Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88115 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88115 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
The people were something else too. So many tanned, toned bodies, and people who seemed to already look like movie stars. While I knew I was no ugly duckling, these people made me feel frumpy, pasty and awkward.
But that was okay. The last thing I was looking for now was a relationship. But I couldn’t help but think that, once I was gainfully employed, that I might dye my hair a crazy color like all of the unicorns and mermaids all around me.
At least my skin color wasn’t what made me stand out. After growing up in a small, Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, being half Asian had made me stand out almost as bad as ‘that one black kid’ that was at our school for one year before transferring. But in Vegas… well everyone was a different color and no one looked twice at the mixed-race woman getting on the bus.
Speaking of the bus, I was pretty sure that I saw my number rounding the corner. Had it been a half hour already? Time certainly flew! I felt like it was the first break that I had gotten all day and it was over.
Oh well, all of the nose to the grindstone business would pay off when I had a job and an apartment. I just had to tough it through the uncomfortable parts.
And if there was one thing I knew about myself, it was that I could tough out pretty much anything on my own. A lesson I had learned as a child, and I hadn’t forgotten it since.
***
I looked up and down at the ramshackle building in front of me. Latching onto the wifi of the nearby McDonalds, I double checked the address and saw that yes, indeed it was.
“That doesn’t bode well…” I murmured to myself, pacing back and forth in front of it.
The windows were all beige with dirt and the venetian blinds were either crooked or broken. The front door had no sign and there were only two cars in the parking lot.
…Oh dear. I knew that this couldn’t be good, but what choice did I have? Sighing, I opened the front door and headed in.
Only to find no one inside.
There was a front desk, alright, but it was completely empty, and there was a nice layer of dust all over everything. I walked around the room a couple of times and everything looked unused and incredibly old.
“Ah! May I help you?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin and whipped around, my heart in my throat. I saw there was a man standing at a door at the other side of the room, a sleezy car salesman smile on his face.
“I’m here for an interview.” I said, regretting the words as they left my mouth.
“Ah, yes! Nikki, right?”
“Nicole.” I corrected.
“Nicole, of course, I should have remembered! Right this way.” He gestured for me to follow him down the hall and I did, wondering if this was how I got axe murdered.
He led me to an office that was almost as dusty as the front area, and the chair I sat in was creaky as all get out. It was about as uncomfortable as I could physically get without being directly attacked, but I pasted on my customer service smile and readied myself for the questions.
“So, is the call center at another location?” I asked, looking around. I could already tell there wasn’t one here. There was no humming of the servers, or sounds of workers, or even toilets flushing. And call center employees took a lot of bathroom breaks. It was the only way to escape the monotony of taking call after call on a headset with people who forgot that you were human.
“Great question!” Double uh-oh. “In the modern word with email, texts and social media, we realized the call center set up was inherently dated. So, we decided to throw the old paradigms away and start up entirely new!
“You see, if you want to stand out nowadays, you have to stand out. And we think the best way to stand out is to meet face to face with our consumers! Connect with them on a personal level, you know?”
I looked flatly at him, smile sliding from my face. “This is a door to door sales gig, isn’t it?” I asked dryly.
“Oh, I can understand why you might think that from the outside looking in, but I think you’ll find that we’re tightly knit family hoping to expand our communities into-”
There were a lot of sucky things in life I could tolerate but being duped for an interview was not one of them. Man, I should have noticed all the red flags, but I was so desperate…
“Thank your time, but I’m not interested in canvassing or door to door sales.” I stood up and offered my hand, only for the man to start blustering.