8:30 AM – Peak Hour

The bus doors open to a crime scene. Chequered warning tape is stretched in a hostile cross between the poles of the baggage area, cordoning off all standing room from the front entrance up to the flip-down priority seating – not that the standing room is needed, not a single seat is taken. The driver nods for me to get on from behind their Perspex shield and I take my pick of window seats. As we pull out, the next empty bus is already waiting to take our place at the deserted stop. Its indicator is still blinking to the silent streets by the time we turn onto the M1 freeway, city-bound. On this ride, there will be no other stops, and there will be no other passengers. It is March 30, 2020, and NSW is under lockdown.

Throughout all of March I had been working for Woolworths in a distribution centre at Mascot, so trekking through hollow, urban scenes such as these had become a daily ritual. It had been a month since I’d seen another person on the bus or train. The CBD had been completely emptied out and its workers relocated. The home computer was now favoured over the office, reducing Sydney’s towering skyscrapers to nothing more than ornaments; stacked, segmented shelves of empty spaces left behind like abandoned hives. Looking up at them each morning from the passenger window felt like disaster tourism, and the fact that public transport still ran to the same pre-pandemic schedule made it all the more surreal. It was as if the city was following a forgotten impulse. A clock wound up and ticking down, but with no one left to count the hours. 

I considered myself to be part of a lucky few. I was able to freely travel outside because the government had deemed my employment to be an ‘Essential Service’. I wore a lanyard that certified this: official Woolworths identification of my name and position that I could flash to anyone that approached me on the street (though the last thing anyone was currently interested in was physically approaching another person). Most jobs, however, were not given this grace, and Mascot especially had seen its industry gutted by the Coronavirus response.

Just earlier that month it was announced that all international flights were to be indefinitely suspended, resulting in Qantas and Jetstar standing down approximately 20,000 staff, effective immediately¹. Of course, the ripple effect of this was enormous. The rug was not only pulled out from under the airports, but all of their suppliers as well: the engineering bays, catering services, logistics companies, basically all of the warehouses and industrial plots that had spilled out into Mascot’s business centre to support the major Airlines. All of these businesses were left with no choice but to be abandoned to ruin.

1.  Khadem, N. 2020, ‘Qantas, Jetstar to stand down 20,000 workers due to coronavirus, Alan Joyce says national carrier’s future is at stake’, ABC News

And it is in the final leg of my journey, walking through Mascot’s industrial area, that I pass these ruins. I pass the scaffolded foundations of halted building sites, construction abandoned mid-breath. I pass the former Titans of Toll and Hertz, their warehouses now hermetically shuttered and gated behind thick, black bars. I pass the wide, empty maws of the Panel Beater’s garages, tools stowed, machinery clamped shut, lights off. With every square metre of nature economically paved over, not even the rustling of leaves can be heard. The only sound that accompanies you over this lonesome path is the sound of wind sweeping grit over concrete. It’s a walk that makes me feel so haunted by the suburb’s ghosts that just seeing the squat, grey Woolworths warehouse is a relief – even with the knowledge that, once the reception doors slide open and I walk onto the jazzy, market-researched green carpet, I’ll be on call for the next fifteen hours.

10:00 AM – Call Ready

At 10am I had to be ‘Call Ready’. This meant I had to be logged into a Woolworths workstation and the call routing software before the second hand had even thought about moving toward 10:01. This was because, the instant your shift started, every minute that passed while you were not ‘Call Ready’ was counted, tallied, and brought up in a finger-tented discussion during your performance review. 

Unfortunately, before you could become ‘Call Ready’, you had to find a seat first, and the office’s open floor plan had become its own downfall here. Without any partitions between computers, Social Distancing requirements meant that we were not allowed to sit closer than five seats from any other employee in any direction. You had to be absolutely sure that your length of creamy grey desk was your own island. Only then could you begin the process of rubbing the workstation down with disinfectant wipes and discovering which USB ports still worked and recognised your keyboard, mouse, and headset. I was rarely ‘Call Ready’ on time.

As a gentle reminder to be punctual, Management had installed digital displays on every wall that projected our current Grade of Service. This was a collection of various statistics, like average hold time and number of calls in queue, and were helpfully colour coded to let you know when things were slipping below expectations. Green meant good. Red meant bad². Which was helpful in the sense that, no matter where you were seated, you could look up and see solid blocks of accusational red beaming down at you, superimposed over the wallpaper of enlarged, smiling children eating kiwifruit. A reminder that, for the past two weeks running, average hold times for callers had been well over an hour.

