"Vernor Vinge - The Cookie Monster" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vinge Vernor)

After a moment, there was the sound of Victor dropping back into his chair in the next cubicle.

Ol’ Victor had been a pain in the neck from the get-go. He was slick with words; if he wanted to,
he could explain things as good as anybody Dixie Mae had ever met. At the same time, he kept
rubbing it in how educated he was and what a dead-end this customer support gig was. Mr.
Johnson–the guy running the familiarization course–was a great teacher, but smart-ass Victor had
tested the man’s patience all week long. Yeah, Victor really didn’t belong here, but not for the
reasons he bragged about.

It took Dixie Mae almost an hour to finish off seven more queries. One took some research, being a
really bizarre question about Voxalot for Norwegian. Okay, this job would get old after a few
days, but there was a virtuous feeling in helping people. And from Mr. Johnson’s lectures, she
knew that as long as she got the reply turned in by closing time this evening, she could spend the
whole afternoon researching just how to make LotsaTech’s vox program recognize Norwegian vowels.



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Dixie Mae had never done customer support before this; till she took Prof. Reich’s tests last
week, her highest-paying job really had been flipping burgers. But like the world and your Aunt
Sally, she had often been the victim of customer support. Dixie Mae would buy a new book or a cute
dress, and it would break or wouldn’t fit–and then when she wrote customer support, they wouldn’t
reply, or had useless canned answers, or just tried to sell her something more–all the time
talking about how their greatest goal was serving the customer.

But now LotsaTech was turning all that around. Their top bosses had realized how important real
humans were to helping real human customers. They were hiring hundreds and hundreds of people like
Dixie Mae. They weren’t paying very much, and this first week had been kinda tough since they were
all cooped up here during the crash intro classes.

But Dixie Mae didn’t mind. "Lotsa-Tech is a lot of Tech." Before, she’d always thought that motto
was stupid. But LotsaTech was big; it made IBM and Microsoft look like minnows. She’d been a
little nervous about that, imagining that she’d end up in a room bigger than a football field with
tiny office cubicles stretching away to the horizon. Well, Building 0994 did have tiny cubicles,
but her team was just fifteen nice people–leaving Victor aside for the moment. Their work floor
had windows all the way around, a panoramic view of the Santa Monica mountains and the Los Angeles
basin. And li’l ol’ Dixie Mae Leigh had her a desk right beside one of those wide windows! I’ll
bet there are CEO’s who don’t have a view as good as mine. Here’s where you could see a little of
what the Lotsa in LotsaTech meant. Just outside of B0994 there were tennis courts and a swimming
pool. Dozens of similar buildings were scattered across the hillside. A golf course covered the
next hill over, and more company land lay beyond that. These guys had the money to buy the top off
Runyon Canyon and plunk themselves down on it. And this was just the LA branch office.

Dixie Mae had grown up in Tarzana. On a clear day in the valley, you could see the Santa Monica
mountains stretching off forever into the haze. They seemed beyond her reach, like something from
a fairy tale. And now she was up here. Next week, she’d bring her binoculars to work, go over on