My Real-ization

After fifteen days of waiting, the company I applied for a job in informed me that I could go there tomorrow to sign my job contract. Once I sign it, I’ll officially be a call center agent once more (I had worked for thirteen months at another customer management center in Bacolod from August 2006 to September 2007.) Now that I’m about to do it again, I remember the reasons why I left the so-called call center life (or what I used to call as The Pits) sixteen months ago and even vowed never to go back. Here they are:

• An opportunity to participate in a nationwide foreign-funded research was offered to me. Taking it meant I’ll be doing something that I really love, working around a time-flexible output-basis setup which would make going to school less stressful, and earning 2,000 pesos more than what I was earning as an agent. So I took it;
• The work became too clerical and toxic for me. I’ve had too much of processing payments and explaining bills to more often than not irate customers;
• I was earning only 10,000 pesos per month. Though it’s considerably higher than most other monthly income rates in the city in those times (competition in the city’s call center industry wasn’t at all steep then), it was hardly commensurate to the nature of the job and the stress of working graveyard shifts; and,
• (The heaviest of them all being) my life seemed to pass me by in a blur. The days turned to weeks, then months, and at the end of it I find myself asking what’s been happening to me, what have I been doing with my life, and the answer I got was: I’ve been answering calls from people in America who needed help with their cable accounts. That just couldn’t go on anymore. So, I quit.

Last January 7th, during my 45-minute final job interview, the Hiring Specialist asked me why I want to work in a call center again. Indeed, why am I going back this time? I told her that I don’t see why not. I’m sure I lacked auxiliary detail and congruence when I gave her my reasons then so I’m making up for that here, now (as I had time to really think them out.) Here they are:

• I’m currently out of a job. My contract for the research project ended in mid-December, and I just can’t pass the time being economically unproductive. Interestingly, along that line, my job prospect promises an income (in a per month scale) higher than my previous salary item by 41.6 per cent, as start up pay. In six months’ time, it’ll top what I used to get every month on my previous job by 54.1 per cent. Can you imagine I did the math? Money motivates in many splendid ways.
• I don’t attend regular classes anymore. I’m In my thesis-making year in graduate school, and although time and energy management is going to be more challenging for me as I’d be working and making a master’s thesis at the same time, I’m positive I can, and will, handle it;
• Though it’s still going to be the same job, that of a call center agent, I’ll be in a new account, with a myriad of new things to learn and new people to learn with. My call center experience should also give me an edge in adjusting at work, managing the job’s inherent stresses, and getting ahead. You read it right, because unlike before, wherein I determinedly stayed at the bottom of the ladder as an agent, which aggravated the ennui of thirteen months a great deal, I’m going to aim for The Promotion. This time, I’m climbing up and steering those big bucks into my bank account; and,
• I’ve learned better than to live a come-and-go life. Working in a call center shouldn’t make ones life utterly dull or keep one from pursuing his passions. I’ve seen friends prove those words to be true and livable. (Marty juggles technical support work, law school, an internship at a law firm, and coffee dates with friends.) I know I can too. I know, given the toll that this job would take on my mind and body, it won’t be easy. But I find I don’t care for easy anymore. Ambition is the propensity to take on difficult things, and it’s time for me to have it. So I’ll be a call center agent, post graduate student, peace educator, and writer in one.

I want to be many things in my lifetime. And I mean great things. Great things that would only and ultimately call for one thing: that I, for myself and others, become the truest and fullest measure of my humanity and happiness. I remember one time, it was dawn then, and I was unable to sleep, I asked my best friend Pipit this question: How does one become great? And is this a question that one’s heart can answer on its own? She said that one becomes great when one understands what one is all about, and when one wields that knowledge to make all the wonder of being a reality that holds truth and meaning, causality and inspiration for even just something or someone in some life. She went on to say that the heart, whoever it may belong to, can tell how it is to be great. The heart, is still the best, most rightful thing to define what greatness, or happiness, or whatever else is.

In my heart I know that going back to The Pits is a dignified means to an end. It’s neither a waste of my so-called gifts nor a self-condemnation to a life smaller than what others say I’m meant to live. I am by no means diminished by it but rather, it gets me real. As real as the joy I feel with the thought of being able to extend a helping hand to my family and friends in a practical way. As real as any need that one desires to fulfill through good, hard, and honest labor. As real as not too many people can get.


*For me, and for the people who appreciate the wisdom of what I do, without requiring explanations.