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	The Farm by Colin Clark

Stories Archive About Home	Jerry wondered how he had got this far. Christ he’d tried hard enough not to. Here he was, nearly 30, and still not sure what he was doing with his life. “I spend all day answering the phone and sitting at a computer screen inputting data to pay my mortgage and feed my cat. Is that the sum total of my life? Is that all there is? There must be something more to it, surely?” It didn’t bear thinking about an answer. So why was he even trying? Jerry had just found one of his quieter moments during the working day, in his head. It wasn’t a Kit-Kat kind of break where the whole world stops for you and your life for 15 minutes to half an hour; it was a kind of break he simply called Head Space. Management termed it ‘Between Calls Personal Reflection Time’. Overpaid American business psychologists called it ‘Employee Downtime’. Whatever that all meant. In other words, Jerry’s arse was sitting on his incredibly uncomfortable brown spinning-wheely chair with the squeaky broken caster. He was sitting waiting for the next aggrieved customer who was calling up to query their credit card statement or ask why they’d been charged 60 pounds for being a day late with their minimum monthly repayment. He had to take all kinds of shit off the punters on the other end of the line but he couldn’t say anything back. That was the rules. Not a word, no retorts at all, the Customer is always right. Jesus, how 1992. In a way Jerry didn’t mind. He saw himself as the ultimate 21st Century service-provider; someone you could shout at who wouldn’t shout back or sue you. Much cheaper than a shrink; it’s even a freecall 0800 number for fuck’s sake! The occasional ‘accidental’ cut-off was sometimes called upon, but not too often so as to be noticed by those above. The other main weapon in his arsenal was the “I need to put you through to someone else to deal with that enquiry” tactic. On hearing this immortal line, everyone in hearing distance would gather round to place bets on how long the punter would hang-on before slamming their phone down in pure hate and frustration: “Hello?…. Hello?….. Is anyone there?….. Ah, fuck it……” Non-aggressive resistance was the best policy for a sloth like him. Jerry was considered unlucky in his place of under-employment; the place affectionately known as ‘The Farm’ to certain members of staff. He hadn’t quite made the grade yet. You see, he didn’t have a window. That is, where his desk, chair, computer and telephone were positioned on Level 4 where he worked he couldn’t see, open, smell or even think a window. It was the big joke; them upstairs called it a ‘modern and functional workstation’, everyone else simply called it a ‘Rabbit hutch’ and, the people in them, ‘Rabbits’. In terms of dimensions, the hutch seemed a pretty apt label to apply. As did Rabbit at times; add a bit of straw and some month old carrots with the tops on. It was designed to keep your mind on the job and focussed on ‘quality service delivery’, apparently. Truth was it just drove everyone who had to work in them nuts. But not quite everyone. When not on calls, Jerry went into Head Space and chilled out, forgetting where he was and closing his eyes to mundane reality and taking off into a world he called his own. Only thing was that Planet Head Space wasn’t very pretty at the moment; no blue skies overhead and no ‘clear for take-off’ message through his intercom system. He’d only been at this particular call-centre (The Mother of All Farms) a month and a half but already people had come and gone ahead of him. One woman, Mandy, had lasted merely three days. Everyone had talked about it. She’d looked about mid-forties, apparently, so was probably 31 or 32–ish. She was clad in thick gold jewellery and smelled of stale fags and a mixture of Baccardi and Benolyn cough syrup. This was a weird mix, no matter how liberal you are when it comes to body odours and what you take into your body at the same time. Her scraggy bottle-blond hair, back-combed and reaching down to her arse, courtesy of the extensions, went well with the black mini, heels and clingfilm-tight white-come-yellow blouse. She was on day 3 of the ‘intensive’ 3 day training course and she was doing the ‘difficult customer’ routine. Now, to give it some context, Jerry had breezed through this gig; nothing got to him on time that wasn’t his own. He made sure of this; it was rule number one. He was as laid-back as a surf board on a bowling green at The Farm and, funnily enough, Jerry’s ‘difficult customer’ had been the one to lose the plot, not him. The ‘difficult customer’ was always a certain Mr Bennett from Human Resources. The Rabbit’s called him Pig on account of his pink flushed face and rabid love of dirt; he’d been found cruising porn sites on his office computer one lunch-time by a Rabbit. Pig just couldn’t break him during the supposed 20 minutes session that became 45 minutes, and in the end it was he (oink oink!) that ended up apologising to the lowly Rabbit for causing ‘such a fuss’ and ‘shouting too much at just the messenger’. This was a first in the organisations history and one that was still doing the rounds in the staff room (naturally enough, called the Warren). Even the sterile operating theatre like bogs that glistened when the light went on had a slogan in red ink carved into the tiled-wall beside the industrial hand-dryers to commemorate the great victory: it read as such (in tune to a slightly slower version of Toni Basil’s number one hit-single ‘Mickey’) ‘BENNET’S MR ANGRY….. HE’S JUST A BACON SANDWICH! – TO MANDY!