2.  As a colour scheme, this also happened to align well with the anti-Coles-red rhetoric within the company. 

Why was it like this? In part it was because lockdown had seen a surge in online shopping, which precipitated a surge in tech support calls. But things had really kicked into gear when a video recorded in Woolworths, Chullora, depicting two women coming to blows over a pack of toilet paper was posted online. The footage went viral, receiving over 4 million YouTube views in a fortnight, as well as being covered by domestic and international media³. Afterwards, there was a wave of what was called ‘panic buying’ as consumers stripped supermarket shelves clean, stockpiling products in the fear that supplies would dry up. What that meant for us on the phones was that there were a lot of desperate calls from customers hoping to secure some rolls of toilet paper for themselves.

3.  You can read the panic plainly on the page, and follow the big supermarkets’ meetings with the PM, in the uncredited article: ‘Coronavirus fears cause toilet paper and hand sanitiser manufacturers to ramp up production’, ABC News 2020

There had been a round of meetings hosted by our Chief Communications Officer and Social Media Strategist, Martin⁴ to address the issue. He assured us all that Woolworths’ supply of toilet paper was unchanged, and there were plans to increase production to meet demand. Martin was slightly greying, with a silver fox vibe about him, but the stress was beginning to crack through, especially under the eyes. He told us that the guys over at analytics had been looking into why this was happening, and there had even been meetings with PM Scott Morrison regarding future stock projections. Even so, with their collective minds on the task, Martin could only offer us this statement: ‘we don’t know why this is happening’. And this explanation was precisely what we were advised not to tell the customer.

4.  In the interest of professional integrity, all names appearing in this piece have been changed. However, I have made efforts to make the replacement names suit the feel of the person being discussed, and this person was definitely a Martin.

Looking back at it now, though, the public’s reaction makes a little more sense. For months Australia had been living in the grips of an invisible enemy. The Coronavirus pandemic was something we were being told to fear by our doctors and our government, but for most of us it was something we never saw. At least toilet paper was something real. Keeping up TP supplies was something we could control.

1:23 PM – Daniel 2:44

‘Are you all safe over there?’ She asks.

I wasn’t sure how to answer this honestly. It wasn’t exactly safety that I felt when I was sanitising myself and my workstation with alcoholic wipes each morning. But the Quality Assurance team hated dead air, so I gave the company line before I had time to dwell on it for too long. 

‘Yes, of course. We’re making sure to follow all of the recommended safety measures here in the office. At Woolworths, we consider staff and customer safety as a top priority.’

‘Oh, that’s good,’ she replies. Then her tone sharpens. ‘You do know this is all God’s plan, don’t you? It’s all written in Daniel 2:44. The great cities will be crushed and the heavenly kingdom will be rebuilt on Earth. The virus is God’s will.’⁵ 

5. The full passage of Daniel 2:44 from the Old Testament is as follows: “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” Of course, I did not know any of this while I spoke on the phone, else I may have responded in a more god fearing manner.

At this point I should mention that it is Woolworths policy to never hang up on a customer until they are ready to end the call themselves. There is an art in guiding a conversation to an inevitable conclusion. But there is also an expectation. To hit that fabled green colour on the Grade of Service boards, each call needs to be handled within five minutes. In this timeframe, you are expected to respond with empathy, actively listen to the customer’s request, solve their request, add value by offering extra products, make them like you for doing this, and then listen as they terminate the call, satisfied. Then you have 30 seconds to decompress, have a sip of water, cough, and/or sneeze before the next call drops in. This system tends to break down when people have been waiting on hold for an hour, however.

‘Mmmm, that’s…um. Yeah,’ I respond. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with today?’ 

‘Well, now that I have you on the phone. I’ve been trying to download that new App you have.’

At the very least, if it turns out there is some limit to human empathy, this whole call centre experiment will find it pretty quickly.

3:44 PM – Escalation

‘It can be a bit confusing on the site, but you’re actually only able to order a maximum of two frozen vegetable products at a time.’

‘I just want some chips with my dinner. That’s all!’ The man’s voice quivers with that fragile kind of mania that comes just before tears.

‘I’m really sorry, sir, but our system considers frozen chips and peas to both be vegetable products. That’s why they have that yellow warning box around them.’ I try not to sound condescending. I honestly do find it quite easy to forget that potato chips are vegetables. ‘You will need to remove either the peas or the chips before you can check out.’

