Shabbat Sermon: You Had Me At Hello with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Our ice maker in our fridge broke again. I called the service line. You know the drill: obnoxious faux classical music, repeated robotic recordings, “we care about your business and will answer your call as soon as possible. Please stay on the line.” Finally my call was answered by a woman who said her name was Jennifer and sounded like she was answering from South Asia. I told her our ice maker saga and once she had gotten all the information, she sai,d “thank you ma’am, I just submitted this request and am waiting for a response from my manager.”

“Ok, thanks,” I said. There was silence. Then, since we were waiting on the phone together, I asked, “how’s your day going?”

There was no response.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m here ma’am.”

“Oh good,” I said, “How’s your day going?”

“Ma’am, are you talking to me?”

“Yes, of course, who else would I be talking to? I figured as long as we were waiting, we could chat.”

“Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry. No one ever talks to me, I just thought that you were talking to someone else. My day is going alright. How is yours?”

I was caught off-guard. “Wait, is that true? No one ever asks you about your day? Ever?”

“No ma’am. People just call to talk about their refrigerator and most of the time they are very upset.”

After the call, and after Jennifer had helpfully sorted my broken ice maker, I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation. What would it be like to be Jennifer? What would it be like to sit in a call center for 12 hours straight, answering calls from angry people who are uniformly short-tempered in a language that is not your own? What would it be like to be called a different name—something that’s easier for Americans to pronounce—and to exist unseen—where you literally can only respond with the scripted responses that the company has green-lighted? What would it be like to work in an environment where you never get to share your passions, your interests, or your dreams? Where you are so divorced from amiable human connection that when you hear, “how’s your day,” you don’t even consider the possibility that someone might be speaking to you?