Chapter 9

The Chipotle was less than five minutes away. The area was so beautiful that I wondered why the hell I didn’t live here, but then again a one and a half-hour drive to work would probably kill me. The 91 and then the 55 in the morning. What a nightmare.

“Why did you choose to live here?” I asked.

“The rent is cheap and it’s only twelve miles to work.”

“No, it’s not. I write policies for this zip code. Even the renter’s insurance policies are through the roof.”

“There was a fire at my complex a few years before I moved there. No one wants to live there, hence cheap rent. The apartments by the hospital are more expensive, actually.”

“So you got lucky.”

“I got lucky in many ways,” he said, glancing at me.

I don’t think I was ever going to truly understand what this guy saw in me. He was cheesy as hell, but I liked it.

“I’m not going inside in this,” I said when we’d parked in front of the Chipotle. A circus tent and a pair of boxers. No thanks.

“You don’t have to. Text me your order.”

“You gonna let me pay?”

“You already know the answer to that question.”

“I’m too hungry to argue with you. I’ll get you back. Maybe like a ridiculously expensive Christmas present.”

“I’ll break up with you before Christmas and we’ll get back together after the new year.”

“Get out.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said with a grin. “It’s gonna have to be a burrito bowl though. No burritos.”

“Gross. I don’t want a salad.”

“It’s the same thing without the tortilla.”

“I want the tortilla.”

“I’ll order a tortilla on the side then.”

“I don’t see how that makes a difference.”

“It might. Text me your order.”

White cilantro rice, black beans, steak, corn salsa, sour cream, hot salsa, cheese, lettuce, and extra extra extra guac. Simple order if it wasn’t for the fact that it was going to be a damn salad. I texted all that to him, including the part about it being a damn salad.

He didn’t answer. Asshole.

He was in and out of there in ten minutes. I guess there’s no rush this early in the morning. I’ll give you one guess of what he brought for a drink because I know you’ll only need the one:

Water.

“You’re just going to have to feed me again in a few hours. Salads don’t fill me up.”

“So I’ll feed you again in a couple of hours. Eat your burrito bowl. I don’t want to eat alone.”

I popped off the lid and tried to look more annoyed than I actually was. It wasn’t a bad salad because it was literally everything that I got in my burritos. And he did get me a tortilla on the side as promised.

“Do you have to check in with your work? I know today was probably a workday for you. Sorry to keep you from it.”

“It’s okay. I haven’t taken a personal day for a long time. I’ll just check the call stats and answer a few emails if I have to, but otherwise my supervisors should be able to hold things down for a day,” I said, grabbing my phone.

“Call stats? For the call center?”

“Yeah. I check the stats remotely. They go over our hold times and transfers and after-call work and things like that. There’s a quota for all of that. I monitor it pretty closely because it’s the most important aspect of our jobs, second only to servicing the customers of course. I keep a lot of supervisors, probably more than I should, so I can break up the agents into smaller teams to boost efficiency. They get a lot more personal assistance and guidance from their supervisors that way.”

“I’m starting to see what kind of boss you are.”

“Yeah, a mean one.”

“That’s my favorite thing about you,” he said. We shared a smile.

I was logging in remotely through my phone, flipping through the bullshit authorizations until I found the call stats.

“What the fuck?” I dropped my fork.

“What? You okay?” Wes asked, sitting up.

“The hold times are through the fucking roof. I need to call in and see what the hell is going on. Do you mind?”

“Nope. This should be entertaining.”

The odds of the supervisors being at their desks were extremely low. I knew they were probably running around losing their fucking minds, hoping to God that I wasn’t about to walk in through the doors. I called the main department line for the secretary. She was usually at her desk—that was her fucking job.

“This is Darlene.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Celine?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Um—”

“You knew I’d find out eventually.”

“They told me not to tell you.”

“Who told you?”

“The supervisors.”

“They don’t have the authority to do that.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yes, you did. Now get me a supervisor before I come down there and fire you.”

“Right away.”

I didn’t even bother picking up my fork again. I’d completely lost my appetite. Why the hell would the hold times be five times below goal? That made no sense. We hardly ever went below goal; the worst we’d ever been was six percent below goal. This was five hundred percent in the negatives. This was a fucking nightmare. There were so many precautions, so many procedures and backdoors to prevent all of this. How was it possible to fuck up this badly within three hours of opening?

