Tough Day for the Army: Stories

Nelson v. the Mormon Smile

1 Nelson v. the Mormon Smile Nelson was worried about his balls, and because Nelson was the kind of person who tended to put his thoughts into words, he leaned over to the cubicle next to him and said to his friend/coworker, Jürgen, “I’m worried about my balls.” Jürgen held up a finger, signaling that Nelson should wait. Jürgen spoke into his headset mouthpiece, asking if Mrs. Luffnagel was home. “Hello? Hello? Mrs. Luffnagel?” He punched the ESC key on his computer and leaned back in his chair to look Nelson in the eye. “Answering machine,” he said. Nelson and Jürgen worked as interviewers for Survey Circle, Inc., Marketing Researchers. The computers in front of them were engaged in predictive dialing, calling many numbers at once, trying to find one with a live human on the other end so Nelson and Jürgen and the twenty-five other workers on their shift could ask questions. Tonight the questions were about fast food; how much, how often, what kinds, degrees of satisfaction, when they anticipated visiting next. Nelson sometimes thought about inserting “having intercourse” into the script wherever it said “eating fast food,” but he knew that would be juvenile, and besides he needed the job. Each week fewer and fewer of the numbers seemed to hit, so Jürgen and Nelson had plenty of time to talk. “Why are you worried about your balls?” “Radiation,” Nelson said. “From cell phones. Turns out they cook your balls if you keep your phone in your pocket. I’ve been carrying my phone in my pocket every waking hour for the past four years. The rats in this study I read about got ‘marble-sized’ tumors in less 2 than three months. I can’t even look at what’s going on down there. I shower with my eyes closed.” “How did the rats keep the phones in their pockets?” “I dunno. I guess they like taped the phones to their junk.” “Sounds cruel. You know what you should be worried about?” “What’s that?” “Your deodorant.” “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” “Aluminum chlorohydrate—it gives you Alzheimer’s.” “Fuck.” Lance Riggins, one cube over from Jürgen, leaned past the cubicle walls, showing his cinder-block head, face as broad as a cereal box, and glared at Nelson. Nelson flipped him the bird in return and mouthed, “Screw you.” Survey Circle, Inc., was owned and operated by Mormons, which made sense because they were located in Provo, Utah. Ninety-five percent of the employees were Mormon, almost all of them students at BYU, which meant nasty looks if you said “Fuck” and no coffee machine in the break room. Nelson and Jürgen got hired because Survey Circle, Inc., needed to keep a certain percentage of non-Mormons on the payroll so the federal government didn’t come down on them for discrimination. Nelson and Jürgen had, for all practical purposes, total job security, since there were very few non-Mormons in Provo, and an even smaller percentage of the nonMormon Provoians had a desire to work for Survey Circle Marketing Research, Inc. A Venn diagram would show a very small intersection, with only Nelson and Jürgen inside. Nelson and Jürgen were supposed to be in Park City, not Provo, teaching snowboarding to hot college chicks on vacation, but Nelson and Jürgen failed the drug test because they both liked pot, because— what the fuck?—they were snowboarders. They didn’t anticipate the piss test, but there’s insurance involved and shit, and they took it anyway, certain they would fail on the merits, but hoping for some kind of clerical error in their favor. But now they were “flagged,” as 3 in no jobs teaching snowboarding in the state of Utah, period. The work they could get was at Survey Circle, Inc., which didn’t have a drug-testing policy because Mormons don’t do drugs because if they did they wouldn’t have any space reserved for them in the celestial kingdom, which Nelson understood to be a kind of endless family reunion lit up by the very bright light of God. Nelson had no truck with the Mormon view of the afterlife. He had zero interest in meeting up with most of his relatives for an afternoon , let alone eternity, except his mother, who died when Norman...