a sudden buzzing in my scrotum
 My friend Matt gave me a new cell phone the other day. Well, its not exactly new. He got it used from our friend Rodney, and there's a crack in the front screen cover. But still, its a flip phone with cool color graphics and more features than my last phone.
When he first gave it to me it was on vibrate mode. I missed my first couple of calls because of this, but once I figured out what was happening, I got the ringer turned on and everything was fine. But meanwhile the voicemail alert was still in vibrate mode. When you get a message that thing buzzes just like my girlfriend's vibrator.
Anyway, my new/used phone from Matt became the primary phone for my tree service. That means that it receives all of our calls from customers. Since we don't advertise and people rarely call us for work (we sell door to door), that also means that most of the numbers I don't recognize on my new/used phone are customer complaints.
You didn't finish this. You guys broke that. You took our rake. Etc, etc.
When I first worked at my tree business I thought it was very important to take care of all of those complaints and concerns. I would tell the crew chief about the problems and expect him to have a couple workers take care of it.
Instead, the crew chief would just say," what the fuck do you want me to do about it?" The clear implication of his question is that he didn't want to do anything about it.
Since the customers had paid a lot of money, and I had at least average morals, I would often try to fix the broken gutter or trim the forgotten palm tree myself.
But after a while I approached the customer complaints with a different method. I just never answered the phone. Unless I knew the number already, I would just let it ring and go to voice mail and then never check the message. I let the unchecked messages build and build and build. It would scare me to contemplate all of the angry and bitter complaints that were undoubtedly in my voicemail. But like all things in life, those angry and bitter feelings would eventually fade with the passage of enough time.
Eventhough I've been using this method of customer assistance for some time, I still get kind of anxious and guilty whenever the phone rings. I feel the customer's frustration and anguish. The ringing sound itself says to me, "you have betrayed us! You are a bad man!" I can barely stand to listen to it. Often I will muffle the ringer with my hands so I don't have to endure the guilt.
Sometimes when I'm driving I will just stuff the phone between my legs until the miserable ringing stops. When my new/used phone stops ringing I breathe a little sigh of relief.
But just when I think everything is okay I suddenly get this buzzing sensation in my scrotum. Then I realize its just another bitter message from the customer.
8:33:37 PM 
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