… TO MANDY!’ So, even Jerry’s legendary encounter with the Bennett-Pig wasn’t quite as memorable as Mandy’s dust-up. On her third day she’d gone in smelling more of Bacardi than Benolyn and was building up to her ‘difficult customer’ session. She’d had, according to Susie and Bill Rabbit from Level 2 balance transfers, a few slugfulls of the 18 + tropical tasting one during her 15 minute mid-morning break and she’d taken it down in such haste that she’d come back in to The Farm full-on mortal. The training manager had looked at her in that quizzical and mystified managerial middle-class way but had just assumed, from appearances, that this was Ms Taylor’s normal demeanour and behaviour. Not two minutes after Mr Angry had got going (he was just getting into his Mr Mildly Put-Out phase, never mind full-on Angry Angry) Mandy was standing up spitting venom into the phone and rasping that she was going to track down the miserable fucked-up lonely bald wanker of a bastard and pull out his eyes, rip out his heart and cut off his flaccid cock and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. In other words, he could jolly-well whistle for his late-payment refund! Needless to say, that was the end of Mandy’s employment at The Farm but Christ had she gone out on a bang. The night-out to celebrate her successful departure was equally robust. Jerry had suffered from a minor dose of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder when, at one point late on, Mandy had shoved her sizeable breasts in his face and one of her pierced nipples had lodged itself in his left nostril. It had taken quite some effort to remove this foreign object from his nose but Mandy did later say how good it had been for her. Jerry had actually managed to convince himself it was just a bad dream, despite the photographs, the camcorder footage and that e-mail JPEG image that had done the rounds on the internal FARM server. Secretly, Jerry was both impressed and jealous of Mandy’s Oscar winning performance. The way she’d done it, such style! In fact, it was so convincing that they got in the Heavy Pigs and sacked her on the spot. With her P45 in one hand and a hurriedly typed-up ‘You are sacked’ letter from personnel in the other, she could get straight back on the dole with no questions asked from any government functionary. Talk about commitment and professionalism. Jerry sometimes laughed at what went on in The Farm but more often than not he cried, to himself. He wanted out of this Farm – all Farms – badly so when he really thought about his life and what he wanted to do with it. But then, his dawn of realisation cast some light on it and it just seemed like far too much work for him to take on. It was easier and far safer just to think about what might be, rather than actually having to do it and possibly fail. Plus, what was the point? Isn’t all work Farm-work in one way or another? He knew he was capable of being creative when he tried. His paintings hadn’t been that bad during degree number 3. Indeed, his numerous bits of paper from various art colleges and proper ‘Educating Rita’ like universities said so. The problem was these bits of paper – on their own - were just that to him; bits of sodding useless paper that weren’t a meal ticket to Seventh Heaven where he could be what he wanted to be. One trap to the next, like a mouse going round and round in a cage or a dog that always barks for no reason. If only he could stop remembering what he’d wanted to be years ago. Maybe then he’d accept his current status and just get on with it all. His current Farm, and all the other part-time, temporary Farms he’d been in since graduating for the very last time, had just about sucked the motivation and drive out of him. However, he thought back to his past life sometimes, when he was a decade younger. How keen, how green and how totally fucking naļve he had been. Was it the same person? He wasn’t sure anymore. The appearance in the mirror was deceptive. The philosophical soul inside him whispered; “Forget about what you used to be and what you wanted to be back then… you were just a boy! Get on with living for the NOW and trying to change what you’ve become, if you really hate it that much”. At that point Head Space was infiltrated by a sharp electronic noise pulsating in his left ear. It was his headset alerting him to the fact that a caller was demanding his services. Another hapless debt-ridden punter to deal with, breathe deep. He could feel the rage build up inside him, all that frustration… “Digital Bank PLC. This is Jerry from Customer Services speaking. And just what the FUCK do you want today you little piece of SHIT…?” Before he’d even finished his sentence the headset was off, coat on, personal stereo plugged in and he was off to the lift to make a sharp exit. A plastic plant, one of many in the Farm, came with him. The lift pinged. He got in, pressing ‘G’ as he spun round. “What do I do now then?” he wondered. ©2005 Colin Clark c.r.clark@strath.ac.uk. ----------------------------------------------------------- Colin Clark is 34 years old and was born in North East Scotland. He currently stays in Glasgow, teaching sociology at Strathclyde University.

The Farm