Trying Hard: The Truth About Call Center Agents and Survival

I always hear about people laughing at call center agents and the BPO industry in general. They say it’s full of lazy, incompetent, try-hard sweatshop laborers. Often, the stories I hear about call center agents involve them showing off their newfound ability to mouth off in English by having loud conversations in jeepneys, and altercations in places like coffee shops and fast-food restaurants, where, of course, the call center agent is the pretentious wannabe yelling at staff in their fake midwestern accent. They earn the ire of doctors for their sorry attempts at faking their way towards a medical certificate. And of course, call center agents have always been the butt of jokes by licensed professionals and the so-called intellectual elite who view the BPO industry as a bastion of incompetence.

I don’t blame them. The BPO industry is full of people who come from all walks of life, and this includes those who tend to be sneered at as being undesirable, primarily because the barrier to entry is quite low. For most call center jobs, the only requirement is that you must be able to read, speak, and write in business-grade English (which doesn’t really take much to do). This results in the industry becoming a hodgepodge of people who hail from practically all backgrounds, but mostly from the hoi polloi, the unwashed masses, the plebs, since, after all, they do make up the majority of our population. True, there are those who come from the A’s, B’s, and C’s, those who come from prestigious schools like UP, Ateneo, and DLSU, and there are those who come in or eventually emerge as lawyers, engineers, artists, and such. But most of the people you will find in the BPO industry are who the news would usually refer to as being part of the masa, people who can only be passionate about survival and nothing else. Call centers are full of socially immobile people who either can’t land a better job because their meager capacity can’t afford them the kind of education that they desire, or whose eclectic interests and personalities do not align with any particular profession that our current society would consider noteworthy.

So to me, it wouldn’t be a surprise if you meet a call center agent who doesn’t have enough cultural capital to carry themselves in a manner that won’t end up being seen as jologs by those coming from the upper echelons of society.

But then again, who can blame call center agents for trying hard? Indeed, to survive is to try hard. And that is exactly what they are doing: they are doing their best to survive, with their dignity intact as much as possible.

And what better way to keep their dignity intact than by being a reflection of society’s ideals? Especially those of the rich and entitled who insult and disparage those whom they consider of lower status. The media seem to think so; their primetime telenovelas are rife with portrayals of rich old women slapping each other and calling each other names. So why not imitate the elitist assholes by being fake elitist assholes themselves?

That, or maybe being an elitist asshole isn’t exclusive to any particular social strata or industry. Painting all call center agents with one brush isn’t just uneducated stereotyping, it’s also unfair to the vast majority who carry themselves with decency and pride.

At the end of the day, the BPO industry is not a caricature of incompetence but a mirror of Philippine society itself: messy, diverse, unequal, but always pushing forward. If call center agents are trying hard, it’s because survival in this country demands it. And if they’re mocked for that, perhaps the joke says less about them and more about us.

Note to self

I need to make a decision about what I really want to do with my spare time.

Wait, wasn't I extremely busy with my work and studies?

Well, fortunately, my work's still there. In fact, for the most part, the past year has been all about work. So much that I, without the knowledge of my family, have decided to place my studies on "pause" for a while.

Side note: I hereby officially announce that I am once again in hiatus from college life.

I'm not exactly sure when I'd be going back to my scholastic pursuits, as there are still several factors to consider before I go back. Either way, my appetite for school is currently at an all-time low, and I need to recharge myself for a bit. And by recharge, I mean distract myself with a ton of free time.

Which is a bit of a problem, by the way, as I don't know if I have actually freed a lot of my time so far, because right now, my daily schedule is a mess. I'm supposed to sleep at 10pm every night, wake up at 5:45, start working by 6am, finish up at 1:30, and everything after that should all be free time for myself. But for several reasons, (mostly internet-based ones), I can't help but stay up late, which then leads to me waking up late and sleep-deprived the next morning. And because I lack the proper amount of sleep, I tend to take long naps in the middle of the day, usually before I'm supposed to log out of work. So at the end of the day, I've worked less efficiently and I've spent more time sleeping than I should have, which really doesn't translate into more free time.

But I digress. This is actually an easy problem to solve, especially now that I've lessened my life burdens somewhat. Once I get myself back into the proper sleep rhythm, everything should be back to normal, and then I get my free time.

