Current mood:

contemplative

Confessions of a Call Center Agent
One small, tiny, insignificant fact that I have deliberately forgotten to mention on my journal (cough...) is that as of last June 22nd, I no longer work as a call center agent.

And trust me when I say that it has never felt so good.

True, my exit wasn't the most graceful there ever was and I think I may have just gone down the company's history books (though I doubt I'll ever be as notorious as the couple caught shagging in the break room during my first month with Sutherland), AND the period wherein I was looking for a new job has been INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT, but I suppose that I'm glad that I did what I did, and I beleieve that everything that happened afterwards happened with a purpose and with a reason.

As for what I was thinking at the time... well, here's something that I never told any of my superiors during the exit interview (I gave some lame excuse that compensation wasn't enough and their health provider sucked... which was true. It DID suck.), but here's the absolute truth: One day, I went to work as I usually did, I started getting ready, I prepared my station and pulled up my tools, and I put on my headset... and then, in a split-second, something just snapped at the back of my head and screamed that this wasn't what I wanted to do; I don't want to be just another among thousands; I'm better than this; there were other things that I knew how to do besides answer the phone and sound reassuring; I didn't want to be there and I should get out as soon as I can before it's too late.

And so I did.

The closest analogy that I could think of at the moment would be a hamster happily running in its wheel, then suddenly realizing that, holy crap, it's a hamster and all the time that it's been running, it has not gotten anywhere at all.

I dunno. It's very difficult to explain.

Ofcourse, there have been moments when I beat myself over the head, wondering what the heck I just did and if it was all a mistake. Sometimes the mental and emotional strain was tremendous and I cried a lot as one problem piled on top of another, but as days went by, I realized that I was still here, I'm still whole and I could hold on a bit longer, one day at a time.

Again, let me reiterate that it was NOT EASY AT ALL. With Lem also being jobless at the time, we had to make ends meet. Our savings account is nearly dead and is only being recuperated from time to time, thanks to Lem's mom. There have been times when we wondered how we'll get our next meal or how we'll pay for the bills, at least.

But the universe provides for its children, no matter how wayward they may be.

During that whole time, my sales on eBay suddenly became frequent. Maybe it's just the trend or the season since school enrollment season is over and people have more money to spare, but eitherway, it helped a lot. The sales didn't come as one big chunk of money suddenly falling into our lap. Instead, what happened was that right before the money from one sale ran out, another item got sold. It managed to stretch itself throughout the period when we were both job-hunting, and it continues to do so until now.

And the funniest part? Some time ago, I desperately needed 1800 pesos so that I could afford a full medical check-up so that I can enter the new job that I'm in right now (that's another story). Just days before the check-up we had ZERO money, or at least just enough for fare to get around the city. Suddenly, one of the obscurest items that I had which I have been trying to sell for so long for 2000 pesos got sold, and the buyer, though a newbie, paid me the very next day. It's nothing short of a miracle, and it strengthened my conviction that we can HOLD ON A BIT MORE.

Lem and I both have jobs again, but we're not out of the red yet. It will take a bit more time before we're in the clear and before we can start paying the money we owe Lem's mom who has shouldered our rent for a while now. After that, we can start building our savings again.

I'm still thankful, though, that we occassionally still had a teeny bit to spare from time to time to have fun (we got to watch POTC2, didn't we?). :)

Anyway, as I looked back on the past year that I was working in a call center, I realized just how detrimental to my growth the entire experience has been.

Ofcourse, I'm not speaking for everyone. I'm speaking for myself since I do know some people who have found their success in the call center industry, and I'm very happy for them. I'm also not saying that it was ALL horrible, since I've met some of the nicest friends in call centers and I love them to bits, and I do have some very fond memories and lots of funny moments to look back on.

However, I just found that the call center environment has not only made me lazy and decadent, but it has also made me stupid.

A year ago, I wrote poems, stories, I knew how to build web pages from scratch, I knew how to draw, I took photos and I was planning to put together a portfolio. I made illustrations that people actually paid for. I knew how to DO THINGS. Nowadays, a pencil feels strange in my hand and I have to re-learn everything again, and if it wasn't for this journal, I think I may b typng lyk ths by nw. OMG LOLZ.

While I worked as an agent, what have I been doing?

