The Diary of a Call Center Slave

Time flies.

A couple of months ago, I just started working and now look at me, I am nearly reaching my sixth month - about to be regularized and about to lose most of my co-workers. Most of them have plans of resigning. It's either they found a better job (or at least would find one) or just plain burnt out of what we usually do for customers - solve their problems and sometimes even worse. But knowing the job vacancies in the Philippines where most of the people earned a college degree, THERE IS NO BETTER JOB. JOB FAIRS offer call center employments. Nothing more. I know so, been there, done that!

In a call center world, it's normal to burst into tears. Not because of joy but frustration. It's normal to hear agents shouting and cursing because of bad calls. It's absolutely normal. A perfectly abnormal setting in the outside world is the absolute normal setting in the call center world. You are paid to be the Americans' shock absorbers. You get to be blamed, shouted at and cursed for something that you did not do. That my friend is the cost of a good paying job here in the Third World Country. We work for every single penny we get. And mind you, most of the time even more. We don't get to have that downtime and idle time where most employees get in their eight-hour-jobs. Our worktime is closely monitored, no time to socialize with co-workers and lunchbreaks are the sickest thing. We go on lunches separately and at different schedules. And no overlunches and overbreaks, otherwise, salary deduction!

In a call center world, we do almost everything. Get to answer calls, one after the other with absolutely no stop. Sometimes it's so sickening you just wished no phones were invented or phones were busted. But whichever the case is, we still would do it all over again all for the sake of money. Money that keeps the world going. Period.

(Sighs.) Gruelling as it is, my job I mean, it pays the bills. It gives me a rather convenient life. If only phonecalls could get me rich, I am now a billionaire. I might be in Carribean even as we speak tanning my butt off and feasting my eyes with men's sculpted bodies flaunting and floating on the sand beaches. But reality check, it's a harsh world. I am not one of the fortunate ones who come from a rich family. I am not bryanboy who constantly travels from one country to the other and regards his journey as just a trip from his house to Starbucks. I am not Paris Hilton whose brain floats in tequilla and goes spending my parents millions to party and be drunk all night everyday. I am not like her whose hobby is to do a sex video and get it available online just because I could not do something more. Unlike the rich and the famous, I need to work to survive. I need to work to pay for the conveniences of life and basic commodities.

Had I known I would be in this business, I should have never studied and squeezed my brains off to graduate, earn a degree and be in this mudpit.

Call Center is a good business. And I am not saying it's an easy job. Hell no!?! It takes a lot of patience to deal and make it in the business. You'll learn to smoke cigarettes (some like crack better), curse while on mute and get back to the customer with all smiles pretending you're unaffected, bitch around after a very bad call, practice the art of selective plasticism (Selective plasticism, a term I used to refer to being good to people who can influence your way up because brilliance and hardwork won't get you there!. In laymans term, sucking up to your bosses.) and to some, get a whole lot of fucking buddies. It takes a lot more if the company you're working for does not recognize your potential and your superior just milk out money from you with her butt tied to her chair doing absolutely nothing!

A lot happens in this business. But that's life - harsh, cruel and selfish. You have to set aside your ideals and principles in the meantime, go with the flow and learn the tools of the trade. That my friend is the bitter truth of the Call Center Business. Very glamorous, huh?