Peter Tompkins

Press One for Murder Peter Tompkins

Captain David Tarmelli of the Akron Police Department discovers that a serial killer is on the loose. His investigation leads him to discover that one victim is a customer at Midland Bank with direct ties to call center customer service representative by the name of Jeremy Gant. If he had to say "Thank you for calling Midland Bank. My Name is Jeremy, how can I make your day a happier one?," one more time he was going to lose his mind. Being employed as a Customer Service Representative at Midland Banks call center in Akron, Ohio burned holes in Jeremy's mind. Each day that he labored at his job was another day a piece of his soul was ripped away. His mind was filled with what lay ahead of him at work: Disembodied voices of customers screaming at him through his head set which also leashed him to his desk for eight hours a day. Visions of Christine, his morbidly obese supervisor, who wreaked of moth balls and insisted on flossing her teeth at her desk while she reviewed his performance with him, flashed before his eyes. The African American lady sitting near him, who obsessively cleaned her left ear every five minutes with a bobby pin made his stomach churn. It was a modern-day freak show and he was slowly becoming one of the freaks. He was slowly losing his mind. The customers that he spoke with on a daily basis could be extremely cruel. Their relentless demands drove many employees to simply take off their headsets and walk out of the call center never to return to work. That compounded with management threatening their jobs if they didn't meet the customers needs within seven minutes without making any mistakes put many into the hospital due to sudden heart conditions and panic attacks. Could the pressures from Jeremy's job cause him to commit murder?