Now, the thing with working as an agent is that the lifestyle associated with it is very easy to fall into. It's so easy to get used to it. Afterall, after paying the rent and the bills, you still had enough left to buy coffee at Starbucks whenever you felt like it. You can afford that book you really wanted. You can have a big breakfast at an expensive restaurant. You can treat your parents to places you would all normally avoid due to the price. When you're too lazy to go out, you can just simply order for food to be delivered and it felt like nothing could hurt your wallet.

And the normal work day? It was basically composed of waking up, wondering what to eat, going to work and spewing out routine answers for the next nine hours, going home, wondering what to eat, and then going to bed.

As I've mentioned, lazy, decadent and stupid.

(Again, I'm not saying that all call center agents are lazy, decadent and stupid. In fact, being a call center agent ain't so simple or as easy sometimes. It just so happened that this was how that experience affected ME.

I feel like litmus paper, or #9 in an "8 out of 10" survey.)

Now that I have a new job, I realized how sheltered we were in the call center environment.

During my orientation, I was expecting to be given a period of maybe a week for training in order to get used to everything. Apparently, that wasn't how it worked in the real world, so you could just imagine my nervousness and my shaking knees when I learned that I had to get used to everything, and PRODUCE on my very first day.

I was also expecting the usual 2-day rest days, so again, imagine me taking a really hard swallow when I learned that since the company is still small and understaffed as it's still in the middle of setting up their local operations, the normal work week consists of SIX days. And this week, I need to work EIGHT DAYS STRAIGHT.

In a call center, you could render overtime when and if you felt like it. Not so in the real world. You rendered overtime because you had to move your ass to finish your task.

In a call center, you were just another among thousands. You were employee number ph010238. You were the girl in glasses in so and so's team. Outside the call center, the head manager calls me by my proper name and/or my nickname. It's scary, and I'm sometimes tempted to go back to the anonymity of numbers, but then again, I never knew that my name had a nice ring to it (hehe.... unless I screw up a task in front of said manager, I suppose...). Our system head is a white guy who has a quirky taste for bad Filipino music (he likes Cueshe!! The horror!) and likes to play pranks. Our HR people are two lovely ladies. I know the people in the shifts before and after mine. They all call me by my name. Not by my surname. Not by my ID number.

The differences in so many aspects are just so stark, to the point of staggering. Until now, it all makes me wonder what the heck I've been doing for the past year or so.

I now write for a living and it pays as much as working in a call center. Maybe more. Not exactly novelist material (how I wish, haha!), but at least I now feel like I'm in my proper place. Lem has also found a job where he can make proper use of his skills.

It was not easy to find these kinds of jobs in the first place, so I feel very lucky that we got into the companies that we're in right now. Afterall, opening a copy of Jobfinder requires swimming through dozens and dozens of call center ads. If you were to take out all the announcements for call center openings, Jobfinder would most likely be four pages thick.

I was actually supposed to have a final interview at PeopleSupport but I didn't show up. Maybe it's arrogance, but I swore that I would never go back to a call center unless I absolutely had no choice, and even then, I'd most likely take the first chance to get out.

I suppose the lack of options in this country saddens me as well, but then again, that's another topic for another post.

Oh, and have I mentioned that my parents still have no idea about this whole episode? I know I should have told them, but I was afraid that if I did, they would manage to convince me to stay, or worse, make me think that I made a bad choice and I'll end up regretting everything afterwards.

It would have been impractical and an utter waste in their eyes. I wouldn't know how to tell them what it was really like for me. All they know is that I've been earning above minimum wage, and that I could have moved up in the company. All they hear are the empty compliments and the superfluous commendations that I get. It's all empty, and I have no idea how to tell them that.

Maybe I'll tell them once I can show them that it wasn't a bad choice at all.

Just this once, I have something to prove not because I want to be right, but because there are people who need to be reassured that everything will be okay. But I still refuse to let others tell me what to do with my life though. I know, I'm a stubborn ass. I'll just have to surprise them, I guess. Bad joke, I know.


I feel weird that despite that lengthy post, I still feel like I haven't been able to correctly or fully express what I wanted to say.

Have I?

I need practice.

So there. For the past couple of months, epiphany after epiphany came crashing down on our heads. It sometimes felt like getting hit by a truck, but as some dead guy said somewhere, "No regrets. Find your bliss. Que sera sera. Just do it. 525,600 minutes."

Okay, so that wasn't how it went.

We're surviving this upheaval. It feels like an earthquake, but we'll still be here after the ground has shifted and the landscape has changed. I know it.