Two Minutes On The Clock
He swipes in through the turnstile gate with coffee breath and a tie that never sits right
Fluorescent hallway hum already drilling into his skull
blocking out the light
Headset waiting on the gray laminate desk like a coiled snake
Monitors bloom with ticket queues
red numbers counting every mistake
Supervisor’s pep talk playing on repeat in the back of his head
While he wishes he was literally anywhere else instead.
Login screen, soft chime
dashboard full of blinking calls like a swarm that never sleeps
Timer starts the moment he breathes
tracking how long he talks, how fast he sweeps
Break counter sitting at eight minutes for the next three hours of his time
Measuring bathroom runs down to seconds like they’re acts of petty crime.
He’s a call center lifer with a bladder on a stopwatch and a dream locked in a drawer
Timing out bathroom breaks like he’s stealing from a dragon’s hoard
They own his voice in five second intervals and dock him if he stalls
Sometimes he stares at the exit door and imagines never taking another call.
First line of the day is someone already three bills deep in rage
Screaming about late fees and “you people” like a beast in a cage
He reads the script in warm tones while his mind floats to the clock
Knows if he goes thirty seconds over his handle time
the boss will knock.
Between calls there’s a sliver of dead air they call “after work
” He uses it to plug in notes so no one calls him a shirk
Thinks about standing up and walking past the rows of hunched backs
Straight out the glass door, down to street level
slipping through the cracks.
He’s a call center lifer with his body synced to timers and his nerves glued to the wall
Counting sips of water so he doesn’t have to log one extra stall
They track his tone, his silence
every cough and every sigh
Some days he pictures never coming back and doesn’t even bother asking why.
He remembers the first week
when the headset still felt strange on his hair
When he thought “this is temporary” and actually seemed to care
Now his ID is just another row on a spreadsheet someone glances past at nine
Green for “efficient, ” red for “problem
” no room for “human” in that line
He locks his screen for a bathroom break and watches the system start to shout
A pop-up warning “time exceeded” like he tried to tunnel his way out.
Inside the stall he leans his forehead on cool graffiti-scratched paint
Not praying for rescue
just asking for a signal that isn’t faint
Phone in his pocket buzzes with a message from a friend
“Come out tonight, we miss you
” on a day that will not bend
He does the math on overtime, rent
and how far he can fall
Wipes his eyes with rough paper
heads back to another call.
Evening shift hits like a slow leak in a tire you can’t afford to patch
He listens to hold music looped so long it starts to sound like a scratch
Caller number ninety-seven wants a supervisor
wants blood, He’s the wall that takes the hit
apologizing through the mud
His fantasy gets sharper with each insult thrown across the line
Walking out mid-sentence, leaving the headset swinging
cutting the cord.
He’s a call center lifer with fantasies of leaving burning holes in his chest
Sits back down every time
tells himself “just make it through this test
” They pay just enough to keep him tethered
not enough to make him whole
So he times his bathroom breaks like tiny strikes toward taking back his soul.
End of shift
he hangs the headset on its hook with a hand that won’t stop shaking
Logs out of the system like he’s escaping a prison of his own making
Walks past security
feels the night air hit his face like a slap of sound
Whispers “one day I won’t come back” to the parking lot and the cold
hard ground.