Chapter XXXIV
Despite the previous night's preparations (i.e. selecting the clothes I was going to wear, setting the alarm clock, etc.) and the morning's efforts at running down the stairs from the apartment while buttoning and zipping my pants, I was definitely going to be late. The Arlington was backed up, and it was starting to snow. People were going to be smashing their cars into each other with the savage, redneck pleasure that festers beneath the thin, affected coating of sophistication that clings to everyone who lives around DC. I wondered if I'd get fired for being late on my first day of work, but I didn't really care. It felt nice to get dressed up and fume at rush hour traffic.
It's not like the job was going to be all that great, but my ongoing streak of unemployment had me jumping at any chance for a writing job, even one that barely qualified. Sure I'd found it in the writing/editing section of jobs on Craigslist, mysteriously titled "Legislative Correspondent", but it was clear from the interview I'd had two days prior that it was really just a telemarketing position with some writing tacked onto it. Basically, it was calling up people and asking if they would offer their support for a cause by letting us write letters for them in their own voices, which they would then sign and send on to elected officials. The interviewer told me that, while the company was a bipartisan one, more of the work came from conservative sources. However, she assured me that the company never took on "hot-button issues", so I wouldn't face many philosophical dilemmas by working there.
No matter how much she sugarcoated it, I was a bit skeptical. Still, I was really happy to get the job, because she kept stressing that they were looking for "really
strong writers." Had I failed their writing test, it would've confirmed my worst fears - that all those journalism school admissions offices were ringing with laughter over my stupid, stupid essays and stupid, stupid, stupid writing samples.
Anyway, I took the test, which was basically the entire interview process - something that should've made me suspicious - and the interview lady called me later that day to tell me I'd demolished it. I believe her exact words were, "We haven't had anyone score that high for several years,
and I want to have your baby, and it doesn't really matter if you're a couple of minutes late tomorrow. Just try to keep it under fifteen." Yeah right, they'd never fire a rockstar like me.
It didn't matter. When I finally got into the office, they kept me waiting in the lobby for thirty minutes before they sent someone out to move me through the door into cubicle world, where I spent the next hour filling out paperwork. The papers were pretty ordinary. The one thing that did stick out in my mind from the employee handbook was the company's policy that employees not use the internet during the work day. Hmm... I paid special attention to the nondisclosure agreement, because I wanted to make sure I could report on what they did without getting sued or arrested. According to their own rules, they could only fire me. I had to make absolutely sure of the ND agreement, because I thought the job was odd enough that I could write a story about it someday.
Writing letters for somebody else to send? Weird. Ironically, I'd heard a piece on NPR that very morning as I sat in traffic that was talking about the Senate’s proposed lobbying reforms and how they excluded "astroturf lobbying" groups, but I was running late, so I didn't pay much attention to it.
When I was finally ready to start training, Kelly, the attractive project assistant, and her colleague sat me down with a packet detailing the project on which I would be working. The project was entitled "Valley Power Plant" and it dealt with getting a show of public support for proposed renovations to a power plant in rural Texas.
Let me explain further. TXU Power wants approval to renovate their plants in Texas, allowing them to utilize coal instead of the natural gas they currently use.
Coal.
What happened to never taking on hot-button issues? Did they not consider environmental issues to be controversial?
“The people you call will be really open to it, because they want reliable energy that’s cheap,” said attractive Kelly’s less-attractive male colleague. I asked what the downsides were to accepting coal power. “Pollution,” he said, “No one wants it in their backyard.” I asked if these were the clean-burning coal plants Bush had been touting in the State of the Union address. “Stay away from using that phrase,” he warned. “Just say that the plants will incorporate the ‘Best Available Control Technology’ to make sure emissions are significantly lower than the average US coal plant.”
