A few years ago I moved to Appleton for a job in the caption biz. At CallCap, workers like me listened to live phone-chats on a headset at our computer stations. We spoke into mics, typed and used macro buttons to turn the audio content into captions. The client had a CallCap monitor at home, where the captions appeared, thanks to satellites passing the data back and forth. We didn’t have to caption what the client said, so we didn’t even hear that side of the conversation. The goal was to help people with hearing problems have clearer and more enjoyable phone calls. As far as noble pursuits go, this one was… OK.
There were logistical issues in the caption biz. People tend to speak at a rate that’s hard for the repeater to keep up with, so lags and mistakes were common. Careful, fast enunciation was a must--and even then, the voice recognition system could easily turn your “boat” into a “goat.” Really, the simple act of older people texting more was a threat to make the whole Caption Biz obsolete. I got a feeling of futility when I fell dozens of seconds behind real-time, repeating someone’s off-the-rails rant.
That said, I liked the job, and I was good at it. I was fast and accurate. At least once a shift, a supervisor monitored and graded our calls. My personal best run was eight-straight scores of 100%.
I loved to compete against myself and no one else. Each phone call began with a blank page on the screen that I filled up with words. The voices I heard were characters. I had to stay true to the characters, and get their words just right. Short of my dream job that has yet to pay my bills, I was pleased to get by as a captionist.
I was there for almost two years. Somewhere between my peak of bliss as an adult and haunting despair I barely wanted to survive, I give you this CallCap story in which I got baked to the Bejesus. On accident.
###
With moving boxes still scattered about in my apartment, I got my lunch packed. I fit three slices of cold Tombstone pepperoni into a baggie, plus a few strawberries in a small Tupperware case, a can of Orange Crush, and for dessert, a brownie my mom had baked for me. It was a housewarming gift. The friends who helped me move had left some party favors too.
The brownie I took was set aside from the pile of brownies in Tupperware. Like my new home, my mind was unsettled. I didn’t think twice about nabbing the castoff brownie. A to-do list on the kitchen table caught my gaze. I added “Get Internet” and “TV Tray.”
I left my place on the east side of Appleton a half hour before my shift began. I worked misfit hours, from 3:15-11:30 pm. I stayed up late and slept in, which suited me fine.
The CallCap office was on the second floor of a five-story building. We shared the little tower with other companies, most of which had their logos on display in huge letters on the side of the building. Not CallCap though; we kept our shit anonymous.
I said hello to the secretary as I strolled into the lobby. I turned left into the breakroom to put my lunch cooler in the fridge. Inside, the fridge was packed with food and drinks. Wrappings of Taco Bell, trays of Panda Express, and half-full sodas filled up the real estate.
There wasn’t enough space for my Igloo bag, but I found a small spot on the shelf. I unpacked my meal and stacked it with visions of Tetris. My brownie rested on my orange soda. Snacks were scattered on the shelf. The likes of Nutty Bars, cookies, chocolate cupcakes, pumpkin bars, and perhaps another brownie stood out like sweet patches of mud.
I went to my locker and spun the combination to renew those absurd high-school vibes. I took out my headset and a book to read and locked up my lunch cooler.
With bounce in my steps, I entered the call floor and clocked in by the supervisors’ desk. I greeted the sups, got a scowl from the mumbly Goth kid who thought I was a kiss-ass, and walked past rows of cubicles to my spot in the back corner. The verbal chaos of all those out-of-context speeches repeated by captionists was odd music to my ears.
I turned on the computer and plugged in my headset. Soon I heard pleasing twinkles that cued my first call. For 90 minutes, I captioned the words of characters from all over the country. Then I heard an alert, the quack of a duck, that meant it was time to get my monitor score.
At the sup station, my team leader handed me a Perfect Monitor slip. It was dotted with SpongeBob stickers for full effect.
“No major errors,” Ella said. “Nice use of the pause pedal on a fast speaker. Good job typing out ‘bag’ because you’re from Wisconsin and can’t say it right.”
We chuckled. I thanked her. This aspect of the job renewed absurd grade-school vibes, and I was onboard. She handed me my shift tracker back, signed with her initials. It was time for my first break. I headed for the fridge in the breakroom to treat myself.
