“Toggling” means briefly logging out of your phone, then logging back in again. There’s no Pause button—we have as much power over our next call coming in as a Ford worker would have over the next auto part rolling down the assembly line. If you need to do something between calls that will take more than thirty seconds—finish up something complicated from the previous call, use the bathroom, yoga-breathe yourself back from the brink of tears—you have to completely log out. This is extremely forbidden, but I still do it a lot. I don’t really have any other option—I just can’t keep up with the pace yet, no matter how hard I try.

Toggling, Vicki says, is time theft. She glares around the room fiercely. I’m relieved I’m not the only one who looks guilty.

“It is considered stealing from the company,” Vicki says. She has that weird Convergys accent, too, layered over a thicker Carolina one. “That is why you see a clipboard beside me—at the end of the day, I go through the Melody reports, and I correct ’em.”