This is a story that I wrote sort of as an audition for a writing workshop. The prompt was to write a romantic comedy about a telemarketer. This is the first FULL short story I’m posting so this is a lot longer than usual (It’s around 2000 words). Okay, hope you enjoy the story:
People tend to not like hearing a 24-year-old wimp trying to sell them a new water filter when they pick up a call- at least that’s what Leo discovered when he was hired at Clean Water Filter Inc. People usually expect his call to be from their husband, their friends, or their girlfriend(s). Once they hear that “Hello, do you need a new water filter?”, you can feel their disappointment through the phone- and you can hear it too. They really don’t try to hide their sorrow, or they’re just really bad at hiding it. He wasn’t mad though- he understood that he wasn’t a very pleasant call to receive.
Leo didn’t like his job at Clean Water Filter Inc. It was a dumb job, and a dumb name for a company. What he really wanted to do was be a singer; it’s what he’s wanted to do since he knew what the word ‘sing’ even meant. And he was really good- at least that’s what he’s been told by his parents (which are never reliable sources for measuring their child’s talent). But he never went after the dream, mostly because of how unreasonable it seemed. And so, he downgraded to the slightly more reasonable dream of having a salary. Which, he somewhat achieved. 17k a year wasn’t great.
“It’s 12 o clock, you should’ve started by now,” his boss frowned at him as he walked past Leo’s desk. He grumbled and picked up the list of numbers he had to call. The paper was all crumbled up from him playing basketball with his coworkers’ trashcans (they, of course, greatly appreciated this). He decided to check the clock again, even though he knew it was 12, and that he really did not have any more time to spend slacking off. His big coworker, Margot, was blocking his view.
“Can you move?” he groaned and glanced at the clock.
It really was 12 o clock. He sighed and swirled his chair back around to face his desk.
“Thanks, Margot.”
He picked up the list and started to call the numbers. Most of them hung up as soon as he said ‘hello’, and some didn’t pick up at all. Which was a relief for him, as it only made his job easier. Soon he reached the 12th number, which had a weird number of 5’s in it. He picked up his phone and pressed down on the sticky keys. Eating waffles at one’s desk isn’t a wise decision. He pulled the phone up to his ear as it rang, getting ready to put it down as soon as the person on the other end hangs up on him.
“Howdy?”
Unfortunately, this time he had to do his job. He thought it was a little weird to answer the phone with a ‘Howdy’, but he pushed that away and recited the line,
“Hello, do you need a new water filter?”
There was a long period of silence on the other end.
“What’s a water filter?”
He groaned, leaning back in the chair. How did he not know what a water filter was?
“It’s this thing that you put water through to make it clean,”
“Was it not clean before?”
“No, it wasn’t,”
“Why wasn’t it clean before?” Oh god, he thought.
“I don’t know man, it just wasn’t. Now do you want a water filter or not?”
“You don’t really seem like you’re having a good time selling me this,”
Leo didn’t know what to say to this, since it wasn’t in any script he was given, so he decided to tell the truth.
“You’re right, I’m not having a good time selling you this,”
“Why?”
What is up with this dude? He sighed and sat up in his chair.
“Because this job sucks”
“What would you rather be doing?”
“Wh- why do you wanna know?”
“I don’t know, I’m just curious.”
“Well, I’d rather be a doctor,”
“No, you wouldn’t,” the man told off his lie almost immediately, which shocked him.
“How did you know that?”
“I’m a pretty good lie detector,”
Leo laughed a little.
“What do you really wanna be?”
“A singer”
“Wow, you can sing?” he gasped
“Yep,”
“Can you sing something for me?”
Leo looked around. It was around lunchtime, so all of his coworkers were eating in another room. He didn’t know why he wanted to sing for this guy, but he did. He sang a little bit of a song- a country song, because of the guy’s ‘Howdy’ in the beginning. As soon as he finished, he heard the phone drop on the other end and some rapid clapping. He laughed, and heard the phone being picked back up from the floor.
“What’s your name man?” the guy asked.
