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From Greg:
Episode 3: The Blood Bank
Following a most refreshing and eye-opening overseas jaunt, I arrived back on US soil jobless and getting broker by the day. I held off finding new employment as long as possible, but eventually had to bite the bullet and get another job (those car payments weren’t going to pay for themselves). As I had shown so much promise in the phone sales industry, naturally I wanted to keep a good thing going and rock the cradle and headset once again. Sergio’s older sister (from Chavez paper route lineage) had been working at United Blood Services down on University and Indian School for a spell and suggested Sergio and I apply for a telephone services position (I remember during the interview that they specifically stressed this was not a telemarketing job, but rather a kindly telephone service to gently remind past blood donors that it was time to give again).
Sergio and I were snatched up along with a fresh batch of greenhorn telephone operators and proceeded to take the grand tour of the facility. A couple of rotund and eternally cranky phlebotomist gave us the rounds. Take blood here, sort blood there, O-pause goes there, A-pause over there, watch it shake and wiggle on the auto-wigglers in the cold room, and finally let’s check out the bone marrow room. Wait … what? Bone marrow? I’m not one to get fidgety about bodily fluids and vast quantities of blood, but bone marrow is crossing the line. They explained the harvesting procedure in grave detail, which requires sticking a 7 gauge needle through a bone (typically a femur or hip bone) and sucking out the internal goodness. (Note: bone marrow is, and I believe still remains, one of the key ingredients in jell-o. Think about that the next time you’re knocking back a vodka spiked green jell-o shot on St Patty’s Day. Luck-o the Irish to ye!) At any rate, I was feeling a bit iffy, but looked over at Sergio and this guy was as green as the jell-o shot you just consumed. He was getting swervy and his knees were wiggling as much as the blood packs. Time to move on though, we’ve got phone calls to make.
The gig was virtually identical to our Auto Trader days, just replace car adds with past blood donors, and the dot-matrix printed data sheets were the same. I did enjoy making the calls and relished hearing on the other line while holding for someone, “Honey, the vampires are calling again!”. Typical nightly targets were to nail down at least 4, count ‘em, 4 donations to happen within the following week. To us silk-tongued males, this was a cinch. But to the rest of the crew that could barley finish a complete sentence, this was the most vexing task they had ever been instructed to perform. And the scene there was the most grab-bag cross section ABQ had to offer. Mexican grandmothers still wanting to take part in the workforce, borderline retarded she-males hell bent on chatting up any and every blood donor. But not even about anything related to blood donations or the gracious help they were providing to their community. Just shooting the shit. There was one very mysterious person who’s name was always uttered in a hush of reverence. I didn’t see this person until I was maybe 2 months into the job. Legend had it that he could make his nightly target in 7 phone calls, he was that good. So one eve this vision in pre-med turquoise scrubs rode in on a late-autumn zephyr, banged out 5 calls, and all of them pledged to donate within the next week. As brisk as he flew in, he was off into the night with only the rustle of autumn leaves in his wake.
The creme de la creme though was this kindof cyber-hacker, pseudo militia man-boy with a permanent prepubescent moustache. I think he made about 2 calls a night, but bummed about 10 cigarettes a night. He was quite the character and was working no less than seven pending lawsuits against various cola and snack food companies he was not at liberty to discuss.
This job lasted the better part of a year, and throughout this time my car was broken into and all my cassette tapes stolen (that’s a lot of Cure tapes folks), and towed (twice). The only fringe benefit was the complimentary watered down post-blood donation punch and a snack cake. This was to be mine and Sergio’s last time clocking in together as our employment paths would diverge the following summer. I attempted to hold down two jobs simultaneously while taking a crap ton of physics and math classes, but eventually something had to give. The pay rate at my other job was far superior to the minimum wage check I was cashing at the blood bank, I was getting more interested in my studies, and I wanted to spend as much free time with my girlfriend as possible. It was an easy job to jettison, and I was thrilled to finally not be a phone jockey anymore!
Cheers to my man Sergio for giving me this opportunity to take you all on a walk down memory lane and here’s to a speedy recovery from his dental sedation surgery.
Over and Out.
-GG
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