Family Feud played on the TV. I said “Hey, Anna” to Anna, seated at one of the tables. A woman of mature age, Anna had shortly cropped jet-black hair to match her baggy shirt. Sometimes we’d watch baseball together in the breakroom while she swiped through her phone for pics of her grandkids and pets.
I flung open the door of the fridge. My frown was mild as I looked at my meal. My brownie had toppled off my orange soda. It was mixed in with the free-for-all of treats, just another snack in the muddy trench of chocolate and caramel. What color was my brownie again? Why, brown, of course--like a Little Debbie Cosmic Brownie, minus the brand name. Not like the Grim Reaper black of the brownie in a baggie a full foot away from my orange soda.
My head immersed in puffs of recirculated air, I squinted at the two brownies, comparing and contrasting. Maybe I could have handled the brownie confusion in a more responsible way, but I was 90% sure my brownie was browner than its blacker alternative. And what, did my brownie topple all the way off my soda and just keep rolling all the way to the other end of the shelf? Un-freaking-likely. I was almost positive I was snatching the right brownie.
I sat down to watch the Feud and munched my brownie. After a few chews, my taste buds found that something was off. The chocolatey treat was not quite as sweet, and I detected a taste that was sorta… pungent. Not gagging pungent, but more bland, less delectable than the squares I’d eaten the day before from my mom’s batch.
I might have taken the wrong brownie.
Anna scooted her chair away from the table and got back to work. My eyes bulged at the Family Feud in a moment of concern. Should I tell someone? Maybe investigate and find out whose brownie I might have eaten by accident? Tell them, my bad?
I shook my head no. Mistakes happen. It’s a mere brownie-for-brownie trade. Relax, Nick.
Back at my cubicle, a half hour went by before I stomped on the pause pedal mid-call to give this thought my full attention: I’m high. Oh shit, I’m ree-hee-hee-heally high.
It’s no fun to be high on accident. Heck, even getting high on purpose might miss the fun-mark. My weed policy was to keep it at home as a pleasing nightcap. After work. At 35, I hadn’t been baked on the job in over a decade. But then I had to go and pick the wrong brownie.
In my newfound haze, I gawked at a timer showing seconds ticking up. What did that mean, again? I gazed down at my foot, which was pressing down on a small metal box. Up to legs and waist and arms, I followed the connected parts of my body with my eyes, until I saw that climbing timer again. It reached 30 seconds.
A bell jingled urgently in my headphones. This meant I had set off the Delayed Tracking Record, or DTR. This let the sups know I was way behind on my call. They might decide to give me a monitor to hear what was up. Was my speaker a rapping Busta Rhymes? Had I gone mad and curled up in a ball beneath my desk, my butt on the pause pedal? If I was summoned to a sup, would my bloodshot, twitchy eyes reveal I just got baked? Funny story about that…
I stepped off the pause pedal. My character unfroze. She went on with her story. I spoke speedily, at about the same rate as my frantic heartbeat. Cold sweat formed at my temples, slipped into my beard. I felt a trickle from my armpit down my rib cage that felt grroosss. In response to this tangible sense of panic, I thought to myself: “You gotta enunciate too, you dumb, stoned motherfucker!”
I did some of my best work to finish that call. Half my mind dialed in to mimic someone’s speech, being goaded by the other half with panic and self-loathing. Like a blazing racehorse and an abusive jockey, my good ability and bad feelings came together in ugly harmony. When the call ended a few minutes later, I was caught up to real time. And I didn’t make any mistakes.
Not in the captions, anyway.
I waited for the quack alert. Hearing it would mean the death of me. My headphones were silent. I sipped from my water bottle, then chugged. Everything gave me dread, except for water.
No quack. Phew! Pleasing twinkles. Another call. Ahhh!
This chat got off to a slow start. Without having to say a word, I pressed macro buttons: “Hello,” “How are you,” “OK,” “Good,” “Good.” I got my breathing under control. I imagined my mind as a levitating sleeping bag, and I was almost enjoying that.
It’s good to hear your voice, my speaker said, which I repeated. Then he got sleazy. I want to suck your nipples, he said. I repeated the first three words and stopped. I sighed and typed in “suck your nipples.”