Which now takes me back to my original question: Now that I am at the verge of having a lot of free time, what should I do with it?

Well, actually I already have some ideas brewing inside my head for the past couple of weeks now:

1) Start a new blog that's focused on my professional experience - I've always wanted to do some creative non-fictional writing about the things I've learned over the course of my time as a young professional. Maybe even make some money out of it through ads (and possibly youtube videos), assuming that I market my blog well through social media, and that there's an actual niche for it.

2) Start an online magazine - Since I'm already on the subject of monetizing content on the internet, might as well talk about my idea of having my own e-zine website. I'm still not sure what the main focus of the website's going to be, but I'm pretty sure it would revolve around subjects that I'm very familiar with and/or very passionate about. The site could end up as an extension or an expansion of my "professional" blog, where I could talk about tech, home-based work, and other stuff that I come across in my everyday work. Probably add in a small section for viral stuff as well.

I've also thought about opening an online men's magazine, now that FHM's shying away from "mature" stuff. My next-door neighbor's a budding photographer; we could probably team up and make our own content. Definitely not sure about this one, but I did think about it, so I'm putting it up here. Might not fit into my idea of something that can be done during my free time, though.

3) Learn day-trading - I ordered a book about day-trading in the stock market yesterday so that I can start learning about turning the stock market into a day job. I want to add day trading to my repertoire of skills as a possible contingency plan just in case everything goes wrong with my current job. I still don't have the necessary capital to begin with (I've heard I may need amounts of up to 200k to start trading), but at least I've put in the necessary intellectual capital before I start diving into it.

4) Practice driving, and possibly branch out into the transport business? - My recent experience with Uber has piqued my interest about the transportation industry, and I might end up running a transport business. I don't have any background on it, but from what I've learned, it doesn't seem too complicated.

5) Others. Will edit them in as soon as I remember them.

So there, I have a handful of plans that I have been dreaming of for some time now. Notice that most of them are inclined towards opening up additional streams of income for myself. That's because I'm 30 now, and I need to start earning money if I want to travel and see the world before my bones start creaking.

When am I going to act on them, though?

No. Freaking. Clue. Maybe once I'm done whipping my schedule back into shape?

Well, I guess for now I'll just have to leave my ideas as they are: ideas. Though, I'm writing them down in the hopes that I get to doing at least one or two of them in the very near future. I'd write this post down on a post-it and stick it on my monitor. But I'm not that kind of guy, and it would ruin the aesthetic of my current setup. So this blog post will have to do.

Note to self: read this post every day, then hit yourself with something hard. It might help.

A reply to "Telling Girls To 'Cover Up' For Boys Promotes Rape Culture"

I posted this as a comment to the article entitled "Telling Girls To 'Cover Up' For Boys Promotes Rape Culture" by Ms. Stephanie Shi of Cosmopolitan.ph.

I, for one, strongly agree that women are not supposed to be treated as sexual objects, and every man should be taught not to harass, catcall, rape, or creep upon women, regardless of what they're wearing (I do have some reservations regarding womens' fashion and exposure of skin, but that's for a different topic).

However, in our present state, where not everyone has access to proper education, especially in depressed areas, women are still at a risk of being harassed or raped by men who are uninitiated to the modern principles behind women's rights, and most of the time it's because these men can do so. No police presence to enforce these lofty ideals, nor are these criminals exposed to suppressors of sexual instinct like education and proper moral guidance.

True, exposing skin should not be a reason to be raped. Same as flaunting your money in public should not an excuse to be stolen from. However, that will only work in a perfect society where people and their thoughts are policed extremely well, where everyone's morals is calibrated with each other, and where people are free from social ills like poverty that prevent them from sublimating sexual energies into more productive activities. Until that is achieved, everyone should protect themselves before relying on society and its constructs to uphold their personal well-being.

Still in crisis, and I'm loving it

I'm pretty sure I've already written about how much I've been trying to avoid any discussion of the social or political kind, mostly because I'm not properly equipped to be involved in such, but I've already forgotten where I put that damn post. Oh well.

Anyway, this is merely a reaffirmation of my previously-stated stand on political/social issues and/or current social trends: I don't have any particular stand on anything, I don't take sides, or, at the very least, I am inhibiting myself from being a part of one.

