IV: Friends
I started with a bunch of people, most of whom stayed until I eventually quit. Dan, a guy from Mayo who had an awesome goatbeard and kind of looks like the devil that appears on your shoulder when you’re faced with a moral quandary. Craig, a local Derry lad who had many piercings. Many. Tony, a Wexford or Waterford man who lived with his ex girlfriend and their two boys. Added to the motley crew were such characters as Greg, another pierced Derry lad; Allan, the sleazy Scotsman; Alan, a suicidal giant whose mother wouldn’t let him shave his own head; Emmett, a quiet guy who had drunken nights filled with public urination and fighting; Ryan, a South American thrash metal enthusiast; and Kieran, the asexual chain-smoker who wanted to be a robot.
I still speak to many of them today and a few are some of my best friends. Dan and his girlfriend Kyle are in Korea, with Craig joining them shortly. Ryan is on his way to America to start a new life.
If you learn anything from working in a call centre, it’s that the ones that are happy there have been there for a long time and are there for a reason, either financial difficulties or because they don’t have anything better to do. If they’ve been there for more than a year, they either love the place or they’re saving for something better. Others don’t last longer than three months. I lasted nine.
It’s fun to listen to their stories of the weekend. You don’t just get struggling single parents or stop-gap students there, you get people who have nowhere else to go: people who have dropped out of school; people on leave from the army. Many of these people go out on the weekend because they don’t have anything better to do. They are not stupid, they are not ignorant or arrogant, they just don’t have anything planned, other than the next drink, next holiday, next child.
When they went out, they would have parties in their houses afterwards, drunkenly bringing back people they had just met, which occasionally led to altercations. Stories of girls being taunted about their breast implants leading to fights where other girls had their earrings and hair extensions pulled out; people pissing into other peoples drinks; self harm and spousal abuse. Dirty, awful, vile stories from individuals who are not scum, not the bottom of the pile, not criminals.
The fact that people in my position, university graduates, educated, good people could be capable of such casual acts of anger and violence scared me. It made me not want to be there. But I stayed, because, like them, I didn’t have much better to do.
