Why I'm Poorly Regarded: The Transcript

TECH SUPPORT: Thank you for calling Dole Bananas, this is Ben, how may I help you?

SN: Hi, my name is Soren, and I’m having a problem playing one of the games in the Kidz Korner on your web site.

TECH SUPPORT: I’m sorry to hear that; can you describe the problem for me?

SN: Um, it’s when I’m playing Mon key Business, I know for a fact that I beat my high score because I popped 33 balloons, I was counting aloud to myself, but it wouldn’t save it.

TECH SUPPORT: Okay, I see. I’d be happy to help you with that. Would you like me to manually override your high score?

SN: Oh, that would be awesome!

TECH SUPPORT: Certainly. I’ll just need your Kidz Korner username and password. If your parents are there, maybe they know it.

SN: No, that’s okay, I’m forty, so I got it. The username is AlanAlda, and the password is 4077MASH.

TECH SUPPORT: Okay, let me just bring your record up…there we go. Now to manually override a high score, we will need to ask you the two security questions you set up, okay?

SN: Sure, I remember those.

TECH SUPPORT: Okay, the first one is, what is the name of the street you grew up on?

SN: Walnut!

TECH SUPPORT: Okay, and the second one is, can you sum up for me Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the will?

SN: Ooooooh….yeah, let me think for a second. Damn. Um….Schopenhauer was critical of Kant and Hegel’s logical optimism and the belief that individual morality could be determined by society and reason. Right? Is that right?

TECH SUPPORT: Yes, that is correct, but there’s more.

SN: Oh I know, I know….um….Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated only by….oh shoot, they were motivated by something…..it wasn’t fruits and vegetables….was it pride?

TECH SUPPORT: Uhhhh, nooo….

SN: No, wait, it was their own basic desires, or Wille zum Leben, “the will to live”! For him, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. To Schopenhauer, the Will is a metaphysical existence which controls not only the actions of individual, but ultimately all observable phenomena!

TECH SUPPORT: Okay, thank you sir. In three to five business days, your high score should appear on the web site, though I’m required by law to advise you that the Kids Korner will be taken down next Friday with all scores erased.

SN: Oh. Oh. How come?

TECH SUPPORT: How come? You know sir, I don’t have the answer to that question at my fingertips, and frankly, when I was a young man growing up in Paris, wanting only to become a great artist and sacrificing everything I had just to buy paints and canvas, starving on the streets but experiencing an almost hallucinatory joy when a passerby paused on the street to simply glance at one of my landscapes, it’s not a question I thought I would ever have to hear or answer. In fact, now that I think of it, the phrase “Now hiring Dole Bananas Kidz Korner FT/PT Customer Care Specialists / Open interviews on Tuesday” never once entered my mind as I lay night after night beside the enigmatic Arianne on the makeshift bed we made, huddled against the city of light’s brutally cold winter yet warmed and empowered by our dreams of a world where beauty was valued above all things. Is there anything else I can do for you today, sir?

SN: Well….where am I going to play Monkey Business?

TECH SUPPORT: I just don’t know, sir. I just don’t know.