DANIEL by Loren Taylor

“Daniel” revitalizes the notion of Literary for me. It is the story of son who calls his father’s credit card company in order to try and convince the person on the other end of the phone to forget that his father ever existed. The underling reason being that his father has a huge credit card debt.

The story is almost completely in conversation. The bit that is not dialogue between the son and the customer service representative is the son’s internal monologue or narration of the phone call. The dialogue is wonderfully written. As a customer service supervisor in a call center, I have a lot of love for this story.

The customer service representative does an excellent job in handling the situation, in the beginning. She listens, asks clarifying questions, and goes beyond helpful. However, she is slowly worn down by the strange circular-logic that the son is using. She comes to identify with his problem and then helps him by ultimately fulfilling his request that the credit card company deign the existence of his father (and thus his father’s debt). She should have either elevated this call to a supervisor after a couple of minutes.

What the son does not know, or does not really care about is the customer service representative. He is focused on only his problem, like most customers with problems. What customers with problems don’t understand is that sometimes, if the customer service representative helps them, it puts the customer service representative’s job at risk. By the end of the story, I had lost all my sympathy for the son and his plight and was now identifying (probably because of my line of work) with the customer service representative.

“Daniel” is an excellent piece of writing. If you can find a copy of rock, paper, scissors, this story makes it completely worth it.

For copies of rock, paper, scissors, try emailing West Egg Literati here.

Taylor, Loren. “Daniel.” rock, paper, scissors. Hamline University: West Egg Literati, 2007

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