We dealt with phone sex once in a while. We didn’t censor the things people said. (The racists and homophobes were the worst, but horny folks could be a challenge, too.) Some workers never flinched at dirty talk. I heard tales of armpit grinding and pee orgies that I’d be too bashful to repeat. Stoned on accident, I was too shy to say “I want to hold your hand.”
Hearing the sleazebag in the moment, I stepped up my typing game. Then I’m gonna squeeze those buttcheeks. As the letters clacked, I detected less confidence in his voice. The woman using the CallCap monitor wasn’t in the mood for this. I had a hunch she was digging this sleaze about as much as I was. I just get so fucking turned on by your, um… nipples and buttcheeks. Typed it! The guy sounded deflated. He changed his tone. I spoke again. Anyway, where do you want to get brunch on Sunday?
At lunchtime, I logged out, gathered my stuff, and set about a daunting task: Standing up and walking to the exit of the call floor. Left foot, right foot, breathe in, breathe out, I told myself. I floated past a blur of voices in cubes with fuzzy gray walls. I zoomed past the supervisor station without risking eye contact. At the time clock on the wall, I pressed my four-digit password and pressed Out for Lunch.
My mission to avoid humans in my state of high guilt went on in the breakroom. The few people inside stared at their phones. I darted to my locker and fussed with the lock. I snagged my lunch cooler and locked up my headset.
At the fridge I flung open the door and basked for a moment as the chill blew against the hot mess of anxiety I had become. Someone entered the room behind me and that was the end of my peace. I stuffed my meal into the Igloo and flung the strap on my shoulder. The other brownie was gone. They’re gonna not get high on accident, I brooded.
Poised to make a dash for my car to eat alone, I saw Anna by the door. She thumbed her thick-rimmed glasses and smiled hopefully at me. She gestured at the cell in her hand. I dared to look her in the eyes.
“Hey Anna sorry gotta go,” I blurted out.
I slithered past her, dead-set on escaping outside to my car. I snubbed Anna, who probably wanted to show me a picture of her cat or grandson on her phone. How lame was that?
Flying high and anguished, I stuffed my face with cold pizza, seated in my car. I had time to think. What were my options? I wasn’t going to report the brownie to a supervisor. I knew I’d be fine in a few hours, and that I could be finer right now if I relaxed. I didn’t want the drama and gossip of a full-blown investigation over a weed brownie. With its shades of high school, drama and gossip sometimes got blown up at CallCap.
Should I just drive home? Call from home, say I felt sick before lunch, but I’ll be back tomorrow?
This option would allow me to enjoy the effects I was feeling too. No internet, but I could entertain myself with Simpsons DVDs or Super Mario All-Stars.
But if I ditched work too soon, I’d be giving up my perfect attendance bonus. CallCap didn’t offer the greatest wages--because America--but showing up as scheduled led to monthly bonuses--from $50 to $100 to $150. Having just felt the crush of a security deposit plus rent, making $12 per hour, I refused to surrender $150 because of some weed brownie switcheroo.
“Fuck that,” I said.
I leaned across the passenger side, fished in the glove compartment, and found relief in a tiny plastic bottle of Visine. Soon droplets were raining into and around my eyeballs. Whether placebo or not, Visine made me feel less self-conscious in the presence of others when I was high. Whether improved or doomed to make the same mistakes, this soothing eye liquid made me feel upgraded. The way Mario must feel when a mushroom turns him from small to big.
Indeed she did. She grinned and showed me her phone. Sure enough, her little grandson in his overalls was holding a squirming orange cat, to the delight of one.
“Wonderful,” I said of the picture. My mind searched for another adjective. “Wonderful,” I said again.
It didn’t matter. I said goodbye to Anna and charged back into my work routine. I didn’t smell like ganga, my eyes were clear, and besides, half of my coworkers on the night shift were probably stoned on purpose. Stoners can caption with the best of ‘em. I was sure to survive this adventure with a story to tell.
On my way to my spot in the back-corner, I had to show off my restored confidence. So, I stopped by the sup desk for a brief chat with Ella.
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Meh, good. You?”
“Good. Good… also.”
Ooh, somebody was remastering the art of conversation! And I didn’t even slip up and admit I was high. I swaggered to my station and got busy.
