] doesn’t live here. This is still the wrong number.”
“Mrs. [name omitted], I would remiiiiiiind you that your account is more than 90 days overduuuuuuuuuuue.”
Now, the first few times, I diverted the convseration down the following lines:
“Obviously you’re not understanding me. May I speak to your supervisor?”
“Iiiiiiiiiiiii am not a supervisor.”
“Can I please speak with your supervisor?”
“I am noooooooot a supervisor.”
Inspiration strikes. “Do you want to talk to my supervisor?”
“Iiiiiiiii am not a supervisor.”
Aha. So anytime I say anything involving “supervisor,” he’s going to tell me that a supervisor is, in fact, what he is not. I believe him on that, at least.
Now, let me just say that while I’m making the odd humorous reference to this fellow’s speech pattern, this is not a blanket slam on his ethnicity, or anyone’s ethnicity for that matter. I’m not here to debate on which President’s watch this flood of outsourcing started. I’m not here to lay out a master plan for how it can be stopped. I’m not sure it can. That’s not even what’s bugging me at the moment.
What’s bugging me is that, without making sure he knows who he’s talking to, he has repeatedly told me what kind of credit card this woman has, and how far into the red she is. And he has apparently been instructed that any attempt to go off-script – telling him he has the wrong number, telling him he has the wrong person, asking for a supervisor, etc. – is an attempt to be evasive.
There are so many things wrong with this scenario that I don’t even know where to start. For all I know, given the bizarre nature of these daily conversations, he’s not with a credit card company at all and is trying to scam money out of me. Whatever the case is, my friend Victor is (A) persistent and (B) annoying. But far be it from me to lose it and scream at the guy, I’ve tried having fun with him. I’ve told him that this is not the Pamela [name omitted] residence, but that it is the Pamela Anderson residence. I’ve told him, at various times, that I am not Pamela, but that I am in fact the Queen of England. Or Frank Zappa. Or Ren Hoek. It doesn’t faze him. He still gives me Pamela’s account balance and asks how I want to pay it today. It’s a little game we play.
And before you ask: Victor’s calls show up as “unknown name, unknown number” on caller ID.
Just remember, if this guy is for real, Victor’s employers know what kind of card you have, and what your outstanding balance is. And for all you know, he’s calling Pamela up everyday and telling it to her.
This is just another reason why I don’t have a credit card to my name.
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In other news, remember a while back when I was ranting about Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corporation and their unsubtle tactics to wring more money out of their customers? It’s been two years now since I wrote that particular tirade, and things haven’t improved a bit. The public utilities commission in the state of Arkansas is still not accountable to the public, and the rates have continued to go up.
In January 2004, I moved into a new home which doesn’t rely one bit on natural gas. It’s all electric. Now, sure, that’s expensive too – my average monthly bill during a cold winter is around $250. But that’s not just the heat. That’s the heat and the fridge and the oven and the washer and dryer and the lights and my computer and my A/V gear and the hot water heater and the security light and the trash compactor. If I was still living in Fort Smith under the iron fist of AOG’s continually mounting costs, I’d be looking at a lower electric bill, but twice that much again just to heat the place. No thanks.
In recent months, Mac Steel, one of Fort Smith’s largest industrial employers and one of AOG’s largest corporate customers, declared its intention to drop AOG’s gas service and run a pipeline to connect with another natural gas provider. AOG cried foul – actually, that doesn’t really do it justice, they screamed bloody murder – and kept it tied up in court for months. Mac Steel upped the ante, outlining a plan to buy every piece of land that would be needed to run this proposed gas pipeline to another provider. AOG tried to turn public opinion against Mac Steel by saying that if Mac Steel was allowed to get its gas from another provider, AOG would have to make up for the huge shortfall by charging its customers more.
The response of the Sebastian County Quorum Court was a refreshing one: they allowed Mac Steel to buy the necessary land to run the pipeline. Even buying all that land and clearing all of the right-of-way needed to run a pipeline, Mac Steel will be saving a huge amount of money in the switch. (Remember, residential customers are being hit with natural gas bills topping $300 per month here. I can’t even imagine or calculate what Mac Steel was having to spend to keep the smelters hot.) AOG has carried through with its threat, asking the public utilities commission to OK yet another rate hike.
So in the short term, the public loses. (AOG is still up to some dirty tricks, however, trying to outbid Mac Steel for the land that it said it would buy.) And yet, this decision may help the public sooner than they think. By allowing a company like Mac Steel to open the door for another natural gas provider to service this area, the county officials have taken the first step in allowing competition – competition that could finally break to stranglehold AOG has over this area’s natural gas customers. Even though I’m no longer one of those customers and it doesn’t affect me, I’m rooting for the competition by default here. Hopefully it won’t take too long for another provider to make its presence known in the area and force AOG to play fair. Because apparently they’ll have to be forced.
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Due to some recurring gastrointestinal problems that, according to specialists in at least two states, surgery would only make worse, I spend quite a bit of time in the bathroom. (I’m there right now as I’m writing this, in fact.) These visits are often prolonged and it’s not entirely uncommon for them to be painful. In my own way, I’ve tried to find some humor in the situation – if my wife calls me from work while I’m at home on the can, we have a number of phrases that identify the situation ranging from “hunting for poopapotamus” to “fighting the battle of Crappamattox”, depending on the amount of pain involved. (I’m sure you really wanted to hear this.)
Inevitably, this happens at work too, though I take steps to avoid it as much as possible (like doing all of my eating within a 10-hour period, none of which are the ten hours before I go to work). One night I recently wound up hunting for poopapotamus at work (not an easy task!), during which I wrote the “Victor” story you just read. (Thank God for handheld PCs, though I suppose I’ve opened myself to the inevitable criticism that everything I write is shit.) I heard my name being paged on the PA system outside the bathroom door. Not a lot I can do about it. Oddly enough, though, if I had been in the men’s room in the sales wing, there are phones in those bathrooms. Really. Can you imagine that conversation?
“I want to be three 30-second spots in Monday Night Football.”
“Okay, hang on just a second.” [grunt] “Big one coming here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Really big one. Hang on.” [grunt]
“Beg your pardon?”
“Oh boy.” [muffled splashing sound] “Whew. OK. Big one. Uhhhh…closed a big deal. So, 3 x 30 for Monday Night Football, right?”
In any case, the unisex bathrooms for the company’s proletariat have no such amenities. It was about ten minutes before I emerged. On my way through the building, I asked one of my co-workers if I had been paged. He admitted that I had, and then made the fatal mistake of asking where I had been.
“Sitting in the captain’s chair, making a log entry,” I said, and walked away before he had a chance to think about it. Just doing my part to keep Star Trek alive.
But more on that later.