Eva tilted her head back against the ergonomic support at the top of her chair, stretching against the tightness she could feel in her neck and shoulders. A glance at the clock on her desk phone told her that she only had two more hours left in her shift; the rush had soon tapered off into the mid-afternoon slump. By the time she clocked out, there would be another rush—people calling in right after work to take care of their business with the bank—and Eva wanted to make sure that she clocked out exactly on time to avoid being roped into staying “on the floor” as they called it.

She closed her eyes, imagining fleeting memories of better days: the Louis Vuitton handbag she’d had to give up, along with the Louboutin shoes, and the vacation she’d taken to Cancun. How the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, opening her eyes once more.

Eva blinked a few times, scrubbing at her face with her hands. Just two more hours and I’ll be out of here, she reminded herself, glancing at the time once more. She could hear Jana, one cubicle down, patiently explaining something to a customer. Eva gritted her teeth and took a slow breath.

She had known it would be a bad day as soon as she’d arrived on the floor, stepping off of the elevator and into the cacophony of a rush. Eva had quickly learned the apparent cause of the influx of calls: there had been a system issue the night before, which had made twenty-five thousand accounts reflect “past due” status. The tech team didn’t have an ETA on when the issue would be resolved, but had simply told everyone to flag the accounts in question.

Same as always, Eva had thought bitterly. She had been through two similar incidents with the company within about six months after training; and generally speaking, unless there was an issue that the higher-ups thought really merited a “mea culpa” from the company, any and all customer satisfaction surveys that came in during those incidents still counted against the metrics that all the call center employees had to meet. “We trust that you have the resources and intelligence to turn a negative moment into a positive branding opportunity,” they always said.

Eva was certain that her surveys—if any went out for that day—would all come back with solid negatives. No matter how she explained the issue, using the script provided in the update in her own words, none of the callers had sounded satisfied at the end of the conversation. They had—almost to a one—wanted a statement credit to compensate them for the inconvenience of having to see a big, red, Account Overdue on their homepage online. Of course, Eva—as a first-tier representative—didn’t have the clearance to do that, and even if she had, she knew she probably wouldn’t have done it for more than maybe three of the thirty calls she had taken that day.

Beset by mind-numbing boredom, she reached out for the water bottle she kept on her desk, pushing her chair back enough to look down the line of cubicles that extended across the entire floor of the office. There were easily a hundred people just in her section, though at night there would be less than fifty. Eva sipped her water and debated putting herself in Aux to run to the bathroom; she didn’t really have to go, but even the threat of being reprimanded for “aux overage” wasn’t quite enough to remove the temptation of getting away from the desk for five minutes. Her last break had been an hour before, and even if there were fewer than two hours left in Eva’s shift, that seemed like entirely too long a time.

“How you hanging in there, Johansen?” Eva turned her head and saw one of the other team leads, Rebecka, walking up the aisle.

“Glad we finally slowed down a bit,” Eva admitted. “That was a brutal first half.”

“Well, at least it wasn’t boring,” Rebecka said, beaming with the kind of fake brightness that Eva immediately recognized. She wouldn’t last ten minutes in a real game, she thought, returning the woman’s smile with her own best fake grin.

“I’m glad of a little boredom right now,” Eva quipped.

“See? There you go: the bright side to that rush this morning.”

Eva simpered at the team leader as Rebecka walked past, heading over to another section of the immense cubicle farm. Eva pushed her chair back into place, wiggling her mouse to keep the screensaver from coming up. A bleep in her headset announced an incoming instant message, and Eva opened up the application, glancing at the screen to see who was messaging her.

When do you think they’re going to learn not to mess with things outside of their understanding?

Eva snorted at the message; it had come from Clarence, a member of her team who had recently moved up to Online Services Specialty. It wasn’t a real promotion—he only earned about a dollar fifty an hour more than she did—but it had given him at least a little prestige, and a little bit of clout in the cubicle farm.

Right about the time the asteroid hits the planet and wipes us all out, Eva wrote back.

The running joke in the call center was that tech were all people who had come in with fake resumes, who managed to screw up more than they actually fixed. It wasn’t entirely true; Eva assumed that they made plenty of repairs to the system without incident. But the issues with the system—ranging from the payment system going down, to the website itself going offline—were legion, and they always seemed to happen at the worst possible time.

You doing anything after? came the reply.

