I am Awesome

I recently looked back through my many blog entries and as I read musing after musing, wonderful insight after wonderful insight, I realized something profound:

I am an amazingly awesome person.

It hadn't really struck me before, but somehow I've had thrillingly genius viewpoints about everyday things, and my writings about them remain interesting and intriguing. Not all of them, of course, but so many that I just went on reading and reading, late into the night, my mind being blown over and over by how vastly superior my writings are in real life to how I imagined them to be. How I managed to become this fabulous writer is beyond me, but somewhere along the way I replaced sad, introspective me with unequivocal genius I am today, spreading wit and awesomeness throughout the world. It truly makes me feel bad for not updating more often, like I'm withholding something from everyone else. The inner-workings of my mind should be shared with all.

The trouble is work. It's too distracting, not only during the block of time from 8am to 5pm that I'm paid to be there*, but in the off-time as well. I get home and I'm completely drained. I have no time to catch up on current events when I'm home, and at work I have breaks between calls (which would probably amount to a substantial chunk of time) but it's divided into uselessly small increments. I'm repeatedly made aware of a new call by a beep in my ear. You know who else had beeps in their ears? Smart people in Harrison Bergeron:

And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

And you know what? It works. Knocks the thoughts clear out of your head. I can't even write a decent email at work because it takes me 8 tries to write a single sentence. By the time I finish, I've forgotten how it began. It's terrible. Nothing like spending years learning how to think, only to get a job where it's frowned upon. Today I spoke with a customer who was on his second payment and 10 days past due. He was telling me that he can't pay until the 5th of the month (at 20 days past due), and that it will stay this way unless we change his due date. I explained that he wouldn't be able to change the due date until he brought the account current. He dismissed it and say it was all our fault and that this was how it would be paid. I kindly pointed out that he would be accruing additional interest, getting phone calls every month, and that being that late early in the loan would put him at higher risk of being reviewed for repossession later. We went back and forth until he yelled at me for being "rhetorical". I asked him what he meant and he said "You just keep repeating yourself over and over."

Now mine is not a confident intelligence. As he went off on my rhetoric, I took the opportunity to verify my inkling that he was misusing the word**, looking up the definition online and then pointing out that "rhetorical" is not a synonym for "redundant". I gave him that benefit of the doubt while I looked it up, though, thinking that maybe, JUST MAYBE, this man who can't make his second car payment knows some obscure archaic definition. But he didn't. And I was right. And I mentioned it calmly as an aside. And he asked for my supervisor.

But it was a small victory and I relished in once again reminding myself that I am the Lord and Master of my humble phone line. I bow to no one, and no one dares approach my throne.






*Which I don't begrudge them for. They're paying me for my attention and mad collecting skillz, and during those many mindless hours, I am their indentured servant, plowing their fields and getting only the smallest share of the crops to take home.

**At least he didn't say that I was being so "ignorant" to him. Oooh, I hate it when they misuse ignorant.