JC Penneys and the Creepy Guy

Goodbye JC Penney catalog center in Midlothian. Channel 12 is reporting the office will close at the end of March, putting 256 people out of work. Penneys has apparently suffered a 78 percent drop in third-quarter earnings, which seems huge. I tried my best to help. Easily 90 percent of my clothes for the past six years or so came from the catalog. They have a size that fits me perfectly, so it's just easier to shop there. I hate trying things on in store dressing rooms.

But I don't call in to the catalog center. I order online. I am guessing most people do that now so the catalog center can't keep those 256 people busy.

I used to be one of them. Whenever I was in an unemployed situation, I'd apply to call centers for temporary jobs. It was an easy-in, easy-out situation, (although as many times as I applied and even interviewed, I could never get hired by Time-Life on Parham Road.)

In the early '80s, I did get hired for Christmas rush at JC Penneys on Alverser Drive, across from the Chesterfield Towne Center. Christmas rush lasts from September to January. You could not specify a day or night shift. You could not ask for the same days or weekends off. You had to have 24-hour, seven days a week availability, and every week your work schedule was different, depending on projected sales call volume. The number of hours you worked also varied. And you were paid just a little above minimum wage.

You had to punch into a time clock within 5 minutes either way of your shift starting time. If you punched in 6 minutes or more late, you were flagged. If you were flagged late three times in a six-week period, you were on probation, and if you were late again while on probation, you were fired. Panicky women would pull up to the entrance door, double-park with their motor running, run in and punch in, then run back out to park to avoid being flagged.

I forget how long training was, at least a week, maybe more. We tediously went through the manual of how to answer the phone, put callers on mute or hold, take an order, process a return, and upsell a customer if an item wasn't available. The computer would give you alternatives to offer. We learned the jargon of catalog numbers, sizes and color codes.

The computer terminals were tiny boxes with black screens and glowing green Courier looking type. The training only went as fast as the dumbest person in the room, and there was always someone who couldn't follow, who was totally lost. The instructor had to explain things over and over while the rest of the class snoozed. Nevertheless, eventually we were all set loose on the floor to take orders, in long rows of computer terminal semi-cubicles.

You never sat in the same cubicle, so there was no decorating your workspace. The bulletin board by the time clock assigned you a cube number for the day, and there you sat with your headphones on. Your headphones came in a disinfected bag, but you brought your own alcohol to clean your keyboard and phone set each day. Tissues? Check. Lozenges for scratchy throats? Check. Some women brought their own seat cushions. No food or drink in the cubes. At the end of the shift, everything went home with you. Only the full-time year-round employees had lockers.

By the time I made it to January, I was on probation for being late three times, but I managed to find a full-time job just in time to get out before I was fired. Christmas rush was over and I was going to be laid off anyway.

In many ways, I enjoyed the job. You stayed busy. The calls were constant. It was interesting to see the kind of things people were buying. It was interesting to see how some women seemed to have endless money and would order dozen of things regularly. And they'd return dozens of things, too. Some accounts were flagged, so if an item was out of stock, you didn't suggest another one. They were only going to bring it back anyway. For some reason, the early-early morning shift was always full of calls from women in New Jersey, ordering drapes and bedding. It was very curious.

Then there was the Creepy Guy. Creepy Guy usually turned up on the evening shifts. Sometimes Creepy Guy got right to the point and asked what was I wearing. Sometimes he pretended to be ordering women's underwear and would ask for descriptions of bras and panties on certain pages. What do you think of this bra? Would you like this one? How would it feel on you? What are you wearing under your clothes now? What color is it? Is it tight? Is it see-through? Does it have lace on it? He had a thing for lace.

Creepy Guy was relentless. I got a call from him at least once during every evening shift. I could hear from the chatter up and down my row that other call-center women were getting calls from him, too, so he was a nightly serial caller. He kept calling and calling. That's because every so often he would strike gold. Someone would be bored and actually tell him what she was wearing. It only encouraged him. Even I got enticed one evening and told him, and then he got creepier. What did I look like under my underwear? Okay, enough of you, Creepy Guy.

One evening, while Creepy Guy was trying to get me to describe a bra in the catalog, I could hear on his end of the line the sound of children's voices. He was startled -- apparently the arrival home of the wife and children was unexpected. Flustered, he said he had to go. Creepy Guy, I exclaimed, you have children? And you're making these calls? Shame on you, shame on you!

After that, when he called, I asked him about his kids, and he hung up on me.

After the catalog call center shuts down, what will Creepy Guy do?

