Somebody $avoir

Short story

With a friendless can of STAGG® chili in my cupboard, empty as self-respect— I fear being paid tomorrow more than being sent home.

Entering the rented office and crossing into the phone room, you breach into the wall of noise, and you'd think we'd be chanting about debt to God as prayer. Sitting next to me in a shirt yellow as caked piss, Pete asks me if I’m excited. Putting on my headset, I nod.

“You better notify your face then,” Pete says, ripping open a bag of ranch-flavored Lay’s® potato chips.

Yeah, funny Pete, was funny too yesterday. Me, sitting at my station with my microphone covered in spittle waiting for the phones to go live in the dirty shirt I've worn three days in a row, and it's my bored face that's the problem? Sure, Pete.

I will murder you someday, Pete. I will.

A hundred and seven debt collectors sit around me intonating the Miranda 'till It’s white-noise echolalia. The Miranda is us notifying you that you’re being recorded and that you’re about to be fucked for your debt, something the FDCPA, the Fair Debt Collection Protection Act, requires. The second thing you'll notice is the damn humidity. Air dry as dead sagebrush outside but inside's mucous and mildew. Drop ceiling and fluorescent’s sterile with cracked and white desert tiles above you, and it does nothing to combat the wet breath and hot sweat of soon-to-be-dead coworkers. Lemon smell? Perpetual. How is that possible? You know they never clean the place because you can feel the grainy wet grime on your fingertips as you touch the keyboard. An ocean of lemon, lemme tell ya.

Four pews of computer desks face a seventy-seven-inch television on the south wall; It plays infomercials. Always. Today’s worship is wellness.

How you know I'm a good boy debt collector is the resin paperweight at my station, says:

Good Student Award.

"RMP, we keep our promise."

Every collection agency is a three-lettered acronym with an 'R'; it stands for 'receivables’— it's obtuse code so that debtors don't know who is hunting them down while also telegraphing to clients that they can hire us to do so. ‘Good Student’ is corpo-speak for does what he's told.

I swear to God, I'm buying a gun on Tuesday.

Pete, the Petester, Peter Second Only to the Floor Manager, he plugs his headset into my desk’s auxiliary jack and mutes his mic. Today he’s monitoring me. He’s making sure that I get the clients a payment before noon. If not? I get bumped down to secondary collecting and sent home early to my nearly empty cupboard.

My open-ear headset is pumping in royalty-free Losing My Religion instrumental as its microphone flicks dandruff off my beard and onto my shirt when the call goes live.

"This Debra?" I ask. If it ain’t, the call goes nowhere. It's illegal to disclose personal debt to third parties. So says the FDCPA, so shall it be.

Don't fuck up my mojo.

“Yes,” Debra’s voice sounds faint, sounds far.

"Hi Deb," I'm such a little shit, "can you take me off speakerphone?"

I hate speakerphones as much as I hate Pete. It's easier for a debtor to record me that way, and if a debtor is recording me, then they are trying to sue me. The damned trying to get out of hell on a technicality.

Far-away Deb says, "I can't. Can you help me, please?"

Now for the spiel. The chant. The Miranda. It's compulsory as a Hail Mary.

"Deb, this is RMP calling about your Amazon cybernetic Power Legs. This is an attempt to collect a debt and any information obtained during this call will be used for that purpose. This call is being monitored and recorded."

My index finger and thumb scratch putty off Alt and N so I can read her history, the notes left by previous collectors. I clock refused to pay.

“Will that be Visa or Mastercard, Deb?" Binary questions like heaven or hell remove the opportunity for excuses.

"Please turn my Power Legs back on, I can’t get up off the floor,” says Deb before taking a breath, “I’m dying.”

I ask Deb if she has her card on her and feel Pete's side-eye and smirk begging for lead at the desk beside me.

"Please," voice distant, raspy as the drop-ceiling tile, deb says: “water."

Next to me, Pete's shoving Lay’s® into his mouth. He raises the TV’s volume because his crisp crunching is that loud. TV's saying: Therapy has never been easier with Freud™

Pete's saying: "Empathy, you gotta remember that, not sympathy, don’t sympathize, they got themselves in this situation."

Notes say Debtor No-legs’ service was cancelled two days ago. She’s been on the floor that long. Notes say she wasn't reasonable.

