PRESSURE COOKING

(I worked at the Thomas Cook call centre in Larbert during the summer of 2016 for a while. Wrote this at that time. There was a terrorist attack in Turkey while I was there, which explains some of this. They were also doing the place up, and had jammed the full place into half the hangar it is in, which explains some other potentially confusing things. Apart from that, well, you're on your own.)

Okay folks, step right up, don’t be shy, step inside this new dark Satanic mill, this centre of the call from Hell, this big top circus of horrors of shysters of carny barkers, of killers of thrills, the graveyard of holiday dreams and dream holidays and frustrated communication flame name-shame-and-blame wars. Step right through this malfunctioning insecurity door, don’t be shy, nobody round here bites, all perfectly decent people doing an indecent job for an indecent company so they don’t get indecent exposure in the media. Up to your right, that’s right, past the waving-hiya security guard receptionist up that wee slight-angle plastic ramp, pause to bemusedly peruse the how-now-to-wow-vows, shake your head, shrug, canteen to your left if you’re hungry, just opened again after weeks of no hot water and very hot tempers dripping down the damn-no-food walls. If we could hover above the chaotic shitstorm mess of no mixed blessings we see before us we’d get a beady-eyed eagle’s-eye view of a modern psychotic workplace, a mental institution in disarray. Refurbishment blues and anarchy have eaten all the routines and routes in the place, shoving everybody cramped and stark into the half the space needed, carpets bearing phantom scars of been-there-forever furniture, hot seats, cold furies, no seats bookable, the hell with your friends sitting next to you, this is a job not a playground. And a lowfly hum and buzz of murdered communication underlies everything in this blue-balling barn of a place, people fielding complaints, taking orders, giving orders, coming, going, snowed under, bowled over, televisions broadcasting simple revisionist call targets from an uncompromising roof disadvantage position, everybody on and take a call, Turkey has exploded and people need reassuring, and it’s always the same rote trauma drill for the expectant media-frightened masses, the mass debaters, the masturbators, the cool and the cold and the intolerable, Thomas Cook emails spitting slick wound-licking tickertape-parade updates of how to soothe the savage troubled gonnabe-tourist beast scared for their lives and those of their family, bland soothing smoothing reassuring foreign office say it’s fine to fly lies, check their website, Lyingovscum.com , they’ll truly tell you the truth, the half-truth, and everything but the truth so help me goddamn it, that’s all I can tell and sell you. And we have all races and ages and sizes and sexes here, a kaleidoscope of constantly-busy pretend-unseeing swivelling eyes, everybody at some point or other surveying the varying-hotness fleshy pouting landscapes for signs of sexual release and relief from braindraining calls in and out, everybody keeking and peeping at an eyeburn groinstrain lustspiller parade of hips and tits and lips and jeans-front-bulge bits, and what is that young blue-sashwearing woman looking at in that strained unnatural quickflash downwards glance oh yeah, almost forgot how tight these jeans and genes are inward chuckle, a million boredom-killer sly shy sidelong loinheater glances and these sometimes-fulfilled sexual fantasies and fallacies and reveries the only way to make the day go by, an orgy of nonexistent sexual positions reverberating through tired-of-work minds all over the showroom floor, teenage trying-too-hard fashion parades, all-age tight jeans, lowcut tops, tight teeshirts showing off ripped muscles or mammary excursions to a possible future orgasmic nirvana, and she goes with him goes with her is married to him is married to her is engaged to him is engaged to her looking forward to the wedding and she’s single and looking and he just nailed her Saturday night and the accusations and insinuations and indignations tremble through the smiling accommodating air, look at her over there that hot and heavy so-Scottish beautyfuel reverie, unaware of being idly hopelessly scrutinised, dark black hair and white skin and a million representative headswimages swamping swarming round her she is not even aware of just begging to be nailed to a page, but so what, it always boils back down to at hot panting dog on a short employment leash and a fused boiling tedium lobster pot of braindeath that not even conversations or sneaked net sorties or who-cares truth-or-dares about last Saturday this Saturday next Saturday can ever itch-scratch, complaints pouring in thick and fast and furious in the curious and twitching yielding Larbert air, dreams dashed, holidays of horror, some true some fake some good some bad some ugly truths coming down the phonelines via call or computer jpg, bedbugs, hooker attacks, inedible food, intolerable hotel neighbours, no rep, bad rap, never travel with your company again no matter how many insincere vouchers of strained apology you try to wallpaper my next-holiday life with. And muddle buzzing cuddling huddles, phony ego guddles, best team ever, he said she said we said, strive to skive, hot boring gossip newly minted on wagging jealous tongues of prurient vicarious-kick brutality, temperature rising during the day a sort of meteorological metaphor for the whole vicious situation, my team your team which team we all scream for a stable with permanent tables team, incomprehensible computer-systems hieroglyphs branding our brains with their confused unexplained inexplicable blinking-lights idiocy, casting life-tired despairing glances at the dusty roof and rafters and seeing delicate intricate unclean ghost spiderweb homes of long-gone arachnids and wishing we could go with them, slip away like the taken-down depressing mangy fake clarty trees that disappeared like South American political prisoners in the night one time, manufactured plastic green lies, stolen headsets, wished-for headstones, sweatily surfing heatwaves and going cold-cocked as the temperature inexplicably drops later on in the day maybe the sun going down doing its level best to cool the could-be-killer day in here off, and these ungrateful people will never know or care how we suffer for the cursed curative art of repairing their holidays and memories and compensating them for lies and lives put out by taxis and hotels and no-good food and drink and drunks and dirty pools and crap floating round in the gene pool you wonder how they can be working to afford a holiday, holy daze, incomprehensible haze of wasted crying tourists trapped in penny-ante motels of slutty shouldn’t-be-rented-out hovels north of nowhere-round-the-world saleable, why the hell do we deal with these fools anyway, no wonder people are xenophobic, except the expectant fools who want everything to be like home when they travel abroad why even bother? And it’s a high staff turnover, high brain churn-over environment of frayed tempers and don’t-take-it-personally abuse and targets and clueless management who couldn’t manage to find their arses with both hands and a Thomas Cook map, really, so let’s just take our leave of this decent-people-filled place and bounce on down the road somewhere

wholly happier and healthier

While we can cos fuck,

monitor complaints

never bring any

recompense

or anything

useful

ever.