He clears his throat. ‘That’s not good enough. I want to speak with your Manager.’

And so the magic words are spoken. As soon as any customer asks to speak further up the hierarchy, we are obliged to find someone with seniority on the floor to take the call. I put the man on hold and type into the team group chat: ‘I have an escalation’. This summons Matilda.

She wheels herself over on her chair, evidently done with walking across the floor for the day. Matilda is about two heads shorter than me, four heads while seated, but speaks with an inexplicable contralto that implies authority. I give her the rundown. I wanted to tell her that the whole situation was just so petty, that there were people waiting with real problems. And I probably would have said that to a colleague, if any were allowed to be within chatting distance of me. But, while I stood there mute, I was forced to reflect somewhat. 

Really, this man was about as happy to be arguing over frozen vegetables as I was. I’m sure this was not how he had intended things to go. Ever since lockdown his life had probably taken a drastic shift in trajectory and, as he had said, he just wanted to have a normal dinner again. Peas and chips in one meal, now an impossible feat. Even for myself, I know I had never intended to be working in this role, but there wasn’t a whole lot of demand for my skillset during lockdown.

Matilda ends the call. ‘All done.’ 

‘What did you tell him?’ It dawns on me that I probably should have been listening to how she had handled the situation, rather than daydreaming. 

‘I just repeated our rules, same as what you told him.’

She leaves with a smile, and tells me to wipe down my workstation before taking another call.

7:30 PM – Break

At 7:30 I get a one-hour break. It’s a legally required reprieve when you work for longer than 10 hours. There’s not much to do in the break room aside from watching reruns of Millionaire Hot Seat, but you at least get to rest your voice.

Before I get there, however, I’m flagged down by a colleague. It’s Charlie, one of the guys I did my induction with back in January. A Penrith tragic, he’s wearing a Panthers jersey over a collared shirt and grey slacks, an outfit that sees high rotation within his wardrobe⁶.He’s alone, as we all are when we’re working on the floor, and he tells me that he’s been crying. It’s obvious.

6.  He is also, obviously, gutted by the forced prohibition of audience attendance at NRL games at this time.

Charlie’s just spent the last hour talking to a woman named Kathleen over the phone, a woman that he describes as ‘just like his Nan’. He was trying to explain to her that we won’t be able to deliver her groceries until next week. He takes me through exactly what he had said, feeding me back the call script that we all follow, line by line. Then he looks up at me with his tragic, wet eyes, and he tells me that Kathleen is under medical instruction not to leave the house, that she has no food left to get her through the rest of the week. We are the only people she can call for help.

Unfortunately, I’d heard this story before. In response to the number of desperate customers in this exact situation, Woolworths had set up a special ‘Priority Assistance’ hotline. This was a service for anyone who was over 65, immune-compromised, pregnant, or otherwise medically advised to stay indoors. And those that used the hotline, like everyone else calling at the moment, couldn’t be promised a thing. Priority Assistance did not mean a guarantee of assistance, in this case.

Despite this, Charlie still wants us to try. Kathleen had requested a callback at 9pm – after his shift is over.

 I agree to cover it for him, even though we both know full well that I had no extra insight to provide her. If she wanted to continue the conversation, it wasn’t just the least that I could do, it was the only thing I could do. Scheduled callbacks like these were an unspoken taboo in the call centre, especially with call waiting times still in the red. But I was hoping our ‘customer first’ mantra would soften the slap on the wrist that was to come from higher up.

It isn’t too long before Charlie is able to calm himself back down. He’s meant to be ‘Call Ready’ after all and his emotional lapse is being timed. We nod to each other from a 1.5 metre distance and he tips me off to avoid the Woolworths Pad Thai Pack Dinner on sale in the kitchen. 

9:00 PM – Kathleen

At 9pm I check the Grade of Service screens. Red, red, and red. I remove myself from the inbound call queue and set my status to ‘outbound’. An indicator next to my profile in the corner of the monitor flicks from green to a slightly-concerning yellow. It’s time to call Kathleen. 

‘Hello?’

‘Hi this is Ben calling from Woolworths Online, am I speaking to Kathleen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Great, is now a good time to speak?’ 

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Before I continue, I just have to let you know that this call will be recorded for quality and training purposes and that this recording can be requested to be stopped at any point during the call. Are you okay with this?’