I may have some ideas and thoughts about such issues, brewing inside this tiny brain of mine. But they're all underdone due to the fact that my education in these issues is only as much as the amount of relevant information that a glance on Facebook or a quick read on some news site can provide, which happen to be very inadequate for the purpose of having a meaningful discussion of said issues.

Now, I am fully aware that since I am a part of this society and a citizen of this country, I am somewhat responsible for taking part in the public exchange of ideas in order show that I actually care about what's happening. Also, even though I may not seem like it, I do care about our society in general, since, at the end of the day, everything that's happened within our country will eventually find itself into my life, and of course I would want to be prepared for when that happens. So yes, I am compelled, through the awareness of my responsibility towards society and the concern for my personal well-being, to learn about these national issues, read about them, and talk about them with other people who actually care about these things. It is a responsibility, to myself and to others, there's no doubt about it.

And make no mistake, I do want to get involved. I do fancy the idea that there are some things in this society that I think will improve a little bit (or a lot, depending on whether or not you'd agree with me), if only I was allowed to add my own personal touch to them. Yes, sometimes I do like thinking about the things I could try to do to fix this nation and the people within it.

So there, I do want to join in.

But, well, to give you the short version of things, I'm just too preoccupied with my own goddamn life to worry about things like politics and social issues.

I currently have two major responsibilities in my life right now: my work and my schooling, both of which need my full-time attention, which is already a burden in itself. So that already eliminates the possibility of me trying to read up on relevant social issues, because I simply do not have any time for it.

Aside from my own unavailability, another huge reason for me to not participate is that there are people out there who are way, way more qualified than I am to talk about these things, and that they usually don't like associating with me in particular.

Strange reason, yes, but let me explain in detail.

For starters, whenever I finally get the chance to read up on social issues, they're usually articles or social media posts written by people who happen to be within my own social circles. Not exactly people that I can call friends, though, as most of them find it below themselves to consider me as worthy of their company, but I have been acquainted with them somehow. Anyway, whenever I attempt to insert a thought into their conversations, I end up getting rebuffed, usually in a very harsh, condescending manner, probably because I sound stupid, or because the topic at hand is way out of my depth.

I've had one too many experiences of that sort in the past, and because of this I guess I've become party to our country's so-called "culture of ignorance", which is basically the tendency of "ordinary" people like me to shy away from intellectual discussion, usually expressed through the phrase, "andami mong alam!". This is mainly because almost all intelligent people that I know of are, well, dicks. From my own point of view, they all seem like intellectual elitist assholes who usually brush off the opinion of small people like me without even trying to consider the context of our opinion and the circumstances behind our inability to express our ideas as well as they can. So, for me, these supposedly all-encompassing social issues become the private realm of these stuck-up intellectuals, an invitation-only gentleman's club of elitist douche bags, and we are all left behind to simmer in our own soup of mediocrity. For people like me, we just end up going after the more personally relevant things, like being successful at our own jobs and our own lives, because we've been pushed away from the discourse.

Now I know that by saying I'm going to leave the more important issues to the smarter guys, it's gonna mean that I would have no choice but to surrender myself to wherever their intellectual revolution might take all of us. Well, in a way, I guess that's true. And it's not like I had any choice in the first place, since I'm too inept to be of any significance to any kind of intellectual discourse. As far as I'm concerned, what's important is that their tentacles do not approach the narrow bubble of space that is my own personal life. I could care less about what they do as long as I'm left alone to my own devices.

The last major reason for my non-participation is that, well, I'm still in the middle of my own existential crisis, hence the title of this blog. All the power that my limited mental capacities can muster are all focused on the questions of my own existence. My own purpose. Ultimately, my stances on religion, politics, society, and all that good stuff will all depend on my own moral compass and my own principles, which, at this point, are still under construction, so to speak.

So basically what I'm saying is, fuck the society for now. Eventually, I'll be a bit more mature about things, and I'll be more read up about stuff, and when that time comes, the public sphere can eat me whole, for all I care. But for now, I have more important things to take care of, so y'all will just have to catch me later, when I'm a little more prepped up for the talk.

A reaction to the movie "Her"

I don't think I'll be able to recover from the melancholy that this movie has left me in any time soon.

