La Llamada

Another day at the office

An old and tired ceiling fan, twelve desks with their respective worn-out chairs and twelve telephones. Twelve expectant telephones ready to ring with every newcomplain, with every new problem. That´s all there was between those four suffocating pale walls. And, of course, behind every desk, prisoners of the phones, twelve employees, who had no other task, no otherchoice, than answering to the incessant calls. During eight hours a day, six days a week, in this cage-like office, these twelve people mechanized their behavior. And during those hours, neither asmile could be seen, nor a laugh could be heard; except for the tired voices that had to answer the never-ending calls that did not give a break. Tension would vanish just a bit during the insufficientthirty minutes of lunch break, time that was not even closed of being enough to clear their heads. Heads where the demanding voices of the other side of the receiver still sounded, while they wereeating.
Despite this, employees still waited anxiously for their moment of little relaxation. There, they seized the opportunity to tell the rest who they really were outside those walls. But alsoto remind themselves that they had a life, that it was not all about answering phone-calls. So everyone needed of those thirty minutes, except for Maurice. He had been working there for fifteen years,more than anybody in the office. He wouldn´t talk to anyone, and during his lunch break, he´d stay in his eternal desk eating alone. He was a nervous, tense and solitary man who didn´t seem to feelupset or annoyed by his loneliness. No one even bothered to talk to him, not even Oscar, who had known him for ten years. His desk mates didn´t try, either. Carol, to his left, was new there, andMaurice managed to scare her from the very first day. Mark, to his right, was a pleasant young man, but he had already given up trying to socialize with Maurice, who showed himself very upset with...