Notes from the Call Center Piece I

Historical Background

It’s 11:15pm in the year 2001. I’m twenty years old and fresh out of a top and therefore overpriced University where I earned a Philosophy degree. I’m aboard a cab en route to the Valero Entrance of PhilAm Life Tower in Makati. The driver’s tuned in to an AM station. Other than AM and the mechanized hum of vehicles and rubber rolling on the asphalt, the streets turn tranquil. It’s a few minutes before midnight and I’m neat as a necktie-wearing 9am-5am office worker. Except that I don’t have to wear long sleeves and a tie. We’re probably the only office in the building who allows (if preferred) their employees to come dressed in shorts, beach sandals, hats, or in the most or least amount of clothing.

Like most obtrusive cabbies, this one asks, what’s my line of work? In 2001, nobody’s ever heard of a call center before. It was a pain to explain. Who would have thought that so much business from the land of milk and honey would come to Ayala corner Paseo through the thick undersea pipes and cables of broadband technology? So I try not to sound condescending and just say,

“Computer.”

With a brush of the familiar, the cabbie lets out a knowing “Ahhhhh.”

“This is only temporary.”

It’s 2010. I, for one, have been working in this billion-dollar “Sunshine Industry” for over nine years. More than being a thriving milking cow, the call-center lifestyle has been re-interpreted in music, literature, invented its own fashion, and even has its own college curriculum. Nowadays there are kids who dream of becoming call-center agents.

We were unknowingly creating a new sub-culture, my so-called wave-mates and I – newly grads who were all riding these cabs or driving their parent’s cars to Valero back in 2001.

Now the cabbies are all over where the call centers are, and I no longer need to explain what my line of work is. Now the conventions are sketched less vaguely.

As call center tunes play along, everyone still thinks this is only temporary.

I also once wrote, “In the trickle of time’s eternal hourglass, in this little existence of mine, something must have even a smidgen of significance; something else must be worth trying.” Oh, I’m going to be a philosopher, sure.

I’m part of an industry that sowed its beginnings in my own time and I often wish I didn’t have anything to do with it. Slowly, wearily, I’m scaling myself down and realizing that this is probably what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.

Nine grueling years. Like all the once wannabe-or-never-was-artists, writers, engineers, nurses, rockstars, architects, and all the ex-real estate agents, airline-reservationists, teachers, we are all literally going to endure the long, long night.