The excitement of having finally reached my Berizon Wireless destination caught up with me and presented itself in shortness of breath. A salesman greeted me when I entered.

“You don’t know what I’ve been through.” I took a deep breath and wiped my brow. “My phone.” I held the specimen out and he pointed toward the customer service counter at the back.

A middle-aged woman with a southern accent waited eagerly to assist me. She appeared as though she had eaten too many fried candy bars in her youth.

“Broke?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s broke.” I told her, following her vernacular lead.
“I hate when them phones do that.”
“Me, too,” I agreed. “I hate when them phones do that, too.”
“This here seems like one uh them pre-motional phones.”
I nodded a response.
She chuckled, turning my phone over to look at the battery case. “You got one uh them ten dollar phones, din’t you?” She dragged out the word “ten” and I didn’t feel like mimicking her anymore. She sounded so hateful when she said it.

Did she not want to fix my $10 phone? Her company was the one who sold it to me. I didn’t feel cheap when I bought it, and just because it only cost $10 didn’t mean it shouldn’t work.

“Lemme go take a look in the back, run a check through it.” A check through it? That sounded scary.

She waddled through the swinging door directly behind her, swinging my phone through the air in her meaty hand as she walked. I feared I’d never see it again, that she’d either bang it into the doorframe or just never return.

She emerged moments later. “The check din’t work and we ain’t got no more of them ten dollar phones left.”

A line had begun to form behind me. I peeked over my shoulder and saw several impatient customers with fancy, flipping phones, phones with different color keypads and one person was even receiving a call in Chopin’s Nocturne in D Flat Major. I was the $10 person making the several hundred-dollar people wait in line. My problems had insignificant because I was a broke college kid who bought a $10 phone. So what if my screen didn’t work; At least the outer screen did. What did I expect anyway from a $10 phone? I needed to just suck it up, take it as it was until I had the money to buy a real phone, one that could not only speak, but converse with me when I was bored about an array of tops, and one that would sing me lullabies or read to me before bed. I needed a phone that had gone to finishing school.

“Lemme call the other store and see if they got any of them ten dollar phones. Unless ya want an upgrade.” This last sentence was not really a question; she didn’t think I was going to ask about an upgrade.

“How much is that going to cost me?” The guy behind me looking somewhat like Ben Franklin in his build, sighed loudly to let me know he was there. Didn’t they know it wasn’t my fault that more than one person wasn’t working the Customer Service Counter? If I had a more expensive phone, would he have been as agitated?

The Customer Service Representative laughed again – I was making her day. I sucked my cheeks in in irritation, telling myself that making fun of poor customers was the only thing she had to look forward to in her life. “Sorry, hun, not gonna be another ten dollars. More along the lines of a hundred fitty fur the next up one. Fur a decent phone.”

“A hundred and fifty dollars?!” My head jutted forward, away from my shoulders. This is what necks were for, other than to connect my head to my body. I was beginning to feel flushed and my hands clammed up. I flexed them to try and air them out. There was no way I could afford to spend $150 on a new phone. “I have insurance for this phone. I want one that functions, just nothing fancy.”

“Sounds ‘bout right,” she continued. “Lemme give Redwood City a call. ‘Less you want us to ship it to yur residency when it comes in? Do ya got a house?” This was unbelievable, and if I were anyone else, I would report her to the manager. But, I didn’t want to – the manager would probably tell me I didn’t have a right to complain if I only had a $10 phone.

“I’m not from here,” I tried to explain.

“Uh huh.” Either she didn’t care or she wasn’t paying attention. She picked up the store’s beige landline phone and began to dial.

“I need a phone as soon as possible.” Another person farther behind me sighed. “I have insurance,” I repeated, desperately. I felt the person behind me take a step closer to me. Cold beads of sweat punctuated my hairline.

“I’m sorry,” I started to say before she cut me off and backed up to lean leisurely against the back wall, to the left of the swinging door, sticking her pointer finger up in the air, indicating that I had to wait.

“Hi thur Marsh. It’s me, Jolene…yep… The kids’re fine. Bobby finished teethin’…yup…thank god, too, ‘cause the right one’s gettin’ kinda sore.” I stared at her right breast – it did seem a little deflated in comparison to the left one, which seemed watermelonesque. “Eh-nee-wayz, I’s callin’ ‘bout this here girl who seems to have broke her ten dollar phone.” Now she had passed the stage of just dragging out the word “ten,” she was onto bigger and better things, dragging out the entire freaking sentence. She laughed and glanced over at me, as though I were oblivious to her condescension, before looking back at the wire of the store phone and twisting it and lacing it around her pudgy fingers. “One left!” she exclaimed to me, as a parent would kneel down to their hysterically sobbing five year old and exclaim “Ice cream!” She even opened her mouth and winked at me. “Yep. Sendin’ her right over. Yes ma’am.”

Basically, I was shoed away. The next customer jumped to the counter, saying “Finally!”

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