Previously I reported that there was a rumor we phone drones at Fitzsimmons ATL where going to be layed off. Scratch that -- they can't get enough of us! Or can they?

When I signed on with Fitzsimmons we were told there would be occassional Saturdays. Now I'm scheduled to work nine days in a row, from July 5th right through to July 13th. I don't doubt there'll be another nine-day marathon after that. Once this kind of thing gets started, it snowballs. I talked to a lady at Fitzsimmons' sister company awhile back and she said they had been doing 10-hour days, five days a week, for a year! This is due to something called "mandatory overtime," meaning you actually have no right to your own life, they can work you around the clock if they want as long as they put the words "mandatory overtime" behind it. Time to pop the parachute on Fitzsimmons!

But the big news you may actually be almost interested in is the launch of the new Orange E-Phone, the competitor to the Apple iPhone. Boy, were we ready for this! One hour before the big launch they were going around individually asking us who had been trained and who hadn't. In a group meeting I asked my manager, "Who's responsible for scheduling the training sessions, and keeping a record of who has been trained for what so they can be scheduled accordingly?" My manager said, "Let's move right along..."

Despite the TV hype about the Orange E-Phone I've had exactly one phone call asking about it, and that's over a three-week period. After work today at 8:10 p.m, just two hours after "zero hour," I rolled by the local Fitzsimmons store to see...about the same number of cars as any Friday evening. No one was taking down their tent posts or putting the folding chairs in the back of the minivan. No broken shop windows or fist fights for the last Orange. Just a normal, sleepy Friday evening.

Back at the center, this evening some of my fellow sufferers were supposed to hang around an exta three-or-four hours for this new project we have. The computers went on the fritz, so you had about 30 people standing there getting overtime with nothing to do. Of course the #2 at the call center was busy yakking away about her weekend plans with some team manager in her office; you'll never see them actually breaking a sweat trying to fix a major fuck-up at Fitzsimmons. Yesterday we were supposed to do some training for this same job, but they said they had actually ran out of orders for us to work on. So when I go in Sunday I may wind up just needlessly whiling away the day in my gray box because either the server will be on the fritz or there won't be any work, anyhow.

But at the same time they're working people nine and even 12 days in a row, they sent around an e-mail today asking if any of us would like to work just part-time. One team manager is leaving and the Scheduling manager is leaving after only a few months (she looks like a stripper, complete with big breasts she shows off and a navel ring that can be seen through her super-tight shirts; guess she'll find work on a pole somewhere). And you may recall I interviewed for a Leader Helper job awhile back. Well, the two people who became Leader Helpers say they're supposed to attend the monthly manager meetings, but the past couple of months they've been shut out! Hmm! Yet at the same time they're hiring more people...? Grossman's theory was that they're going to work us around the clock and pay us some overtime before kicking us to the curb. I look forward to the curb part, actually.

Yeah, I know this is dull stuff. What do you think it's like to live it?