Eva considered that, pressing her lips together.

Clarence wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t her type at all; if he were asking her out personally, she would have to think of a way to decline him without ruffling feathers. It was harder than she would have assumed—especially in the cramped and confined environment of the call center.

She’d been asked out by three men in her short time at the company, and the first two had come completely unhinged as soon as she’d said no; the third, Eva was convinced, had gone to her supervisor about something that most of the other employees generally agreed to look the other way on, whenever it happened; certainly, she’d gotten a “random call monitoring” session within days of turning Richard down; she hadn’t been slated for one for another week or two. The “random” in the call monitoring sessions was less accurate than the assertion her employee packet had made that the company valued its employees even more than its customers.

The sound of a call coming in—two steady beeps in her headset—cut through Eva’s thoughts. She took a deep breath and tapped the “unmute” button on her phone base.

“Good afternoon, and thank you for calling DigiFinancial. My name is Eva. How may I help you today?” She heard the roar of wind over the other line and rolled her eyes to herself, waiting for the caller to speak.

“This is DigiFinancial?”

Eva pressed her lips together to resist the retort that rose up on her tongue.

“Yes, sir, it is. How can I help you today?”

“You can help me by telling your company to stop illegally charging me fees!”

Eva closed her eyes. The man’s account—or so she assumed—had come up on her screen.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, sir,” Eva said, as calmly and as coolly as she could.

“Your stupid company keeps charging me an ‘account maintenance fee’ which is totally illegal and I want the fees for the last six months credited to my account right now.”

Eva counted to three mentally.

“Let’s look at your account and see what we have going on, shall we?”

The man made a noise that sounded weirdly like a growl on the other end of the line.

“Fine. Do you have my account up?”

“I believe so—but in order to access your information I’m going to need for you to confirm the answers to a few security questions,” Eva explained, sitting up straighter in her chair.

“Those goddam questions…why do you even ask them? I’m clearly the account holder.”

“Unfortunately sir, since I do not know you personally, there’s no way for me to know who you are. You have not even provided me with your name—much less verified that you are that person,” Eva pointed out. She pressed her lips together to prevent herself from speaking further; she counted to five in her mind, slowly. Don’t let the rude ass get to you.

“My name is Steve Jersik,” the man said, exaggerating each syllable.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Jersik,” Eva replied, as levelly as she could. “In order to access your account, would you please tell me the month and day of your mother’s birthday?”

“January third,” Jersik said, once more with exaggerated slowness.

“Thank you again,” Eva said. She typed the answer into the field and the next question popped up. “For our second verification question: what are the last four digits of your account number with us?”

“Oh my God!” Jersik sounded as though he were on the point of throwing his phone. “Four-five-six-three,” he said after a moment.

“Thank you, I’ll put that in now,” Eva said, feeling the beginning trickle of a rush of irritation. The man had to have accessed his account over the phone before; the fact that he had security questions set up for phone access proved that. How he could be surprised at the fact that he was being asked to verify his ID was beyond Eva’s understanding.

“Do you have my account up yet?” Eva clenched her teeth and the tone of the man’s voice.

“It’s coming through now,” Eva said, struggling to keep her voice patient and calm. “So we’re looking at your monthly maintenance fee, you said?”

“Yes! Yes, that’s what we’re looking at.” Eva pressed her lips together, reaching over to her phone base to press the “mute” button while Jersik continued.

“Why do I have to keep repeating myself over and over? I want you to remove these illegal charges on my account right now—that’s all.”

Eva rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she accessed the account transaction details. It was true that the man was receiving a monthly maintenance fee—but it was for a product that he would have had to apply for, an investment package that the company offered. The fee was part of the standard contract for that product, and would have been explained to him when he signed up.

“I’m seeing this monthly maintenance fee,” Eva said, after unmuting her phone. “However, what I am seeing is that this fee is for our Digi-Investment product.”

“So? That doesn’t matter. It’s an illegal fee. Just like the late fee you put on my account last month.”

Eva shook her head, clicking through to the previous month’s transactions. The man had paid late—there was a notation on the account that he had acknowledged paying late, and that his reasoning was that he ‘didn’t feel like he should have to pay for something he wasn’t using half the time.’

“Unfortunately, sir, that maintenance fee is part and parcel of the service you signed up for,” Eva said, keeping her voice neutral.

“It’s illegal to charge fees for services like that that come with my account!”

