It is now 5:36 PM, and I have taken almost 60 calls. The number 59 glares at me from the digital display on the phone base, and I somewhere down the line of cubicles I can hear an Indian accent asking the unwitting sap on the other end of the line whether he is paying attention. This is Raina, restraining herself from screaming profanities at the customers in Hindi.

More than the statistics, which are weighed and judged by the ‘metrics' division, more than the red light on the phone base that tells me that there are calls waiting, more than the tone of voice of the New York cell phone dealers towards the end of the day, Raina's slow decline is the yardstick against which days are measured. On a good day, after she has talked to about 50 different people, Raina becomes giddy and will laugh at anything that happens in her environment. On an average day, after she has talked to 60 different people, her entire physical presence has diminished. Raina has been known to walk into the call centre with a bounce in her step and a smile only to leave eight hours later and three inches shorter. On a bad day, one on which at least three different people have asked to speak to her supervisor, she begins to get annoyed with the dealers and the customers.

Today is one of those; one where she begins to ask the customers whether they are paying attention to her. Understandably so, as during the first six minutes of my break she has managed to explain the same rate plan for a cell phone in three different ways. She has also explained that she is unable to change the rate plan personally, as that is the job of another department. She is correct on all counts. The information she gave was flawless. We cannot change the rate plans on single lines, and she will have to transfer the customer. This is not, however, what the customer wants to hear.

My brother and I have a bet. How long will it be before the next escalated call? We can usually tell by the tone of her voice whether someone will have to go to the first floor and get a supervisor. There is a general dearth of supervisors here. On bad days, there is one person to take escalated calls for the entire building. When Raina gets like this we worry due to the fact that eventually, inevitably, there will be no supervisor at all, on any floor of the building. She will look at us, and one of two things will happen. Either one of us will pretend to be a supervisor, or we will run like hell in the other direction.

We have thought about this situation in our off hours. I theorize that the best thing to do would be to tell Raina to go and find someone who can help and then, while she is away from the phone and free from blame, one of us will release the call. Blake's view of the situation is more pessimistic. "She won't be able to handle it. She will become Raina, Destroyer of Worlds, Activator of Cell Phones." Sometimes I wonder whether he might be right.

Raina came to Canada three years ago, and from what I can tell, she shares an apartment with her brother. She lived in Regina for three years, which is enough to drive anyone slowly crazy. Somehow, having come from Delhi, she was unfazed by the colder Canadian climate, by the snow that drives across the prairies during the middle of winter. She and her brother have also been able to adjust to our rather eccentric Canadian culture, maybe because they went to a british school. They are Canadians in the sense that they understand as much about living here as I do. I was forced to concede this after a twenty minute conversation about why Tim Horton's was so popular. As no one in the room could come up with a reason better than Blake's "They put drugs in the coffee!" we all decided to stop thinking about it.

The first time we met was at the first day of training for the job. I remember thinking to myself, "What a delightful person. She's exceedingly polite." She talked quietly and with great wisdom about what it was like to move to Kingston, and how she found Canada to be much different than India. At the time, the epitome of poise and charm, despite her rather eccentric, wandering pronounciation of some longer words. At the time, it would not have mattered much if she had been making them up. The majority of the people who work at this particular company are from the rural areas outside Kingston and are missing teeth, high school diplomas and in some cases, limbs. The occasional thresher or chainsaw related injury did not stop Raina from holding court at our table during her breaks. "When one moves from one part of India to another, the change can create a disturbing level of discontinuity in one's mindset. It is interesting that this does not happen in Canada to the same extent." I agreed, nodding politely, while looking around the table at people who had not been more than fifty miles from home in their lives.

At that time, just over three months ago, Raina was able to carry on a conversation civilly with a complete stranger about her life. She would not always connect with the talkee, but she would at least feel as though she was contributing something. There was an air of grace that she lent to the proceedings.

There is, however, something evil in the scripts for the calls that we take. There is something soul destroying in spouting the same phrases day in and day out, and in the toxic level of idiocy to which we are exposed. There is something terrible in being told by some sh*t kicker from Alabama that it is our fault he lost his phone. We take calls from other departments that don't know what they're doing. We are told on a daily basis, by our customers, that we are liars and the slimiest creatures on earth outside of Washington. We receive the blame for everything from voicemail working improperly to the fact that it is too hard to dial a tiny cell phone with fat fingers.

I hear a click from down the row of cubicles, and Raina turns to me and says "Goddamnit, tonight I am going to have TWO coolers when I get home." I can only nod politely and look at the clock. There are one hundred minutes left in my shift. I can only pray that my brother is wrong. From the rage in her eyes, fueled by a day's worth of coffee and idiots, it is hard to tell whether today will be the day. It is only a matter of time. She will become Raina, Destroyer of Worlds.

I love you JSJ.

Its office space like a mofo there.

You should go all crazy on a copy machine.

"PAPER JAM!!! THERE EES NO FUCKING PAPER JAM!!!"

I will love and marry this Raina on two conditions.

First, we all know there are two kinds of Indian women. Hideous ones, and unbelievably hot ones. Which category does she fall into?

Second, she cannot smell like most of the Indians I met in college. Of course, if she is of the unbelievably hot variety, she will most definitely also smell good, as that is part of being hot.

Well, JSJ, what's the answer? If she meets the conditions, tell her she has a standing marriage proposal in Connecticut, USA. And in my house she can drink three coolers.