The Phone Call

This is the story of how the worst job I ever had formed how I thought about human interactions and what is truly important in life and in design.

Introduction: The One-Way Ticket

After graduation I was unemployed for around 6 months. When I did finally land my first job (as graphic designer at an actuarial consultancy) I felt exceptionally lucky. However after 5 years of trying to visualize actuarial life expectancy tables and explain public sector pensions with only Corel Draw 4 and a CD Rom of clipart, I was tired and in need of a new challenge.

Glasgow, Scotland at that time wasn’t a vibrant place creatively and it soon became obvious that my next career step would not be in the city I had called home for 24 years. I did the only thing that made sense at the time. I took a leap of faith.

I quit my job, packed two suitcases and bought a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. I was lucky in that within 3 months I was working at Nike. Designing soccer uniforms for some of the best teams and athletes in the world and generating millions of dollars in revenue. However it was the 3 months in between quitting my job in Scotland, and landing a job at one of the world’s most innovative companies that really shaped the person I am and how I approach each human, and design interaction.

Part One: The Missing Magazine

I had been sleeping on a friend’s living room floor. They were happy to have me but after a couple of weeks it was clear that I needed to find an apartment of my own. I had already burned through my savings and was well into my overdraft. I had been looking for a great design job at one of the world-renowned agencies in Amsterdam. But it wasn’t happening. I quickly came to terms that if I wanted to stay in the city that I had quickly come to love, I needed a job. Quickly.

I bought the weekly jobs paper and called a couple of the numbers looking for English speaking customer service reps. I ended up working for Time Warner Publishing answering telephone calls from people who had questions about their subscriptions to Time and National Geographic. It wasn’t a dream job by any stretch of the imagination but it paid the rent for the bedroom in the shared house I lived in while I could look for something that was a better fit. Something happened during my first week however, that made me think about it very differently.

I received a call from an older gentleman who lived in Amsterdam. I took calls from all over Europe but this one was from just on the other side of the city. He was asking about a missing issue of National Geographic. He was a veteran of the Battle of Arnhem in World War Two and the issue he was missing was a special on the 60th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings. The computer system we used was archaic. It was in MS Dos and I really had no idea how to use it. I just pressed buttons until the screen disappeared and then hoped for the best. I couldn’t take the chance with this call that my inability to use the ordering system might result in more disappointment. So that night when I was getting ready to leave the office I went down to the library that held all the back issues. I picked up the D-Day issue and cycled over to the man’s house. It was a little out of my way but Amsterdam is a very bike friendly city and it didn’t take long until I was at his front door ringing the doorbell. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he answered the door and he saw that I was personally delivering his missing magazine.

There is a quote in the movie “Any Given Sunday” where Al Pacino’s character is delivering a pep talk to his players. He says:

You find out that life is just a game of inches.
So is football.
Because in either game
life or football
the margin for error is so small.
I mean
one half step too late or to early
you don’t quite make it.
One half second too slow or too fast
and you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in ever break of the game
every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that inch.
We claw with our fingernails for that inch.
Cause we know
when we add up all those inches
that’s going to make the fucking difference
between winning and losing
between living and dying.

Now that’s pretty dramatic, but what I learned that day was that going the extra inch can make a massive difference in how you, your colleague, your friend, your customer or your user experiences the world.

Part Two: The Realization

I had been working in the call center for a couple of weeks. Most of the calls I received were pretty standard. “I need to change my address”. “I missed the latest edition of the magazine”. “I want to renew my subscription but instead of the LED torch gift I want the digital alarm clock fountain pen”. However, occasionally I would get a phone call that I couldn’t explain. They were usually from older people. Not always, but mostly. I would answer the call and ask them how I could help. They would start asking me about where in the world they were calling (not an unusual question). They would then start asking about my accent, what was a Scotsman doing in Amsterdam, what the weather was like… In fact, anything except what people usually called about. However I tried, I couldn’t get them to explain to me why they were calling and what I could help them with.

And then it hit me. Like a ton of bricks.

They were calling because they were lonely.

They were calling purely to hear the sound of another human voice.

They had nobody else to talk to and had resorted to calling the customer service number in the back of their magazine.

So I talked to them.

Whenever someone called that just wanted to talk. I talked. For as long as they wanted.

My productivity numbers tanked. But I didn’t really care. It made them happy. When they first called, their voices were low and wispy. Once we had been talking for 10, 15 or 30 minutes, they were laughing, telling stories of their childhood and engaging. It was obvious I had made their day. Maybe I made their week or their month. Just by talking to them.

What I learned during those three months in the call center was that you never know how you can positively impact someone’s day just by connecting with them on an emotional level. I call it “The Final 1%”. It’s as true in design as it is when you are buying coffee, or waiting for the subway. It’s the difference maker and what separates the ordinary from the extraordinary. It changes unmemorable to remarkable.

Often we disregard the smallest of human interactions as insignificant. They are anything but.

Published in #SWLH (Startups, Wanderlust, and Life Hacking)