Guilt By Telephone

Today was the second day in a row that I've been home with a sick child. Yesterday I thought it was one of the myriad of viruses flying around right now...until the huge white dots formed on his tonsils. Then I knew that the strep throat that I had last week had found a new home in my son. Oh joy! After a day filled with trips to the doctor, the pharmacy, and cuddling, I was a bit stressed. There are at least twelve million things that still need to be done and by four today, I was feeling the pressure.

In the middle of my time in the pressure cooker, the phone rings and I answered it without looking at the caller ID first (my mistake). The person on the other line was Michelle, and she was just calling to let me know that my one and only credit card was okay, but I could get protection on my spending for the low low cost of $1.80 for every 180.00. When she asked me for my information so that she could help me with this process, I told her I wasn't interested but thanked her very much; and she continued talking, I hung up.

That split second that my finger hit the "end" button, I was filled with a really strange guilt. Here was this woman that was just trying to do her job and I hung up on her. I used to think that telemarketers were the scum of the earth. They were the lowest of the low--the paramecium's of the working world. And then something happened to my family that changed that thinking forever.

Drew was almost four months old and let me tell you, life with a child of that age is not easy. On top of that, Mark and I just built a new house that was everything that I always wanted. We had two big car payments plus the extra large electricity bill that goes with an extra large house. We went into all of this knowingly. Mark was working for his family and his salary paid for all of it. My measly teacher's salary was for incidentals.

This was how things were until January 9th when Mark took a stand against the horrible decisions that his mother was making involving the plant. He called in the middle of the afternoon and said, "I quit and I feel good about it." That was all well and good until the fallout hit. Rumors were circulating that were untrue, everything that we could once afford now all of the sudden was way too expensive, and since Mark has over thirteen years of managerial skills but no college, getting a great job was not going to happen.

After a month of searching, he took a job at a local credit agency doing customer service and sales. Though Mark didn't have to call anyone directly, he did have to try to pitch horrible products to people who didn't want to buy them and ended up hanging up on him. It was all there was at that moment and every time he'd call home, I could hear the stress in his voice. He didn't want to offer things to people but not doing it meant his job.

To make matters worse, Mark's hours were Monday thru Thursday from 2:00-12:30. When Drew and I were home, he was somewhere else and when he was home, we were sleeping or leaving. Both of us tried to make concessions to have time together. Mark would bring lunch to school and I would wake up at 2 in the morning to visit with him (usually Drew was up to eat around then anyway so it was a nice family time.)

This was a really tough time on our family. There were only about twenty transitions going on and it was wearing on all of us. People at the grocery store would look at me with puppy dog eyes and say, "Are you okay?" I would answer the same way--with what was going to be my mantra for a long time. "Everything is going to be fine." The words would come out and I'd will myself to believe it. Sure, everything was going to be fine when our income was cut more than in half, we had large bills and family members were accusing us of terrible things. We were going to be fine. Uh huh.

I think I said it enough because eventually even I began to believe it. Mark found a new job that was a little more put together. Drew learned how to sleep through the night. We worked out how to pay the bills and stil eat. We are okay--most of the time.

So when I hung up on Michelle today, all of that came rushing back. What if Michelle was doing this to make ends meet? What if she was going to be at work until midnight and would eventually call home to tell someone how horrible her day was? I could have just added to someone's horrible day and I feel horrible about that.

This is my public apology to Michelle, a person who I don't even know but I feel for. Does that mean that I'm not going to hang up on telemarketers? Probably not but I feel the pain.