“Leo,”
“Woah, I like your name, Leo! I’m Mikey!”
Leo liked Mikey’s name as well.
An average telemarketing call length is about 1.5 minutes. It’s fair to say that Leo and Mikey were an outlier, with about 1 hour down. Leo liked Mikey a fair bit; he went along with pretty much anything he said, and he had an interesting view on things, although he was missing more than a couple of brain cells. Plus, they both agreed that PB and B sandwiches were better than PB and J.
“You don’t have a girlfriend?” Mikey sounded as if he couldn’t believe it, which Leo appreciated.
“Well, it’s not like you have one either,”
“I do have a girlfriend, actually”
Leo laughed. He didn’t mind that Mikey was lying, but he thought he could have done a better job at it.
“You know, I could totally set you up with someone dude”
Leo believed that Mikey just happened to know a bunch of single girls just as much as he believed that he had a girlfriend. But he decided to see how far he would go.
“Sure okay, let’s do it”
“Okay, so this is her number…”
Mikey repeated the number twice and Leo wrote it down hesitantly. He had thought that Mikey was lying, but he knew right then that he probably wasn’t. He was kind of counting on the idea that he was lying.
Leo didn’t know how to socialize with girls. He had never understood girls, which was perfectly reasonable. Girls are a complicated subject, especially ones in their 20’s. A man in his 20’s was one thing, but a girl was a whole other, and he had no clue on how to approach them.
“What are you gonna say to her?”
“I’ll be fine; I’ll wing it.” He tried, but the lie detector was fool proof.
“No, you probably won’t,”
“Fine, what do I do then?”
“You should try singing to her”
“Don’t you think that’s a little weird to get a call from a singing stranger?”
“Nah, girls love it, trust me”
Leo did not trust him, but he had no other ideas, so he decided to go along with the singing.
“Okay, fine. I’ll call you back after and tell you how it goes,”
“Okay, warm up your vocal cords before!”
“Bye, Mikey,”
“Howdy Leo!” He obviously didn’t know what ‘Howdy’ meant. Leo hung up the phone and dialed the number that Mikey gave him.
Leo pulled up the phone to his ears and listened. As it rang in his hears, his head played a movie-like montage of a possible future. He and this girl fall in love, they get married (maybe he’ll invite Mikey to the wedding). He writes love songs about her which become instant hits, and boom- he’s the world’s most famous singer. And loaded.
Before he could get to his second world tour, the girl picked up the phone.
“Hello? Who is this?”
He frowned. Her voice sounded raspy, and weird, which would not sound good with the wedding vows. But he decided he could look past that. He cleared his throat, and although it felt so awkward and weird to start a call that way, he began to sing a love song- one from Bruno Mars. He wasn’t quite sure when to stop singing, which led to him singing all 4 minutes of the song, with complete silence on the other end the whole time. He soon finished singing the last verse, and his throat was so dry, he thought he would talk raspy like the girl.
“Uh, that was very nice honey, but who is this?” Panic rushed in.
“The love of your life?” That would have sounded nice if he hadn’t said it so awkwardly.
“Haha, oh wow, well, that’s nice. But I’ve been married for over 30 years honey,”
30 years? That was more years than he’d been alive. It was then that it hit him that Mikey, the man he met over a sales call, set him up with an old woman. He didn’t even know if it was a prank or just Mikey’s own stupidity. It was most likely the latter. He silently cursed Mikey and erased his famous-singer montage. He sighed,
“I’m so sorry, ma’am. Someone gave me the wrong number. So sorry for bothering you-”
“Wait, did you mean to call my granddaughter?” Huh, he thought and answered,
“I- yeah, I did.”
“Oh my, I’m so sorry, let me hand this over to her- STACY!” He heard someone climb down some stairs on the other end.
“There’s this boy- he wants to sing a song to you.” He silently cringed.
“Hello?”
This voice wasn’t raspy at all.
“Hi,” he tried to quickly think about what to say.
“Well, are you gonna sing for me?”
“I- Well, do you want to hear it?”