Once logged in, I got to know some characters. Accidentally stoned or not, I had to do right by their words. My head was swelling like a hot air balloon. I just thought, How fitting. And I rolled with it.
I captioned a preacher from the South who said what this country needs is a dictator. Then a Dolly Parton impersonator who had just put on a show at a nursing home. And a flighty young man who looked forward to the Rapture--seeing folks at the gas station vanished one-by-one while he stood there “just bugging out.”
It became as natural as getting into a Vonnegut book after I’d had a few tokes. I never did that job with a head full of THC again, but I rallied to enjoy myself after lunch and Visine.
My final 15-minute break came and went without incident. The night was winding down. By the water fountain in the breakroom, I chugged half the water in my bottle in like three seconds, then happily filled it with ice and H2O. I looked around to confirm I was alone.
“I fucking love water,” I declared.
At about 11:10, my last call of the night left a mark. The man sounded so happy. Purely, comically, spiritually happy. Only, it took him a while. He was newlywed at 56. He’d been through failed marriages, career nothingness, and substance abuse. I marveled at this man’s gratitude. He chatted with his mom, the CallCap client. He was thrilled about his newfound knack for remembering his dreams.
Walking through the park, I ran into Pete, the man said, and so I said it too. I said, “Pete, it’s great to see you!” And Pete just smiled, you know. He gave me that “too cool for school” shrug of his. I said, “How’s it going, man?” He said, “Good. I can’t complain. How about you?” “Pete,” I said, “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. It’s ridiculous. You should pinch me. I found someone I love, and she’s different. She’s the best. She gets me.” And mom, Pete’s glad to hear that, you know? But I gotta rib him about something. So I said, “Pete, I sent you a wedding invite. I wanted you to be my best man. And nothing? Where the hell were ya?” And Pete’s face just came alive, with mischief or something, like it did when he was telling a joke.
I had to wonder about this character: Where are we going? While I came down from an unwanted high, it turns out we were going past drugs to enlightenment. The man continued, and so I continued:
Pete said: “I had a perfectly good excuse for not being at your wedding, pal. Don’t you remember?” “Remember what?” I said. “That I’ve been dead since 1983,” Pete said. “Otherwise, yeah, I would have been there.”
In this man’s lucid dream, he apologized to his best friend for the faux pas. The man asked Pete if he wanted some of the major news bulletins. The things he missed in life since Pete’s passing into the dreams-only place. Pete was all ears. The man got command of his dream and gave what he could summon from life to his dead friend.
I wasn’t even stoned by the time I clocked out. It was no trouble to say goodbye to Ella and the other sups.
###
Back at home, I wanted to stretch out on the recliner and update my to-do list. But before that, I needed a snack. In the kitchen I smiled ruefully at the mound of brownies in Tupperware. I took off the lid, brought a square to my mouth, and froze.
These brownies were colored mocha or light brown, like a waffle or ice cream cone... The other brownie, the one in the fridge at work, was Grim Reaper black. The brownie that got me all Stoney Baloney was true to its name: brown. There was no mixup with the brownies at CallCap. I ate the brownie I brought from home. The mixup occurred in this kitchen...
I flashed back to two days prior. A crew of Willy, Swinkle, Todd, Cal, and I had lugged my heavy shit into a van and a truck in Fond du Lac, then drove north to unload it all in my apartment. After that workout with furniture, we celebrated the end of an era/ the start of a new chapter/ smoked some weed. I handed out orange sodas and ice cream bars.
When my friends left, I had to use my new toilet. The bathroom door was shut. I heard a knock on the door of my apartment. It was unlocked. Someone let himself in. It was Cal.
“Hey, you poopin’?” he said.
“Maybe,” I called out.
“Well, everybody does that. Hey, I almost forgot. I made you a special brownie. I’ll set it on the kitchen counter, OK?”
“Thanks, man. Got it.”
Cal left a second and final time. When I got out of the bathroom, I started my to-do list. Item #1 should have been: “Remember weed brownie.”
In the present, I said this: “It was my weed brownie. The entire time...”
With a sudden lack of appetite, I placed the snack back on the pile. I sighed deeply and walked slowly to the bathroom. I glowered at myself in the mirror. Time for a pep talk. Here’s how it began…
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
