Call Center, Call Boys and Call Girls

My wife’s nephew is coming over from the province to stay with us while he is applying for a job as call center agent. He is currently working as a high school teacher and as a local radio station disc jockey but attracted by the lucrative salary of a call center agent, which is almost thrice his combined monthly salary as a high school teacher (he teaches in a small provincial private school) and as a local radio DJ, he will leave the province to try his luck. I told my wife that if ever her nephew will be accepted as a call center agent the cost of living here in the metropolitan Manila will eat up most of his salary and in the end, if he really take the time to think it over, his life in the province would be better off.

-

I don’t know if my wife’s nephew knew that being a call center agent is one of those jobs that pays a lot but in the long run will make you wish you were dead. There’s no opportunity for growth there, except maybe in salary, but otherwise there’s no movement. Most of the shifts are graveyard and the stress factor is high that most call center agents are either chain smokers or caffeine addict or both. And because of the nature of their job, call center agents develop distinctive appearance, sunken eyes, pale skin, some have blonde hair (I don’t know if it’s dye or because of lack of sunshine). They speak in slangy English and they congregate near trash cans, smoking trash cans. If one is observant one can also identify call center agents by the way they dress, most of them are overdressed. They wore fancy sunglasses as if they’re afraid of the suns, they have beads, tattoos, jackets (for their freezer like cubicle), and some of the men have long hair. I don’t know, maybe it’s a statement of sort, “Hey, although we look cadaverous, we rock!”

I remember a call center agent that my wife knew, the guy resigned after three years of talking to strangers all over the world, the reason: he was bored and frustrated. For twelve hours a night what he did was to talk and look at a computer monitor, argue, receive curses from dissatisfied and abusive callers, and talk and look at the computer screen and talk and receive curses from dissatisfied and abusive callers, and look at the computer screen, and talk, and talk, and receive curses…the pay is good but its’ a non existent existence, a punching bag existence.

I wish my wife’s nephew luck. If I were him I’d stay in the province enjoy the low pay, the low stress, the low cost of living and the absence of pollution. I’d study more and read more and buy myself a computer and get online and enjoy life in that slow rural atmosphere of Quezon Province.

Call boys and call girls, is what they are called. No, I don’t hate call center agents it’s just that some of them exude this aura of superiority that is annoying.