Eva managed to keep herself from snorting, but with an effort. Oh, goodie—a customer who has literally no idea what he’s talking about, at all, about anything.

“At the point that you signed up for the service,” Eva said, still attempting to remain calm, to keep her voice level, “it should have been explained to you that there is a monthly maintenance fee associated with the Digi-Investment service.”

“There was, but that’s not fair! I told the girl who signed me up that I shouldn’t have to pay a fee. You’re already making money off of me just by having me invest,” Jersik said. Eva rolled her eyes, shaking her head.

“I do apologize for the misunderstanding, Mr. Jersik, but that fee is attached to a service you signed up for. If you’d like to cancel the service, I can certainly do that—and you won’t receive any further fees. However, if you signed up for this service, the fee is—I assure you—perfectly legal.”

“What is illegal is not informing customers of those fees in advance, or charging fees that customers cannot opt out of. If you would like to no longer receive this monthly fee on your account, I can cancel the service for you.”

“I want the service and I don’t want to be charged a fee! How hard is that to understand? Jesus Christ, did you even graduate high school?”

“Yes, sir,” Eva said. She could hear the sarcasm beginning in her voice. “I did absolutely graduate high school.”

“So that’s the state of education in this country these days,” Jersik said bitterly. “Look—you just need to remove these fees for me. I don’t care how you do it, but I want them off of my account.”

For the sake of at least paying lip service to her job, Eva selected one of the fees and submitted the request for a credit. The screen refreshed and she nearly laughed out loud at the resulting message: Credit request denied. Customer has exceeded credit value on account for the year. Apparently Jersik had requested credit not only for his late fee the previous month, but for other fees he’d accumulated in the previous twelve months; he was not generating enough money for the company to justify providing any further credits.

“Unfortunately, I’m unable to credit any fees on your account at this time,” Eva said. She may have relished being able to tell the man that; he was steadily not only getting on her nerves but stomping on them.

“That’s bullshit and you know it!”

For what felt like five minutes straight, Jersik continued to rant and rave about illegal fees, about the bank’s shady, crooked policies, about his right to not pay any charges he didn’t want to, and how DigiFinancial should be bending over backwards to make him, the customer, happy. Eva kept microphone muted as he went on the tirade, glancing around the office.

“Are you still there?”

Quickly, Eva took her phone out of ‘mute.’

“Yes, sir, I’m still here,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that I heard all that you had to say without interrupting you.”

“Well, then, what the hell are you going to do about my account?” Eva shook her head.

“Let me be real with you for a moment, Mr. Jersik,” Eva said; she knew that the rising anger she felt bubbling through her veins was a dangerous thing; she knew that she should put him on hold and wait until she could calm down to address his issues; but after a long, stressful shift, the sixth day in a row of working, Eva’s ability to be circumspect simply vanished.

“You have fees on your account because you agreed to the terms and conditions, which included the company charging you a fee for paying late, as well as monthly maintenance fees for a service you signed up for. At this point, you are not going to receive any further credits on your account because you’ve managed to bully previous representatives into giving you credits and at this point, the company views giving you any more free money as a bad investment. You are not worth another sixty dollars to this company.

“If you would like to cancel the service that you’re being charged for, I can certainly do that for you. But this company is not going to continue giving you money when you’re abusing the services we offer.”

“I want to speak with a manager,” the man said, his voice tight with anger.

“Certainly,” Eva said. “If you’re willing to hold for a few minutes, I will get a manager on the line for you.”

She didn’t wait for his assent; instead she tapped the hold button and took a deep breath. If anyone monitors that call I’m out on my ears, she thought. She transferred the call to the tier two customer service, holding for the minute it took to connect to a representative in that department.

“What have you got for me?”

Eva sighed.

“Hey Tiffany,” she said. “I’ve got a guy who wants credits for a service he signed up for, who thinks that any fees we charge him are inherently illegal because reasons.”

Tiffany snorted.

“One of those, eh? All right, put him through.”

Eva connected the call; she could hear the chirpiness in her voice as she told the man he was connected with an account manager who would take care of his issues going forward. She was tempted to stay on the line and eavesdrop, but as soon as Tiffany began her script, Eva obediently disconnected.

