The Johnie Shellshock of Telemarketers

I'm remembering a really great movie called The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain, that few people had the opportunity to see. In particular, I'm thinking of a character called Johnie Shellshock, who had been sent to fight in WWI and had returned home with a badly damaged psyche. His experiences in the war had affected him so profoundly that he no longer spoke to others. Maybe he had no words to express what he had seen.

In any case, it was easy to see that Johnie had no mental defenses against the horrors he had witnessed. Where other soldiers might have been able to disassociate themselves from what they were experiencing, Johnie internalized it and brought it home with him. The military had wisely discharged him to go home and try to put the pieces of himself back together as best he could.

I propose that there should be a similar allowance for telemarketers who have gone a little crazy and melted down under the pressure. Anybody who has ever been desperate enough to try telemarketing knows that it's a bloodbath, and only the very strongest survive, of whom I don't even try to number myself. Desperate? Yes. Poor? Yes. But not strong.

I tried to go back and do some telemarketing, and I made it a whole day without any outward sign of distress. On my second day, however, I completely lost it. half an hour into my shift I began crying uncontrollably. I made two trips to the bathroom to pull myself together and reenter the fray, but both times I collapsed into tears again as soon as I put my headset back on. At one point, when I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my eyes were such a vivid shade of red that for a shocked, confused moment I thought I was crying blood.

And I just couldn't force myself to continue. I somehow put my butt back in my seat over and over at Healthways and tried not to think about the fact that there have been jobs where I literally never cried at work. But I couldn't do that this time. I just couldn't force myself to go back. I stayed at work for an hour, crying nonstop, before I gave up.

I am cognizant of the fact that I have bills, and that I can't simply go without a job. Like, I get that. I don't want Shayne to feel like he has to bear the burden of supporting us, when we both agreed that we would work together. But I understand now that I can't do telemarketing anymore, not even for a little while, not even while I look for something else. Even horses, at the end of their lives, go to the glue factory. Used up telemarketers? I dunno what happens to them. Maybe they can be recycled.