When I arrived for my first shift, the office door was chained up from the inside.
The hum of answered phones murmured down from the first-floor window - so, the rank was open.
Is that galvanised steel keeping people in or out? I joked with myself.
Later, as the job coiled around my neck, like a fantasy of a telephone chord, I would realise it could have been either.
“Sorry, just a precaution” explained my new colleague, giggling the strained giggle of clerks everywhere, as she clinked off the padlock.
“Um… for what?”
“Ohhh, we’ve been having a few… uh… issues with a driver, you know, threatening the telephonists” Susan rolled her eyes, “saying he’ll show up here, you know...” I couldn’t tell if that eye-roll was at the unlikelihood or the mundaneness of violence towards my new co-workers and me.
I smiled that obliging, new-employee smile. As if I, too, knew exactly what it was like reinforcing your door for the besiegement of an aggrieved cabbie.
Susan re-shackled the door behind me, as quickly as she could without appearing in an obvious hurry.
The featureless office building had even fewer features inside. I soon learned the multimillionaire family that ran the taxi company was big into minimalism: furnishings, break allowances, wages.
Strip neon lights, a few tables and chairs, the call centre had the feng sui of an improvised torture chamber - which, as it happened, was in perfect harmony with the duties performed there.
Repetitive sensory torture can be defined as “subjecting a person to the same audio or visual stimulus repeatedly and for prolonged periods.” The intent is to break down the individual psychologically through sensory overload or monotony.
For a 12-hour-day-or-night shift, every 6 seconds we responded to a beep and offered a passenger a taxi with the same minimum-wage mantra:
Hello, Royal cars… where from?... where to?... how many people?... that’ll be 5 10 minutes, mate. Hello, Royal cars… where from?... where to?... how many people?... that’ll be 5 10 minutes, mate. Hello, Royal cars… where from?... where to?... how many people?... that’ll be 5 10 minutes, mate.
After a day, the words lost all meaning. After a month, you no longer felt a human was saying them. After a year, at the ding of the microwave, you would offer a ready meal an optimistic arrival time.
A few hundred calls deep into depersonalisation, the abuse from belated passengers was almost a relief. Just to feel something. The cortisol-sting of vented contempt, reminded me I was alive.
A lot of people - and I use the term generously - get their warped rocks off taking an underpaid worker to task for the failings of the organisation underpaying them. In a faceless call centre operator, they find the perfect repository for all their life’s frustrations. The only hate I allow into my heart is reserved for these fucks.
Luckily, at Royal Cars the customer wasn’t always right.
My favourite co-worker was a way-chill, raging cokehead, with a case of the forever-sniffles and an impeccable telephone manner. His whole thing was doing blow and delivering sweet old ladies rapid-fire customer service.
Until wronged.
Or a wronging was perceived, at least. Where he would unleash a stream of Urdu obscenities, suggesting a coming together of sisters, mums and dogs in the most resourceful of ways. Close second was a white Muslim-convert rudegyal, who’d occasionally pop down her new-found dogma, and instruct a taxi driver to “suck your (their) mum,” from within her hijab.
If there’s one person more rude and belligerent than a person whose taxi hasn’t arrived - it’s the person who didn’t pick them up.
The drivers would storm the office to fight staff regularly enough for the establishment of the chain protocol and a code word. At least, twice a week you would hear “Eastenders. Eastenders. Eastenders*,” ringing around the rank.
“Youuuuuuu bastard!” a middle-aged taxi driver crashed into the taxi rank stage left. Their thick South Asian accents and over-dramatised anger gave the feel of a Bollywood musical. The rage a driver sustained for the entire journey over always impressed me.
On one of my two 15-minute breaks every 12 hours, a driver found out I had a degree and laughed in my face, “What the fuck are you doing here, mate?” The only good answer I had was laughing back.
At the time, my potential felt like a dead weight around my neck.
I would make my beer and pill money Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday - then host a 4-day bender on somebody else’s couch, anywhere else.
One Monday, I waited at the ATM for my weekly cheque to land, so I could gift my mate two grams of coke for his birthday.
“I knew you’d do something like this man” he smiled, genuinely touched, as if it were the most thoughtful surprise in the world.
For whatever reason, that Tuesday shift came around even faster than normal. I didn’t bother calling in sick for work.
The next Tuesday, I missed another shift after a never-ending speed binge. The good thing about speed is it’s dirt cheap and never runs out. The bad thing about speed is it’s dirt cheap and never runs out. The cost-effectiveness of the stimulant means your sanity is the only limiting factor of a session - and I had plenty, at the time.
After a dynamic brain-storming session with the mandem, I Keyser Söze-ed into work on Wednesday. A backstory of a fall well-rehearsed in my pal’s filthy bathroom mirror. The plan was channelling all the spent neurochemicals into my performance. As nobody noticed, I forgot my limp by lunchtime.
It was only on the third consecutive Tuesday that I didn’t show up or call in sick, my boss sat me down and presented his findings:
“Sam, we think we’ve noticed a pattern, where you don’t show up on Tuesdays? You are supposed to work Tuesdays, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am”
“Ok - ummm, what’s going on there?”
My boss gave me a final chance, he valued me as an employee, because he’d seen me take ketamine on YouTube. That very next day I was an hour or so late, but he still wouldn’t put me out of my monotony.
“OK, I’m going to give you one more chance. “
“Please don’t.”
“What?”
“Just please… don’t. I need to do something with my life.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to look for another job first or-”
“No, as personal a favour, please fire me.”
“Ok mate, uh - ha you’re fired.”
*The British soap opera where each week the cast slap the freshly-doused face of an adulterous partner in a pub.
If you want a taste of life at Royal Cars, the first scene of our sitcom starts there...
If you liked this… check out:
Times I Got Fired 1
Arrest for Hummus - Part 1
Times I Shat My Pants 6
Times I Shat My Pants 7
Times I Shat My Pants 8
Times I Shat My Pants 9
The Magic of the Afterparty
5 Stages of a Pillhead
3 Biggest Myths About Dick Size - Part 1
Our New Dad - Part 1
The House that Pills Built
Plenty of sparkling bits in your piece, Sam, but I especially love this one: "I soon learned the multimillionaire family that ran the taxi company was big into minimalism: furnishings, break allowances, wages." All things that match beige cashmere outfits so well.
🤣🤣🤣 “A lot of people - and I use the term generously - get their warped rocks off taking an underpaid worker to task for the failings of the organisation underpaying them. In a faceless call centre operator, they find the perfect repository for all their life’s frustrations. The only hate I allow into my heart is reserved for these fucks.”