inside call centers

December 8, 2007

This is a reply to the youngblood post I read. I was surprised, insulted and furious at the same time because she claimed to have worked in the industry for a long time. So she thinks she's knowledegeable enough. Define knowledgeability. Here are 5 facts about the industry she cited.

Fact No. 1: The call center is the new church of the gay religion.

Fact No. 2: The call center industry is the breeding ground for “college bosses.” … Oftentimes, these bosses get to where they are not because of their superior skills and intelligence but because of their great “talent” to smother their own bosses with praises and compliments and their ability to kiss butts..

Fact No. 3: The call center industry is slowly turning into a haven for the “plastics.” The movie “Mean Girls” glorified the “plastics” as portrayed by Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. They are basically persons who do not show their true colors, and most of the time they engage in backbiting.

Fact No. 4: The call center industry is the modern-day Garden of Eden. It is where single men and women meet, work together and fall in love. It is also where married men and married women meet, work together, fall in love and leave their wives or husbands. Morality and social obligations are often overlooked, if not, deliberately forgotten as lust triumphs completely.

Fact No. 5: The call center industry is a ticket for foreign travels. Most call center companies nowadays include training abroad as part of the job offer to entice the best applicants. 

Excuse me but all these things happen to all working environments every-effing-day. If she happened to know colleague with these lifestyles, it is not for her to conclude that these are facts exclusive in the call center arena. 

The truth is our society is the one changing. Homosexuality is accepted more openly. As for college bosses, well, the performance metrics now are very dynamic. These college bosses may be young but they aren't merely college graduates to begin with but talented go-ahead leaders. Though management sometimes ripens with age, age is not a basis of efficient management. Non sequitur. Makes me think that writer was bitter because she either did not get promoted and ended working for someone younger than her or perhaps, her boyfriend left her for another guy.

Call center is not the only haven of plastics. The reality is all working environments can be places where you should practice the great DTA policy (Don't Trust Anybody). Like in any place there are good ones. bad ones, and good-enough-for-you ones. I guess I'm lucky because I've found a few good ones at Sykes.

And don't give me Fact No. 4 because honestly, finding 'someone' is a global phenomenon (and crisis if I may say). As for overlooked morality, well, I know more immorality other than adultery in other working environments. Try the congress! So you must be the husband?

As for the last fact, I know a lot who declined opportunities to go abroad for training simply because they don't want to enter binding contracts. Foreign travels like any other opportunities have trade-offs and it's just a matter of priorities and need if people accept them.

It's so insulting how society underestimate those who are working in BPO's particularly in call centers as if our only core skills are to speak in English well and stay awake through the night. Honestly. there was a time when I thought I'd follow through the BPO career path. There are so much opportunities in the industry and I prefer the work ethics practiced here. I know that I just have to give soon because of my health and studies yet, it's in readings like this that give me more reason to stay and prove those people wrong.

commencement

December 4, 2007

Lately, I enjoyed browsing through commencement speeches. They are so inspiring! I feel like I'm graduating a stage in my life and I need some sort of commencement. I need something to remind me that whatever I am supposed to begin is something worth it. Actually I can't say that I'm starting over. I can hardly pinpoint much more explain it if you ask me. I may just be working on a new outlook but for me this is a prelude to something big.

Here are some of the lines I liked:

***"I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way… So, that's what I wish for all of you: the bad as well as the good. Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally. And remember that the story is never over." -from Conan O'Brien. Harvard grad pala siya!

***"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Encourage them take risks, and in doing so they can learn how to fail. Notice that I did not say "make them take risks so they can fail." I said "so they can learn how to fail." Because only in learning how to fail do you learn resilience. Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. I would add that sometimes the enemy is your own fear." -Martha Loudder quoting Winston Churchill.

***"Practice Patience. Whether you sit around like I do, working for that perfect word, or you are working toward a dream job, or wishing for a dreamy sweetheart. Things will come to you when you are ready to handle them—not before. Just keep walking your road." - Suzan-Lori Parks

Here's one of the best lines I read from Steve Jobs: You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I like Steve Jobs' speech most. Perhaps because he dwelled on the circumstances in his life where he thought he was in the losing end yet it turned out that things happened for the better. In the Witch of Portobello, it was said that the best consolation you can get in a loss is the possible hope that things happen for the best. There was even a story there where a girl left her bag in her house so she spent the next hour trying to unlock the door to get in. Because of this, she missed a job interview and didn't get the job she wanted. It was said that had she been chosen for the job, she would have died six months after in a car accident related to the job.

Funny because sometimes I become so cynical about this whole idea. Sometimes I think that saying that things happen for a reason is just some loser's alibi for his failure. But then again I am one person  who has always believed in destiny. My friend Maui even  told me last weekend that my most overused lines are "Trade-off lang yan" and "What are the odds?" Believing in odds and what's-meant-to-be is my way of trusting on Divine intervention, some cosmic powers and even luck. So though it's a mystery on how much failure you can handle in a day, on how odd it is to be odd without even having a trade-off, of how the waiting seemed not worth it anymore, it is still best to pause, believe and have faith. In faith, like love, if you believe, no reason is necessary, if you don't, no reason is possible.

To my few friends who might read this: kindly pray for me, pretty please. There's something I want that is really important for me. May it be God's will. : ) I pray that all that's happening to our lives be a fine dot we can be thankful for however grim they appear right now.