They told me that after calling people – people who were specifically targeted by market research as most likely to be available and willing to talk (i.e. the elderly) - and preaching to them the great benefits of coal plants (i.e. cheap and reliable power, increased jobs, and less dependence on foreign oil), I was to interview them so I could write as genuinely personal-sounding a letter as possible. After all, it wouldn’t do for Fannin County Commissioner Ronnie Rhudy to receive hundreds of similar sounding form letters. He might get suspicious! Then, I would write a letter for them that convincingly enumerated their arguments in favor of TXU Power.
They asked if I had any questions. I asked if there were any other projects that were going at the moment. There weren’t. They really needed to make that 1100-letter quota they had promised TXU Power.
I was then instructed to take the packet (with enclosed sample telephone script) and try making my first phone calls. They expected me eventually to be able to get participants at a rate of two letters every three hours. However, I had a little trouble getting started.
Mainly, I didn’t really know anything about the issue, and I didn’t want to sound like an idiot or, more importantly, give false information to the people I would be calling. I walked back and asked if I could do some research on the topic before I began. Unfortunately, while they applauded my initiative, they couldn’t really let me use the internet, because of “problems in the past.” It would be fine if I wanted to go home and do research on my own time, but the employee punch card system made it impossible for them to pay me for that time. Really, it would be best if I just went back to my cubicle and listened to how the other “communications specialists” were making their calls. So, I did.
The most successful caller assured me that I would get over my initial reluctance to push coal power on people. On one of his lengthy phone calls, he responded to a person’s claim that coal power would cause pollution by saying, “Sir, I believe you’ve received some bad information.” When the man told him he’d read it in the newspaper, he replied, “I don’t know why they would write that. I don’t know why they would side with the environmentalists.” After he hung up, he turned to me and said, “I’m a liberal, but I’ll say anything. This is just a job; it’s not what I believe. You just have to look at it as something that’s going to happen anyway. You’re just a cog in the machine. You aren’t gonna change anything.”
I spent the next hour mostly with my head in my hands, dreading making my first call. Telemarketing is bad enough, but doing it for a cause you oppose? Eventually, Kelly took me aside and asked why I hadn’t begun making any calls. I said that I didn’t want to push coal on people.
She just stared at me.
Eventually, I was so uncomfortable that I said I’d start. On my second or third call, I reached a live person who politely declined to participate. Since she seemed pretty well educated on the topic, I asked her to give me the details of the case - after all, I had to learn about the issue somehow. We had a pretty good conversation, and after I hung up, Kelly came bounding over to me. “That was
soooo good! You did a really great job!!!” I’d forgotten that the handbook stated that supervisors could listen in on phone calls. “Thanks. I like talking on the phone,” I muttered.
Thankfully, most people don’t answer their phones during the day. Over the course of the day, I wrote only one letter. Yet, the satisfaction I got from completing it and sending it in for review was enough that I could see how it would be the highpoint of my day, how I would really want to get people to agree to participate. The people around me seemed not so much numb to their jobs as much as they were bloodthirsty by the hunt for weak-willed or ignorant senior citizens. It wasn’t enough of a challenge to write a letter for a supporter of coal power. Instead, it was more satisfying to write one from the standpoint of a conquered prey. I saw how easy it would be to close off all my objections, to sell my soul for twelve dollars an hour (without benefits).
When I left, I told them I would see them in the morning (a lie). Three or four of them gathered around and exclaimed, “Wow! You made it!” Apparently they’d had a rash of new employees leaving after the first day. One, more self-confident than I, left after just touring the cubicles. All day, I’d felt skepticism in their looks. It seemed like they were appraising me, wondering if I’d be the sort who, like them, would give in and stay. Maybe if I’d gone back, they would have even tried to be friends with me. However, as nice as they were in private, I know some part of me would have always resented them had I stayed.
As I walked out, I stopped by Kelly’s desk to say goodnight. Outside of her window, I saw a large, ugly building standing next door. When I asked her what it was, a sneer distorted her face. “Oh, that’s a coal plant. It’s the biggest polluter on the Potomac.”