‘Yes?’

I steel myself. With the mandatory formalities concluded, I can speak more candidly. This is not the first Priority Assistance request that I’ve refused, but it never becomes easy to explain that I can’t do anything to help. That I understand and sympathise with your situation and I offer you absolutely nothing to get you through it.

‘Fantastic. Well, Kathleen, I’m just giving you a call back. I believe you were speaking with my colleague Charlie earlier-’

‘Oh, what took you so bloody long? I’m about ready for bed. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’⁷

7.  The opening lines of this call follow a mandatory script which is just as painful to speak as it is to read. I am glad, however, that in transcribing these calls I have managed to avoid bringing to light any retroactive Quality Assurance failures.

It’s hard to say what I expect from people over the phone anymore. These recent weeks have stretched the meaning of what is normal into an unseemly mask over our daily lives – the tension waiting to be released in overwrought feelings. This Kathleen saga ran through its own spectrum of human emotion, from despair to mild annoyance, and now to my own muted confusion. With the seams holding our social faces together under such duress, I suppose it’s only natural for what’s underneath to burst out in places; our own mortal stuffing falling out unfiltered over the phone, in the office, on the bus. 

What’s important now, though, is to take my sip of water, clear my throat, and return to those still waiting on the line.

12:00 AM – Queues Closed

At midnight, with only an hour of my shift left, a rallying cry is heard across the floor:

Queues are closed.

There is a smattering of applause from around the room. A few reply with self-conscious cheers, curbing their volume in case they can be heard by a customer on a call. ‘Queues closed’ marks the beginning of the midnight countdown, when all Woolworths support becomes nominally closed and the number of customers on hold drops steadily toward zero. There are still calls to be answered, but it is during this time that a rare phenomenon can be seen. Like witnessing a solar eclipse, there is a small period in the hour where the digital Grade of Service boards will shift colours through red, yellow, and even green, until finally coming to rest on the eerily beautiful black screen of zero activity.   

Until then, there were still fifty callers waiting to be served.

12:21 AM – Are your Drivers Clean?

‘Yeah, we’ve been staying open late these past few weeks.’

‘I don’t want to take up your time…’

‘Please, it’s what we’re here for.’ I try to smile through my voice to the customer on the line. ’If you have any questions or need any assistance with anything, please let me know.’

‘Oh, thank you so much. I was just worried about this whole online ordering thing. Do you know, are your drivers clean? I’ve heard there are a lot of unhygienic people driving these trucks.’

I swivel my chair around to look out the window at the dispatchers still loading the trucks at this hour. They’ll be working well into the morning, ready for the next delivery at 4am.

‘Don’t worry, we are taking every precaution possible.’

This is the final stretch before I can hang up the headset. This is when the calls really start to blur together. I remind myself that, for some customers, our conversations sum the entirety of their social life at the moment. I feel more fatigue than comfort at the thought. If it weren’t for the call recordings, I don’t think I’d remember any of these phone calls the next day. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just too hard to shake the feeling of distance in these interactions. These are conversations unmoored from my life or theirs, and they will drift off with waters as they recede. 

However, I will remember the little blinking green message that pops up in my chat window. 

I like your jumper

I’m sitting in the opposite corner

I crane my neck over my monitor. Most of the office has cleared out at this point, but sure enough, sitting some twenty metres away from me, is another ‘Call Ready’ soul. She waves to me, and I wave back. I reply:

Thanks 🙂

And I wear the same emoji on my face. We haven’t met before, which is not uncommon for a company of Woolworths’ size, but we begin to chat like we’re not strangers at all. It’s a small gesture, but it’s enough for me; to have physical proof that there is someone else travelling the same isolated journey as myself.

1:00 AM – Close of Business

No one has any interest in staying longer than they’re asked to, myself included. At 1am I’m out the door and back amongst Mascot’s  ruins. After midnight, they feel paradoxically less haunted, as their desertion seems more appropriate at this hour. It’s only when you consider how the still of night won’t be lifted by the sunrise that the chills set in. 

The bus, too, opens with the same crime scene as this morning, evidently no progress made on the case.  I’d like to say that in this moment, standing as the sole passenger in the earliest hours of the morning, the driver and I exchanged a look. A knowing, weary look; a gentle nod of camaraderie. But, honestly, it’s too hard to tell with both of our faces covered in surgical masks.