She kept herself on “after call work” mode for exactly one minute, breathing slowly and deeply in the attempt to dispel her annoyance. On the plus side, at least there’s only about an hour to go before I can leave, Eva thought, glancing at the time. She put her phone back into “available” mode and closed her eyes, attempting a meditation technique one of her high school friends had taught her years before.

“Eva? I need to see you in my office.”

Eva’s stomach lurched inside of her and she opened her eyes, turning in her chair to see Yvonne, her boss, standing a few feet away. Here we go, she thought bleakly. Either someone had overheard her, or someone had gotten the word to Yvonne about what she’d just done.

“I’ll be right there, just let me log out—feedback code?”

Yvonne nodded, looking solemn.

Eva tapped the “log out” button on her phone and entered the code for a feedback session, knowing that it was likely that she would be logged out for “end of day” as they called it, by the time she had finished her conversation with Yvonne. She took off her headset and put it down on the desk, locked her computer, and stood, pushing the chair back and turning to follow Yvonne off of the call center floor.

She’s been looking for an excuse to can you ever since you got onto her team, Eva thought, staring at Yvonne’s back. Her team leader always wore the same outfit in different colors: a skirt suit in a boxy cut, low, chunky heels, and statement jewelry from Charming Charlie in “coordinating” colors. Her hair was pulled back into a tiny bun at the base of her skull, gleaming slightly in the fluorescent office lights. Eva followed in silence, ignoring the curious glances from her teammates, putting one foot in front of the other until they came to the door of the office.

Yvonne gestured for Eva to go in before her and Eva heard her team leader close the door as she took the lone guest seat available on the other side of her boss’ desk. Eva took a deep breath, making herself a promise that she wasn’t going to let Yvonne see her cry, or get upset in any way; Yvonne had ridden her from the moment she had joined the team, and Eva refused to give the woman the satisfaction of seeing her affected.

“I think you probably know why you’re here,” Yvonne said, sitting down and shifting in her desk chair enough to make it squeak in protest.

“Tell me.”

“The last call you took came up flagged in the system,” Yvonne said matter-of-factly. “I’ve reviewed the call.”

“Okay,” Eva said, staring at a point just above the bridge of her boss’ nose. “What would you like to discuss?”

“I have determined, after listening to the call, that it falls into the ‘egregious’ category,” Yvonne said. “As you’re aware, an egregious call is grounds for immediate dismissal.”

“I’m aware,” Eva said, as levelly as she could.

“As much as I hate to do this to you, I am going to have to dismiss you, effective immediately.”

Eva held her silence for a moment, meeting Yvonne’s gaze. Nothing that she would say at this point could possibly alter the result; she would not cease to be fired if she cried, or if she screamed and begged. She remembered a friend’s advice, given to her long ago: “All the bridges in the world won’t save you if there’s no other side to cross to.”

“I don’t think you hate it at all,” Eva said matter-of-factly.

“Of course I do,” Yvonne said, color rising into her cheeks and her eyes widening. “This isn’t a pleasant experience for me, Eva.”

“I’m pretty sure you get off on the power of being able to fire people,” Eva told the woman, resisting the urge to smirk. “You may want to speak to a therapist about that—just as a parting piece of advice. It’s probably not a healthy trait in someone who’s in charge of people.”

“This is the dismissal paperwork,” Yvonne said, avoiding Eva’s gaze. She extended a sheaf of papers towards Eva. “I need you to sign each of these pages, signaling your understanding. Then I will escort you to your desk and you can collect your personal items, and we will walk to the elevator together.”

Eva considered saying something in response to Yvonne’s directions, but decided against it. She picked up the pen on the desk next to the paperwork and began reading, skimming the information to the bottom of each page and then signing that she agreed to the terms of her dismissal.

When she finished, Yvonne stood and Eva followed her to her desk, where the computer was still locked. Under her supervisor’s watchful eye, Eva opened her desk drawer and retrieved her purse, along with one or two personal items she’d left out.

“If there are any items in the drawers that are non-sensitive and belong to you, they’ll be mailed to the address we have on file,” Yvonne told her quietly.

Eva nodded her assent and followed her team leader through the cubicle farm and out of the office, towards the elevator in the lobby.

“Please hand over your access card,” Yvonne said coolly.

Eva unclipped the security card from the lanyard on her belt loop, and handed it to her now-former boss. The elevator pinged and the doors opened.

“Drive home safely,” Yvonne said, turning without looking at her and walking back into the office proper.