“No, ma’am, this call center is actually and truly located in the United States. Once again, I apologize that the fee might not have been explained to you as accurately as possible, but there still isn’t any way that I can waive…”

  Adesh Shakil heard the line go dead before he had completed the last sentence, and didn’t bother finishing it. The customer had hung up. Reaching out to put himself into idle status, Adesh removed the headset from his ears and shook his head wearily. The large digital Queue Status Board which hung high on one wall of the fifth floor of the Danning building -- so as to be visible over the tops of cubicles belonging to numerous operators taking calls -- had steadily reflected call wait times of more than twenty minutes since early that evening, and Adesh had been counting the minutes down to his scheduled break.

  He was sick of taking calls, sick of whining customers and their seeming inability to comprehend even the simplest of billing concepts. Nonetheless, Adesh smiled as he looked across the aisle from him at the new hire who sat in the cubicle opposite his. A blonde with legs for days, Adesh had yet to work up the nerve to do anything more than make small conversation with the woman since meeting her the previous afternoon, but that was about to change. He had promised himself that the maddening cycle of procrastination and self-doubt would end that evening, and he fully intended to force himself to live up to that promise. He was going to work up the amount of backbone necessary to obtain the new girl’s phone number. He was going to do it before his final coffee break of the day was up in fifteen minutes.

  Adesh repeated this to himself in mantra form for perhaps the thousandth time that night as he stood from his chair. Her name was Jessica Helms, and she was far too engrossed in the call she was processing to notice his awkward passing stare as he stepped from his cubicle and made his way down the aisle toward one of the massive call room’s exits. The constant hum of conversation from no less than hundreds of clustered cubicles finally faded behind him as Adesh made his way to the fifth floor’s lone break room, and he actually breathed a sigh of relief at the respite from the noise.

  Pouring himself a cup of coffee as he checked the break room clock, Adesh jumped when a shortened yell suddenly pierced the air – seeming to come from the call floor he had just left. Adesh cursed himself as the hot liquid bathed the front of his shirt, and grabbed frantically for the closest roll of paper towels.

  Shit. He thought to himself as he struggled to soak liquid from fabric. This is going to ruin it. Some idiot decides to shout on the call floor for no reason and ruins the whole thing. I’m going to use this as an excuse. I’m going to use it as an excuse even though I know it isn’t one. I won’t talk to her now because I’ll tell myself that asking a girl for her number while covered in spilt coffee isn’t the best idea. After amping myself up for hours I’m going to pussy out and not do it. I’m going to go another day without making a move, and she’s going to think I’m just that odd quiet guy across the aisle who strikes up conversations about the stupidest crap but never manages to do anything worth truly noticing.

  “Crap.” Adesh mumbled under his breath. “What kind of loser does this?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Looking up at the clock, he made a decision. Adesh Shakil decided at that moment to, for the first time in his extended memory, grow a pair. He would follow through with his plan to ask Gina for her number despite the fact he now sported a badly stained polo, and he wouldn’t even so much as wait until his full fifteen minute break was up. He would get it over with before he had the chance to change his mind.

  “Let’s do this thing.” He said aloud with no lack of sincere melodrama, and squared his shoulders as he exited the break room at an unusually confident stride. A stride that promptly slowed as he reentered the call room.

In stark contrast to how it had been only minutes earlier when he left it, the call floor was impossibly quiet. The usual buzz of voices and conversation had been reduced to a silence so complete that Adesh was able to hear the hum of an idle copy machine as he slowly passed it. Checking each cubicle as he made his way down the aisle that led to his own, Adesh felt a growing sense of dread as he found each of them just as unoccupied as the last.

Headsets lay unused on desks, computer screens remained unlocked. More than a few uncapped beverage containers had been spilt on the carpeted floor at the bases of the desks they had seemingly been knocked from. The fire alarm had not sounded, and yet it seemed to Adesh as if the entire floor had been evacuated in the time he had taken to spill and clean a single cup of coffee.

What the hell did I miss? He asked himself. How could they all have cleared out so quickly? Where are the alarms? Shit. I shouldn’t even be here. I should probably be running.

And yet he wasn’t. For some inexplicable reason, Adesh felt himself unwilling to leave the call room until he had checked one final cubicle. Finally reaching her desk, Adesh was not surprised to find the cubicle that had so recently been assigned to the blonde named Jessica Helms as empty as the rest. He frowned upon noting that her headset dangled precariously from her desk, still tethered to her phone.

Looking up at the Queue Status Board for the first time since reentering the call room, Adesh’ frown only deepened. After having reflected no less than a hundred calls in queue for the day’s entirety, the board now showed only six customers holding. Adesh watched with a growing sense of surrealism as the display changed, and the digital six became four. He looked down at the desk phone and noted the time.

Eight fifteen. He thought. When was the last time I’ve seen only four calls holding at a quarter past eight?

No sooner had Adesh completed the question to himself than a noise from behind him caused him to nearly lose his balance as he spun to face its source. Yelping in surprise, Adesh Shakil uttered the last words to ever be spoken on the fifth floor of the Danning building then as the blood drained instantly from his face.

“What th-…”