“I’ll never get over how hot you are when you do that,” Wes said, pulling me out of my thoughts.

“You should plug your ears. You’re not going to want to hear this. It’ll change your whole perception of me.”

“You’re acting like I’ve never seen you dehumanize an employee before,” he said, grinning. God, he liked it.

I’d been listening to the hold music for so long that I’d already heard it looping four times. It was just pissing me off. I was considering driving down there and bursting in through the doors wearing Wes’s boxers and oversized shirt. They already think I’m crazy anyway.

“This is Paul.”

Fucking seriously? Paul doesn’t know shit about shit. He wouldn’t know how to handle this.

“Not you, Paul. Get me somebody else.”

“I can handle this, Celine. Tell me what to do.”

“No, you can’t. Get me Lisa.”

“On it.”

“And I better not hear that annoying hold music for more than three minutes.”

“I’ll get Lisa.”

Wes was enjoying this a little too much. He’d even put his fork down to give all his attention to my meltdown.

“I feel like I should have some popcorn for this,” he said. “This is the most entertaining thing I’ve witnessed in a long time.”

“Glad to hear that the end of my career amuses you so much.”

“This won’t end your career.”

“No, but I’ll have to answer for it. It’s my fault I promoted fucking idiots.”

“I’m sure they’re not idiots. Maybe it’s just something complex that they don’t know how to handle.”

“I could’ve forgiven that if they’d just called me. These stats have been plummeting for the last three hours.”

“Oh, then definitely fire them. Fire them all.”

My laugh was hollow and dry, but it was still a laugh.

Wes took my salad out of my lap and turned it onto my tortilla with meticulous care, his fingers holding down the sides, wrapping them up.

“What are you doing?”

“Making you a burrito to make you feel better.”

That was about the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. All he’d done was turned my salad into a burrito, but the sentiment meant so much to me. I was used to my emotions being in overdrive in situations like this. They were always the bad emotions, the ones controlled by unhappiness and bitterness. It was the person I needed to be to be successful at my job. I had to be ruthless. But I’d also had to sacrifice a lot.

Like my humanity.

But here was Wes, handing me my humanity back in a burrito. He could tell I was touched. He brushed my cheek with his thumb. It was a gesture I’d never understood before. Why did people do that? But I was understanding it now. It was innocent. Affectionate. Like just a tiny little touch was still more than enough.

“This is Lisa.”

“I should fire you,” I said, forgetting everything about humanity the second I heard her voice. She was responsible for this. Jesus Christ, she better have a good explanation.

“I’m so sorry. I’ve been dealing with this all morning.”

“You should have called me.”

“You never take any time off. I didn’t want to call you and bother you.”

“You not calling me is bothering me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Portal is down again. Customer Service and Insurance systems are completely at a standstill.”

“Great. What are you doing to rectify that?”

“I’m on hold with IT. They’re working on it.”

“And what’s happening to all the calls?”

“They’re on hold.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Lisa. You’ll run us into the ground. You’re my senior supervisor. We’re not paying you to sit around on your ass waiting on IT to keep the department running every time Portal crashes. We just went over this the other night. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Ah, there goes my temper. I’m known as the Dragon Lady for a reason.

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I trained you for this. You should know exactly what to do. Get a pen and paper and jot this down.”

“Portal’s never been down this long before.”

“You should still be able to think on your feet and figure this out. It’s a simple fix. Got that pen and paper?”

“Yeah.”

“We just went over this the other night, but I’ll go over it again. Pay attention to every word I say because I’ll be thorough. If Insurance and Customer Service are down then so is Claims. Same system. The adjusters won’t be able to keep up with this volume. We’re too backed up. Route all new claims calls to Customer Service. Hand out the manual claims sheets. They’re easy to fill out. Just answer the questions and fill in the blanks. Darlene will have a copy. Get all bull-pen agents off the phones and have them make copies, scan and email the claims sheets to adjusters before the end of the day. Absolutely zero, and listen to me Lisa, zero bull-pen agents are to be on the phones. Keeping up so far?”

“Yup.” I could hear her breathing heavily. I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe I was having to explain these basic fucking things to her. She should know this.

“Okay, let’s deal with billing now. Roadside Assistance, Accounting and Retention Team are all capable of charging cards. You should already know they don’t run on Portal. Transfer to them for payments. I’ll send out a mass email. Branches run on Portal too, but you can still send customers down there if they want to pay manually or with cash. Still keeping up?”