The Silent Type Revisited

I was contacted recently by a reader who remembers this story from November 2003. I think it appeared only in one place, The Hook in Charlottesville, Va. She wanted to know if I was still married to this man because her strong, silent type was getting ready to retire from the military and she didn't think their marriage would survive now that he was home all the time not talking to her instead of overseas not talking to her. Well, I am still married to this one. Here's a reprint of the story:

The Silent Type

This is not a Hurricane Isabel story, although it starts like one. Two days after the hurricane, my entire county was still without electricity except for one small area, an intersection near the expressway with a fast food restaurant and gas station on each corner. Everyone in the county descended upon it.

McDonald's was under siege, and Burger King was only marginally better, so we went there. The line for the drive-through wrapped around the building twice. My husband directed our car to the end of the line, and I began squawking.

"Why are we getting in the drive-through? The line will be shorter inside. I even see empty tables!"

"I don't like to eat inside."

"Why? It has air conditioning. And lights. Things we don't have at home." That should have settled the argument right there, but he was still in the drive-through line. So I spelled out more reasons for eating in.

1. You get to eat the food while it's still warm.
2. If they make a mistake in the order, you can correct it on the spot.
3. After you eat, your garbage is their garbage.
4. And I can enjoy a meal with chicken without four cats breathing down my neck, purring, "Bird? Bird? Is that hot, dead bird? Give me bird!"

My husband passively listened to all this, then, with great reluctance, began circling for a parking space. I graciously offered him equal time.

"Why do you always want to take it home?"

"I can watch TV at home."

Ordinarily I might have given him a point or two on the Marriage Scoreboard for that, but on this particular day, the television he was so eager to get home to was a very small, black and white, battery-operated one that was picking up a single local channel. We had no electricity, remember.

Then it dawned on me it wasn't about the television at all. He wouldn't be expected to make conversation if we were eating in front of the television.

I suppose there are men who are both good conversationalists and heterosexual, but I've encountered very few in my life. I think they must all get jobs as talk show hosts, the skill is so rare and unique.

The last time I persuaded him to actually enter the Burger King, I spent the entire meal performing my favorite monologue, "My Very Stressful and Horrible Day at Work." He said nothing, no matter how hair-raising and incredible the events of My Very Stressful and Horrible Day at Work became. So I switched to a topic guaranteed to get a response, "My Last Boyfriend Was an Excellent Conversationalist, Unlike You."

"He was a great listener," I concluded.

"I was listening," my husband finally spoke.

"But you weren't responding. You didn't participate. You don't comment on my comments. It wasn't a ping-pong game of thoughts and ideas. It was hitting golf balls off a tee."

"I was listening," my husband said. And that was, if nothing else, an improvement over silence in front of a television, so I grudgingly awarded him a point on the Marriage Scoreboard.

But it got me to really think about that last boyfriend who was the excellent conversationalist because, in reality, he was only an excellent conversationalist on the phone. He called when I got home from work and we talked until 9:30 at night. I thought we were having the most incredible relationship of sharing, only to find out after it ended that the bands start playing in the clubs at 10 p.m., and he was only killing time with me until he could go out and rub elbows with some happening babes.

He was a master of the art of the ping-pong conversation, showing interest in a woman's comments, responding, contributing, encouraging, just to keep the phone call going until it had served his purpose of passing the duller part of the evening. When we did go out, it was always to a movie, which is like television only bigger and louder. You can't have a sparkling conversation during a movie. The people around you would club you with their super-size popcorn boxes.

And to my horror, I remembered that the ideal boyfriend and I never ate in fast food restaurants either. Even though the nearest Wendy's was 20 minutes from his apartment, he always ordered out. I'd finish my meal in the car while it was still hot. (When a relationship is in the fragile beginning stage, you can't really squawk about wanting to eat inside.)

He, however, patiently waited until he got home, unpacked everything, and rearranged it on his own plates before settling down in front of the television (not only creating garbage, but dirty dishes). And there I sat, with no food, since I had eaten it already, and no conversation, since we were now in television-mode. This was hardcore anti-conversation! I had been deceived.

Good conversation is such a precious commodity, sometimes even a man craves it. That would totally explain the mystery of why Wilbur spent all his time in the barn with Mr. Ed when he had a hot babe like Carol in the house. (Did you ever notice the body on Carol?) But Mr. Ed talked.

It's been a long, slow learning process. I'm reporting this discovery to womankind as a warning. If you hear of an impending hurricane, gas up the car, fill up the bathtub, pack a cooler with ice, stock plenty of batteries, and marry a man who talks.