Generation A Read Online Free PDF Page A

Abercrombie & Fitch in a warehouse building at Bandaranaike Airport. I knew this was only temporary, as my love of American-produced global culture and my knowledge of the inner life of Craigs would one day allow me to become an actual call centre phone staffer, and yes, after some years my wish came true.
    I quickly rose through the ranks and was placed in charge of the Abercrombie & Fitch American-Canadian Central Time Zone Call Division. This occurred because I was able to give fellow workers hints not listed on our official standardized greetings sheet—obvious words like “awesome!” or “sweet,” and also more subtle phrases such as, “I can tell from your voice that you’re totally going to enjoy what you’ve already bought, and for a limited time only, get two silk-cashmere short-sleeve cable shells for the price of one, plus a fleece pashmina wrap at no extra cost. Think about it. You deserve it—and think of how free you’ll feel out in the fall air wearing all these hot items.”
    I enjoyed helping (I am now quoting an in-house memo) “provide a completely customer-centric operation by consistently enhancing customer service while trying to gain a better understanding of our customers’ shopping patterns and preferences.”
    I was an excellent salesman. But I am supposed to tell the story of when I was stung, so I will perhaps return later to tales of Abercrombie & Fitch.
    I quickly became contemptuous of the people on the phone on the other side of the planet, twelve hours away. My territory was the North American Midwest, and the only thing that really kept me on the straight and narrow was the possibility of taking over the highly glamorous, Maine-containing New England Division, located over by the guava bins at the far end of the warehouse. The other good thing about my job was unlimited high-speed Internet access at the end of the day (a twelve-hour day, mind you). For this I would have worked for free.
    However, I did not wish to be a passive participant in the Internet. I wanted to add my voice to the babble and so, for fun, I created a prank commerce site on which I sold “celebrity room tones.” It was a beautifully designed site (I cloned a Swiss site that sells cutlery) and entirely convincing.
    What is a celebrity room tone?
    For $4.99 you could visit my site and download one hour of household silence from rooms belonging to a range of celebrities, all of whom promised to donate their royalties to charity. There was Mick Jagger (London; metropolitan), Garth Brooks (rural; some jet noise in the background), Cameron Diaz (Miami; sexy, sunny, flirty) and so forth. For cachet, I threw in household silences from the Tribeca lofts of underworld rock survivor Lou Reed and motherly experimental performance artist Laurie Anderson.
    I was quickly flamed by many potential shoppers, hounding me at [email protected] to ask why their Amex or Visa wouldn’t process.
    And then came an email from the New York Times asking to do a short piece on the site for its weekend Style section. So there I was, sitting in an office chair made from three cannibalized office chairs, dripping with sweat and staring longingly at the guava bins, as a woman named Leslie asked me whether I had a prepared artist’s statement and jpegs of myself I could send her. I had told the delightful Leslie that my name was Werner and that I was based out of Kassel, Germany, because it seemed like the kind of place that would be home to over-educated people with nothing better to do than to design commodities like designer silence. I’d affected a German accent and was, in general, very prickly.
    “Yes,” I said. “I suppose you would want a photo, as your section is dominated by photos.”
    There was a slight pause before Leslie replied, a pause long enough to let me know that she considered me a pain.
    I said, “I plan to launch my new line of room tones in coordination with your article’s appearance.”
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