There was also the fact that I was not a fan of clothes shopping at the best of times. Never had been. But later that week, at a plus-sized ladies’ shop in Richmond, I had an encounter with a sales assistant that changed my feeling about both clothes and customer service. The assistant was so friendly, and she seemed to understand how it felt to know that most of the clothes in the world did not fit you. She said, ‘I think I have exactly what you need. I’m gonna go and grab it for you. I am going to make sure you walk out of here feeling like a million dollars!’ She was the first sales assistant ever to make me feel like I mattered, that I fit, that there was something here for people like me. It was a brilliant lesson in customer service. It was all I really needed to learn, in fact, to thrive in the call centre. There is but one golden rule: give a shit about the person you’re serving. Show them you care. That’s it. That’s how you win the day.
Even though the suit she sold me was non-crush rayon with an elasticised waist and about a hundred sizes bigger than my head told me was ‘right’, when I walked out of that store, I felt fabulous. I felt ready to begin my new life, as a normal person, who did normal things, in a normal way.
‘Good afternoon, Martin Dawes Telecommunications, my name is Clare, how may I help you?’
I drank a lot of Nescafé Blend 43 that year. By 10 am I was usually on my fourth cup. All free, said my team leader, Hannah. You help yourself. So I did.
The real perk of this job was that, much to my surprise, I actually liked it.
I liked the routine of it. I liked knowing I had something to wake up for, somewhere I had to be, someone I could help. I liked being good at something. It kept my mind busy. At first, working in the call centre was like a balm. It served to quieten the voice in my head, the one that told me I would never fit in. Never be good at anything. That I would always feel less than, because I was less than.
But that was not how my friends at the call centre saw me.
Hannah was a kind boss. Early on, after listening in to my calls, she told me I had a gift, a special gift, for handling irate customers. ‘You always listen right to the end,’ she observed. ‘They feel heard. You never hang up on them.’
You mean I was allowed to hang up on them? Well—that was news to me.
Training was, let’s say, a little thin on the ground. Martin Dawes was a new telco in Australia, there were only about thirty of us in the office, and we were all working it out as we went along. I started taking my first customer-service calls the same day I learned how to plug in a headset. When the customers who called were irate (and they often were, because do you remember mobile phone contracts from the nineties? They stank!) I’d just let them blow off steam, and then, when they were done, I’d tell them I heard them, and we were gonna fix it. I was never sure how, exactly, we were gonna fix it, but I discovered that confidence and kindness can carry you quite far. I did for those customers what the lady in the shop did for me: I showed them I cared.
Hannah said that if I kept this up, one day I might even make it to team leader myself.
‘A girl can dream, can’t she?’ I said to Hannah.
She laughed. I loved making her laugh.
The thing I loved most about this job were my friends. We grew tight, fast. All of us were newbies, clumped together in a single-floor office. It was a new company, and I guess it felt good to be part of something new. Exciting, even.
On paper, my colleagues and I had absolutely nothing in common. Not a thing. We came from different backgrounds, nationalities, religions, social groups, ages, abilities, health concerns, likes. My friend Lena’s favourite song was OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’; she’d never even heard of my idol, Jeff Buckley. Michael Fizzy spent his weekends hotting up cars; I didn’t even know what a mag wheel was. Tamara had a huge teased fringe and lived with her horse on three acres of land in a suburb I’d never even heard of, but she was so patient, and always took the time to explain the correct process (and I needed many reminders). Chris was small with a sharp wit and zoomed around the office in his electric wheelchair at lightning speed. And when Georgie laughed hard she snorted like a camel, which made her laugh even harder. All I had to do was make a face at her when she was on a call and she would laugh so hard she had to push the mute button and put the client on hold. Viola was my age but she was already married and a homeowner. She had her honeymoon in the Seychelles. I’d never even heard of the Seychelles. We were all so different, but sitting there in adjoining cubicles at all hours of the day and night brought us close. It made us a family.
And because of the amount of time we spent together, these people knew me and my dreams way before I was willing to declare them aloud.
Apparently, I was always singing. That’s why they called me The Creative One. They were always egging me on, telling me to sing, go on, sing. I told them to
