Call Time

I've mentioned call time here before, but I haven't really done it justice yet. I can't even think about it without having a visceral reaction- not entirely negative, but, well, I'll do my best to describe it.

There were plenty of rules, guidelines, goals, and the like for us field organizers, but none was hit harder than this one: call time is sacred. It was usually 3 hours a day when I started. It moved up to 4 on most days after that, and by the time election day had appeared on the horizon we were doing 5 every weekday, none on Saturday (though none sometimes turned into 3) and 4 on Sunday.

90% of that was volunteer recruitment. Usually it was 100%, but there were a few weeks when half of it was persuasion. One pleasant surprise: I loved and kicked ass at persuasion. Sometimes it took 10 minutes, but if someone wasn't already on one side or the other, I could often bring them over to Obama. Sadly, after a few weeks of that, the higher-ups decided it would be more efficient to have us do vol recruitment the whole time and have the volunteers do the persuading. Maybe that was true, but 4 hours of volunteer recruitment could be excruciating.

Here's what a great call time would be like for me: Before it started (usually around 4 or 5), I would nip over to the CVS and pick up snacks (usually trail mix and/or cookies) and, if it felt right, the energy drink called Rumba. I wouldn't call it healthy, but it's fruit juice based and doesn't have high fructose corn syrup for what that's worth. Right before I got started with the calls I would say to myself: "Let's get ready to Rumba!" then I would crack open my beverage and flip open my phone.

Looking at those words, I feel slightly ridiculous, but given the task at hand, anything to get me pumped up helped. The job was to make roughly 30 calls per hour for 4 hours straight. Ideally I would tear through a bunch in the first two hours so that I would have time for breaks. When I was really rumbling, I could do 40-50 an hour. On some nights I might be close to 100 by around the midway point. Even better, I might have had some success at the actual point of call time which was to turn people into volunteers. With some success in the first half, I could relax a little more in the last hour or so.

I would have a really good night of calls maybe once or twice a week. The other nights were mostly average and sometimes crappy. When I say average, I mean average for spending 4 consecutive hours calling strangers and asking them to volunteer their time (check the "Volunteer Ask" post if you want more of that story). You sort of get used to it, but it never really breezed by and was over before I knew it. There were two main things that could make call time fun and satisfying: Rumba and success. Snacks made it more tolerable. I had snacks almost every night, Rumba I tried to keep to a few times a week and success came and went like warm days in March or good news during the Bush administration.

Of course there was a substitute for Rumba or coffee or whatever and that was actual energy. I have some of that these days. I feel more healthy and alive, less drowsy and propped up by caffeine. I would put myself at around a 6 or 7 on most days. By September I hung around 4, and could clamber up to the midpoint with coffee. By October it was more like 2 or 3, as close to crashing as I was to normal, often closer. The best part of my day was when I went home and had some dinner, while I sunk into a chair and Rachel Maddow would say, "You'll never guess what McCain said today." The whole idea of feeling good as a general state, like when you get enough sleep, eat well, get some exercise, that sort of thing, was simply not on the table until after the election. It took at least a month till after it was all done before I really felt "back."

In a way the most impressive thing about the campaign was that they got us to do stuff like that. It took constant nudging, but they got us stressed, sleep-deprived warriors to start at 9am, work through the day, and then when most people would be finishing up, pull out our phones and make calls for 4 friggin hours. And that wasn't even the end of the work day.

Secret Post!

Alright Wonkavator fans, here's the deal: I do have a post ready to go, but, I'm not going to put it in this space. The reason is that it is about someone specific, and while I don't think he (or maybe even she) reads this blog, you can never be sure on the ol' interweb. Back in 2003 (I think) when the internet was just starting to unfold into the beast it is now (it was the Friendster internet), I had a formative internet moment. There was a girl who went to college with me, and I had never talked to her, but I knew who she was, mostly by virtue of going to a school with 2800 other students. This girl was, for lack of a more accurate word, mannish. Eventually, rumors started to circulate that she in fact used to be a man. I'm a big believer in "to each their own," but we couldn't help being curious. Using nothing but her name, a logical guess on what her male name might have been, and of course google (just starting to take over), I was able to confirm this in 10 minutes. I didn't do anything fancy either. I googled one name, then the other, and that was enough. To repeat, I didn't know her personally, and within 10 minutes I was able to confirm that she had had a sex change. Maybe that's not as weird these days, but that was my first real moment of the internet revealing more information than it necessarily should. I'm all for the free spread of information, but maybe people should be able to have a sex change without it being public knowledge.

Anyway, the point is that once something is out there, you can't control what happens to it (the other point is that I think that story is amazing in a sort of sick way and I felt like telling it). Therefore, if you want to read the most recent post, you need to send me an email or let me know in the comments section or something.

And for what it's worth, I wouldn't bother with this story at all, but I feel like it ought to be told in some form. Curious, aren't you. The ball is in your court- whack it back!