�Citiwide Couriers, I can help you,� he answered, somehow putting aside his revulsion at cute customer service sayings. After a brief pause, he said, �Good morning, Mrs. Snowden. Is your regular ten o'clock pickup good for you today? Very good. Yes, ma�am. That will be Mario. Thank you for using Citiwide Couriers.� Harry clicked on a few selections and entered Mrs. Snowden�s pickup in the dispatch computer, then waited for the next call. He knew the system would electronically add Mrs. Snowden to Mario�s route as he drove through the city, so no other call would be needed to set that up. Ain�t life grand. Through it all, he heard the din of voices and keyboards from all the dispatchers that surrounded him. After working as a cop, Harry had excellent powers of concentration, and he was accustomed to tuning out the sounds that surrounded him.

The only thing that continued to distract him was Diane. She had not returned his calls, and she had not taken his calls at the 1-5. He was not one to give up easily. He figured she was mad about the Valentine�s Day thing. How could he explain what that day meant to him, had meant to him in the past? He rehearsed a dozen different ways of explaining it, but he couldn�t imagine any that didn�t sound lame, contrived, or pathetic. He was determined to sound reasoned and intelligent about why Valentine�s Day was a day to be scorned, ignored, and avoided, not celebrated with empty, impertinent romantic gestures. Of all people who should understand, he expected Diane would be the one. Her censure infuriated him.

There was enough downtime between calls for Harry to drive himself nuts with this line of thinking. After a brief lunch break, he resolved to redouble his efforts and concentrate on his job. The afternoon brought a blessed rush of business, and the on-hold queue light on the wall flashed constantly. The pool of dispatchers did a good job of keeping the calls in queue for less than two minutes on average. The longest hold time was five minutes, though, and that wasn�t good. Only ninety-seven percent of calls were completed, which means three percent of the callers were angry enough to hang up before their calls were answered. That�s not good for business, Harry grumbled. He knew the boss would be breathing down their necks at the next staff meeting. Harry�s numbers were good, though. He had handled 153 calls so far that day, a new record for him.

The boss was strolling by in the dispatch area, checking the queue, taking the occasional distressed customer call, answering staff questions. Harry noticed the boss tap Bernie on the shoulder and ask her to come to his office. Her numbers were only ninety-seven that day, and Harry felt bad for her. She was certainly going to get some rough coaching today. He couldn�t believe he was actually starting to care about this mundane crap.

Suddenly, Harry noticed it had become very quiet in the dispatch room, and the quiet distracted him. He looked up at the queue, and noticed there were seven calls on hold. He was shocked the supervisor wasn�t yelling at everyone to jump back on the phones and pick up the slack, an event that usually happened when only three calls were on hold. Checking the time, he noticed it was only four-thirty. Usually it didn�t get this quiet until five-thirty or six. Harry stood up to look around. He was alone in the dispatch room. He yanked the headset off his ears, and he heard an organized shuffling in the hallways, like the boots of military troops moving in to ambush an enemy camp.