I feel like I just took a huge hit in the gut. I'm all out of breath, and I still can't get up from the emotional roller coaster that this movie has dragged me through.

Jealousy. Frustration. Misery. Sexual Intimacy. All in a visually-stunning package.

Damn this movie for making me feel this way.

Why I need to stop posting on Facebook

OR: why it sucks to know that a 16-year-old's got more wisdom than me.

I was on the verge of posting a video of Amon Amarth on my Facebook wall. Their song "Father of the Wolf" was pretty awesome, and even though I'm not an actual fan of the metal genre, I really liked the entire song, especially the guitar solo part and the music video (which I believe is there not to be the superficial marketing part, but as an actual part of the song's presentation). So much that I wanted to shout to the world that I am a hardcore metalhead by posting the video on Facebook, just for the sake of showing that I AM am that hardcore.

I want to be hardcore. Because it's cool to be hardcore. People go to certain lengths just to be seen as hardcore, even though they've never held a guitar in their lives.

But, then again, I need to stop being so pretentious. I know I'm not hardcore. For chrissakes, I'm studing to become a four-eyed accountant right now. I spend entire weeks sitting alone in front of my computer, playing video games and watching Japanese porn. So, even though I still don't have the answer to the question of who I really am, at the very least, I do know who and what I'm not. And right now, I can pretty much say for certain that I am not a metalhead.

So, yeah, I ended up not posting the video, because I realized that by doing so, I will just begin to pretend once more. At the end of the day, it's all too easy to pretend on Facebook. All it takes is a few strokes of a keyboard, and anybody can be anyone they want to. It's easy to control your image if you're behind a screen. 

It's also quite sad to realize that a classmate of mine, a 16-year-old teenage girl, actually knows this better than I do. Well, it was actually a bit ironic because I saw her post this on her Facebook wall. But, if you actually think about it, I don't she'd post that particular aphorism if she actually felt guilty of such a sin. That, or she's just another idiot posting stuff blindly on the internet. 

Well, either way, it doesn't really take anything away from the truth value of what she's said. So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna follow that wisdom from now on. From now on, I'm not going to post anything that might misconstrue my identity on Facebook. No more pretending.

So I guess this is my goodbye to posting on Facebook.

But only to posting on Facebook, or any other social media websites. There's still a ton of entertainment to be squeezed out of these online platforms, like playing Dawn of the Dragons, ogling pictures of celebrities in skimpy outfits, catching up on the latest buzz on the internet, and of course, watching other pretentious people fail at their own lives and make a fool out of themselves. 

Schadenfreude is a beautiful word. 

Hashtag bashers. They make me think.

Facebook. Social Media. After so many years of being part of "The Social Network" revolution, subscribing to pages, liking pictures, and just generally soaking in the steady stream of thoughts and un-thoughts that run through my news feed every day, I still can't put a tab on what I really think of social media with regard to its actual usefulness. Is it something benevolent? Do I really have to be a Facebook user? Am I even making any sense?

These kinds of questions arise whenever I see something irritating/hateful on my Facebook news feed. Every time I see a message written by an asshole for the sake of pissing off people he doesn't like, I suddenly get yanked into a moment of zen by way of a hundred questions that can't easily be answered in one sitting. Maybe it's because I'm just being me. I love over-analyzing stuff. But only because I want to get the truth out of things. Why are people like that? Why are there some people who love being such knee-jerk assholes to things that aren't supposed to earn that kind of ire? Why are hashtags so much of a big deal to some people that they go to such lengths as to degrade and insult the intelligence of others who just want to share the happiness that they feel? Is berating someone for the overuse of hashtags a service to society? Are misplaced hashtags that evil? If so, then what is evil? What is right? Wait, what?

This is crazy. I'm dragging myself into the bowels of moral philosophy just because some asshole decided to become all self-righteous and insult hashtag users.

I know I should just stop thinking about this and let this go. I mean, after all, this seems to be a pointless exercise. Assholes will be assholes. That's how Facebook is.

Still, there has to be an answer to why self-righteous assholes feel like stomping people to the ground because of their skewed opinions. People just want to be happy. Can't we all just get along? And if we absolutely can't, why don't we all just block off each others' newsfeeds and get on with our lives? Don't we all have something better to do than to obsess over each others' online habits?

Why are you being such an asshole over a symbol?