Last night was one that was particularly vivid. I was a rep in this boiler room, crammed up next to some foul smelling homeless dude, peering through the peripherally-narrowed lenses of the dreamworld at what looked like a terminal setup to pilot a Space Shuttle what with all the buttons, switches and coded tags taped near each indicating what they were for (to which I was totally oblivious) and trying to make out the smeared, almost-fully-obscured monochrome monitor which had the script and the customer info on it. What was I selling? What did the script say? I can't read it. I don't know and the line just connected..."Hello? Hello?" comes the impatient query from the unknown person speaking to me in my headset.
You know the classic nightmares where you're naked and you're back in your high school math class or something with all the kids and the teacher laughing at you? Well that'd be a joy compared to this hellscape.
Of course, in truth, I know that these dreams are just the mind's way of summoning up old memories of some of the most challenging and anxious moments of one's past. And, truly, I indeed do recall times when I've been thrust onto a sales floor, had a headset jammed on my head and commanded to just "dive in." Many fly-by-night operations don't have time for training and figure it's just a matter of reps reading a script. If they can read, even poorly, they may get a hit or two. If not, they're out, and will easily be replaced by another warm body the next day.
Do I really get these nightmares every night? No, of course not. But when I do get them, I always wake up thinking -- "AGAIN!?, FUCK!"
Check out this incredibly accurate, I shit you not, trailer for a documentary pasted below about a couple of guy's journey in their own telemarketing hell. I actually worked for an outfit very similar to this back during Koyo. Ah, the memories...
And that's the problem. The memories. They live on in my dreams.