"Debbie, pay your overdue bill with me today, and I'll get those legs of yours reactivated. You'll have that sweet, refreshing cold water on your tongue in no time. You'll avoid your credit score being hit too!"

"Please," unreasonable Deb says, "help me."

With Freud™, you can take personalized goal-based therapy anywhere, including your beachside vacation…

Pete's wiping fried potato saltgrease onto his khakis and while the TV blares, he's telling me that I'm in primary now. None of that tertiary shit where they buy the debt for pennies on the dollar and try to sell it back to the consumer, we’re on active accounts. I stay where I'm at, and I don't have to worry about being sent home at lunch for not collecting my day’s wage in payments.

"You collect like me," he says, licking his ranch-dusted thumb before plunging it back into the chip bag, "and you'll make commission. That's above minimum wage, pal."

"I'm trying to help you, Debra," I say. "I want you back on your feet as much as you do, I don't like these calls either." In one ear I can hear her sobbing, wasting what little hydration she has left; in the other, I hear a dozen co-workers chanting the same thing as me. "What do you say?"

It took me eight months to get this job, unemployed the whole time.

You are only a subscription away from eight customizable avatars to help you on your growth journey. With Freud™—

Pete's still chewing on the last volley, but he puts more chips in his mouth.

"What's the first thing I'm buying tomorrow with my big-ass commission? Guess."

"I don't have the money," Deb says slowly, each syllable punctuated by a sharp inhale as she cries, “help me."

“Don’t sympathize,” Pete says, “empathize, but what ya really need is you need to hate the debtor. Compassion gets you sent home. They put you here; they are the ones that made you interrupt their dinner, demanding them to fulfill their promises, making you look like some asshole when you are just trying to do your job. What? You thought the phone number on your caller ID that everyone has had for decades was some friend you forgot about? Like some hot lithe thing is calling you up for the date you can't afford? Hate them because they answered the phone. Hate them because any other idiot would have let it ring and go to voicemail but now you got to be the villain.”

Hate them because there are no other jobs. One can of STAGG®. Hate them because every day they prove how inhuman you thought you weren't.

Engineered crab pot mentality for the masses; let them have hate.

I hunch forward as if it helps hide me from Peter, "Debra, I'm sorry." She signed a contract. "I can't turn them back on," she's the one who had the audacity to get cybernetic legs so that she could walk again, "unless you pay," she put herself here. If she were seriously in trouble, wouldn’t she call an ambulance to savoir?

Freud™ stays in your brainchip with no signup fees and you can cancel anytime.

Pete hasn’t swallowed and you don't know how that's possible, but he puts yet more chips into his potato mash mouth. His breath is ranch and rotted lungs.

“C’mon, greengills, guess what I'm gonna buy!"

“They cancelled my ambulance subscription too,” Debra says, miles away. "They cancelled my entire emergency service package, asshole," first call in, and you've already been cursed at. "Because," and you hear her suck in breath:

I DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY

Freud™ is not a certified therapist; only trust your doctor's advice. Freud is not responsible for suicidal ideation—

Pete's oil-slick salt-garnished index finger presses into my white shirt.

"I'm gonna buy the life that you can’t,” and he grins.

It’s best to move on, Pete says. Cut your losses. My fingers on sticky keys, I type: refused to pay.

"We'll have to pursue further action," I drone, because that sounds like we are lawyering up even as we aren’t, and you can't lie about suing her. None of this will hold up in court if she's recording, but it works for Peter. Sometimes gets him paid.

"Why won’t you help me?" water-starved Debra, daughter to someone says. I hang up.

Such a Good Student. Paperweight on my conscience. Tomorrow, you’re first Pete. Glock is going straight into your chip-filled mouth. I promise.

I get two more beats out of Losing My Religion when the earpiece clicks and I'm right back in. It’s a different account, but a familiar name and phone number.

"Still with us, Debra?"

"Oh God, please..."

My cupboard is lonely; tomorrow I buy a gun— I swear it.

"Deb, I'm calling you about restoring your Emergency Services account. This is an attempt to collect a debt,” I chant, fearing tomorrow’s paycheck.

---

👉…or tap here.👈

M.P. Fitzgerald writes darkly humorous sci-fi for dream criminals. If he’s called you in the past, we can only hope it was to say ‘I love you’.

Narration audio cleanup courtesy of (and now) Hear no Evil, by

and now Miguel

.