“Sure”
He cleared his throat again. His voice hurt and was incredibly sore from singing the whole song to the girl’s grandma, but he tried to sing it once more.
It was a train wreck.
His voice went up and down without any heads up and he messed up the lyrics as if he had never heard the song before. He stopped after the first chorus and gulped- a loud silence filling the other end.
“That was terrible”
“I swear I’m usually much better it’s just that-”
“No, it’s okay. I mean it was terrible, but hey, at least you tried,”
“Yeah, haha”
“That was Bruno Mars, right?”
“Yeah, one of my favorites, actually,”
“Oh, really, mine would have to be ‘Runaway Baby’”
“A classic,” they laughed.
“So, singer-boy, how did you get my number anyway?”
“Oh, well- it’s kind of complicated. Basically, I’m a telemarketer and I met this dude named Mikey on a sales call, who is a pretty weird guy, and…” Leo rambled on through the whole story nervously. After he finally finished, Lucy laughed a little.
“Ohh, I know Mikey, haha, he really is quite the character. What were you selling him?”
“A new water filter, from Clean Water Filter Inc.”
“Wow, that’s a really dumb name for a company,” she laughed.
“Oh, I know,” he laughed back.
“So, should I assume your name is just as dumb, or…?”
“It’s Leo”
“Hmm, not that bad. I like your name Leo. I’m Lucy,”
“I- thank you, haha, I guess my mother did too. I like your name!” he said a little too enthusiastically, which made him immediately cringe after.
“Well, thank you, Leo. So, did you want to just sing me a song?”
“No, well- would you maybe want to get lunch with me sometime. As a date, I mean, unless you don’t want to, I mean, that’s totally fine I-”
“-I’d love to go out with you Leo,” she laughed.
And so, Leo- for the first time in his 24-year-old life- had a date. They both planned to meet on Saturday, and as soon as she hung up, he dialed Mikey’s number.
“I can’t believe you got a date, man!”
Leo couldn’t believe it either, but he didn’t appreciate Mikey pointing it out.
“Well, I guess I did. We’re meeting on Saturday too, I can’t wait.”
“Can I help you pick out what you’re gonna wear?”
“No, Mikey. We’re not teenage girls.”
“But what if you wear something stupid?”
“Trust me, if I let you help me, I would probably end up wearing something even more stupid. Also, how do you know I have a bad fashion sense? You can’t see me; we’re only calling.”
“True. I guess I gotta see you in real life to decide if you do. Hmm… Oh! We should have a sleepover!”
“Again. Not teenage girls.”
“You don’t have to be a teenage girl to do fun things, Leo! I’m coming over to your place tomorrow, whether you want me to or not.”
“You know I’m not going to give you my address, right?”
“That’s alright, I’m sure I can figure it out. I’ll just knock on every door near Clean Water Filter Inc. till I get to your house.”
“Oh my god, Mikey. Okay, fine. I’ll give you my address, jeez. Just don’t go knocking on everyone’s door.”
“Okay! I promise I won’t!”
Leo’s coworkers started to pour out of the lunchroom. His boss stood right in front of his desk, frowning down at him. He picked up the paper with the numbers Leo was supposed to call from his desk and looked at it, shaking his dead disappointedly.
“Okay, I gotta go now. Bye, Mikey.”
“Howdy, Leo!”
Leo laughed. His boss, who was standing in front of him, did not appreciate this. But he couldn’t have cared less.
A telemarketer makes around 45 sales calls a day. That day, Leo had only made 13, with only 2 that he cared about- Mikey, the infamous lie detector and perhaps a new friend, and Lucy- his very first date on Saturday. Maybe his job at Water Filter Inc. wasn’t so bad after all. Although, it really was a dumb name for a company.
I think I honestly could have written this better than I did. I tend to rush endings when I get bored with a story. But the story was good enough to get me into the workshop (yay), so I don’t think it was that bad. It was definitely fun to write. I tried to make it funny, so I hope you laughed a bit. Or at least exhaled out of your nose a few times. Okay, that’s it for now, see ya~
💛 Dia