I'll be at the call center

A friend of mine who has dedicated eight years of his life to working in different centers once said, “You can find me here. I’ll always be at the call center.”
It was then that I realized that my couture-worthy creations or my daily baon when I was still in the university won’t be enough to buy me a tall Starbucks mocha frappucino at least every other day or pay even half my tuition fee for a month. That is why I decided to put on my black, faux snake skin man-pumps and start making calls that would pay me seven hundred bucks daily just because like any other Pinoy kids of my age, I had the skill of imitating an accent that’s worth the chi-ching. This includes the perks of hitting it big in an industry of air-conditioned rooms, systems, processes, headsets, stilettos on carpeted floors, espresso, chain smokers, fluent American English speakers and listeners, dollars and of course—spiels.
I am in an outbound campaign for a private label credit card in a posh call center facility in Filinvest, Alabang. I work eight hours a day, five or six days a week, in a shift that’s definitely godly for nocturnal creatures like I am. This shift transforms my usual party hours of eight pm to five am into a segment that I called ‘the transcendence of what a nineteen year-old in the artistic It list should do.’ I guess I’m bittersweet.
The call center experience should never be regarded as equal to eating a large McDonald’s fries just because the former is a common thing to ponder on—and because a huge percentage of the tropa has seen and been in the call center bandwagon. One should always see things with new eyes, or as I put it, should always make calls with new mouths.
It was through this experience, where I started as a young, typical, ambitious university kid in a promdi-themed Camarines Sur scene that I realized the big world isn’t really big for a kid that thinks the way I do. It’s not big. It’s humungous, overpowering, suffocating and refreshing as well. It’s like a skin consultation that makes you realize that you do need some other thing aside from that commercialized, ambitious facial wash on your bathroom closet. I do need some other thing.
Alone I am not, for many other kids who are as ambitious as I am also sweat it out in the productions floor like I do, sugar-coating something that really shouldn’t be.
Inside the productions floor area (or simply bay) I would brush elbows with a lot of frustrations. A frustration is one of the many key elements that bring energetic, intelligent, and enviably fluent kids into one call center. Choosing the job just because one thinks it’s easy and it pays well is pathetic if not downright funny. The latter may be right, but the former isn’t. No job in this bustling earthtopia is easy when one doesn’t love it. In my case, I learned to like what I’m doing because it makes me feel comfortable knowing that there’s enough Ninoys inside my wallet to send myself to school, buy a slice of Yellow Cab or two, give my siblings some baon, made a lot of new friends, added a line of few words to my résumé, strengthened if not polished my communication skills, revitalized my skin condition (because of the ac), updated my wardrobe, and above all, I learned that to survive one doesn’t only need to fight. One needs to fight with his best foot forward so that at the end of the day one isn’t bitter over his loss because he gave the fight his best.
When I’m at the floor, I would find myself engulfed in dust in a battlefield. I will realize soon that my bitterness isn’t alone in this room. Listening to the stories of the strangers I met at the floor makes the whole production floor a circus sort of thing that showcases the miscellany that defies all reasons for demarcation.
Opposite me is a fluent, English-speaking rebellious rockstar who never made it to a big rock band competition just because he argued with his parents. Another is a frustrated ballerina who finds ballet lessons expensive, thus the job to keep her in class is this. Beside me is a recently licensed nurse who’s working hard to finance herself in case the nursing board retake take center stage. On her left is a single mother of two who used to be a full-time painter, who once tried to sell her Pollock-inspired oil paintings to buy milk for her daughter. Beside her sits a young entrepreneur who realized that selling woven handbags and clutches from Palawan, Baguio, Legazpi and Negros won’t be enough to buy enough stocks and send her to school. Opposite her is a guy who used to be a Figaro’s barista but decided that his new born son needs more than what a barista dad could give. Another is a brilliant writer who reads Coelho and Neruda while making calls, beside her is an astonishing cook who prepares his baon in a way that puts to shame the Iron Chef contenders. Another is a student journalist-turned-activist who throbs on many socio-political issues every time we see each other inside the cafeteria. Another is an ex-seminarian who spoke of theology, philosophy, and sexuality all the time while insisting that he is agnostic. Next to him is a part-time runway model who walks on stilettos more expensive than the headsets she’s wearing, and says, “They’re just giveaways! Ano ba!?”. Another is a veteran call center agent who has been shifting companies for the past five years because he told me he’s ‘tired of the job’.
The issue now isn’t being bitter to a job that one didn’t like, but being thankful because among the millions of unemployed Filipinos, one was given the chance to have a taste of what it’s like to be earning money at a very tender age, and making the most out of it.
As for me, I am a language major on my last year in the university when they offered me the job “a million Pinoys would kill for”. Hesitant I was, the reason being I had to finish my degree fast, and jump into a design school that would catapult me and my sewing machine to fame. However all of these would have to be put on hold, just like in a call, when you put on hold the cardholder to check on the account within milliseconds. I just hope I would have to put on hold my dream for just a couple of seconds, because if it takes longer, I might grow tired and weak shining in a job that’s really not my thing; even if it’s not my thing, I do need this for it makes me aware that there are indeed some things on this earth I cannot stay on doing for so long; it weakens every aspect of who I really am and where I stand my purpose on this earth; on the contrary it strengthens my views on what I am and where I’m headed to, even if it’s not the flat-screened computers with the headsets all over me in the productions floor.