Give Me a Break !!!

Give Me a Break

After having irate customers since you started your shift, don’t you wish you’re just the automated IVR stating this one? Hahahahaha

It’s Been One Year

The day that I have been on this post was like — really?!? I already got in to this department? I rock!!!

Now, it’s been one hell of a year! I can’t imagine it. I escalated two agents from being a fraud, because they are, to the management, and unfortunately for them, they got fired. We’ve handled one new successful account and they just renewed the contract for another year yippee [it means we'll still have another year for this job]. And my body clock is rumbled because every two months we’re changing our schedules. How’s that?

However, this one year is very fruitful. New experiences. New friends to connect with on my Facebook and Friendster, new acquiantances, new kind of escalations to me compared to when I was still an agent, new enemies [it's a common life when you are in the management side -- you are versus with the Operations ], new drinking buddies, new shopping mates but old friends still remains [I make sure of that], and most importantly, learning to balance my relationship with the management and the Operations.

So far, I got a nice feedback from the Operations. The friendly and nice WMS. And recently I just received a kudos from one of our managers hoorays!!! Yoohoo to me!!!

So for me and for the rest of us — Happy 1st year anniversary. We survived one rocking year hahaha

Recalling Employees

Due to the recession wave, three supervisors were booted out of our company. So, we in the Workforce Management group thought this might have scared our other supervisors because some of them started applying for either the same job or higher position in a different company.

And our guess was right. Two supervisors resigned. One gave a notice and the other filed for an immediate resignation. These two supervisors were already tenured in our company so our management find it so hard to replace them with more deserving employee.

And what was the master plan after?

Recall the two employees they booted out of our company. And the two just happily accepted their comeback to the office.

Salary Raise We Never Had

When you are promoted to a new position, you are always expecting to get a higher salary. And that’s what I thought. When I got promoted to my new post, I am already excited because there will be some additional money every second week of the month. But it did not happen.

So, I just thought again, look at the brighter sides. You are learning so many new things and you get to land a very exciting job!

After almost 9 months, the performance review happened and so we thought this is it! At last!! However, after a week of waiting for it — the tragic news came!! We won’t be having our much awaited salary increase!

Something Is Wrong

After we felt the recession, here comes the new wave of stressing news in our company — our big bosses are resigning from their jobs!

What the hell is going on here?!?!?

Is it about the salary raise issue? Or is it about moving towards a greener pasture? Well, different questions but same meaning though — all boils down to money.

That makes me scary again! Because for our account there should be a new batch of new hires to be trained but it was cancelled and so our company decided to train them for another account!

And solely, just in our department, we have so many employees who resigned recently!

Another thing, there are lots of employees just in our account alone that is being terminated. Higher numbers than last year. Sometimes I am thinking if they are being terminated because of what they did or the company is just really trying to decrease the numbers of the employee so we won’t feel that this is the recession happening in our own site!

Jeez!!! Is this a sign that I already need to resign and find a new job — no that’s wrong. I need to find a new job first and resign afterwards! Hahaha

Halili and Kho Scandal

I actually have the 5 videos after searching in the internet for one and a half hour! Whew! With all the opened websites — can no longer remember where I got the links So if you want to have it, just reply here, ill be happy to ’share’ it!

I am not trying to exaggerate here but I only knew the video scandal thingy ust this week. I don’t know but me having to work in a call center feels like creating my own world. After work, it’s either that a call center employee goes home or hang out first. And when I hang out [or we hang out], we normally talk about how our day was or what happened all throughout — even if we don’t like to talk about the usual happenings in our workplace — we still ended up talking about it.

99% of your mind concentration revolves around what has happened to your job and by the time you get home, all you want to do is to get enough sleep. You don’t want to hear any noises before you doze off, because the noise in the call center company is already unbearable sometimes, so no t.v., no radio and no loud talking!!!!

That’s why I didn’t knew that there was this hot video scandal talks already. I was just told by my sister that there is and she wants me to download it . I told her, if it’s been over a month, pretty sure, it’ll be hard to find already. But my sister persisted.

So, I did. I keep on searching while I’m downloading the season 4 of my favorite Ally McBeal. Took me an hour. But what a shock it was to me when I found out that there’s just not only one but there are lots!! One download and I’ve got 5 video scandals. Long playing videos of Kho with his victimized women!

I think, in the real world, there’s really Mister and Miss Aggressive persons who can just treat sex just like a fast food. Varieties, choices — all you can eat anytime, anywhere coz its readily available. THe only thing that made it so bad is that what they thought they were doing in private has become publicized!

I won’t be surprised if Katrina Halili will be abstinating for awhile because of the trauma. I can only imagine that when she’s about to do it with a man, she will always have this hesitation that there’s just a video around the room and she’ll end up neglecting doing it with him! Hahaha !! Poor man!!

I just hope that Kho will be given the right kind of punishment he deserves because if he claims he is not the one who publicized the videos, there won’t be any video, if he in the first place, did not record his private moments with his women!

Moving Forward

And so I thought about recession … but there it is — a new call center offering so much higher pay than what our company is paying us. And they are going to give us just one  fourth of the load work than what we are doing in the office.

Give in or just stay in the company?

Is this a decision of loyalty or the need to have a higher pay due to economic crisis?

I guess, the answer is already obvious. Because some of my colleagues chose the “higher pay” over loyalty.

Moving forward is a good thing most of all if it is going to give you a better reason to ive your life. What’s hard is you’ll always have something to look back from what you’ve left behind.  I am what’s left behind. A new set of people to work with [because they were easily replaced by somebody else] and a new workload [of course, you can't teach a dog new tricks overnight].

I don’t know if I’m sad because my friend left the company or I’m sad because he just added some load to my overloaded work already … hahahaha!

But that’s how life in a call center. Once you’re gone, or even before you’re gone, there’s somebody already in line waiting to replace you.

At Last!!!

Used to be a frontline agent but now I’ll be monitoring the movements of the agent on the floor. I just had my lateral transfer from the one taking calls from my customer to seeing the agents are doing ok while they are on their job.

Just three days ago, I am applying for a job in a different company as I thought I don’t have any chances of elevating my position in our recent company. However, on that day as well, I was not accepted on the job that I applied for. So, I headed to the cchurch and told God that please give me what is really for me. And I just got my answer.

Eventhough the salary increase is not automatic, one thing that I am very relieved is that I will no longer be taking calls, I will no longer be irate because of my more irate customers and most of all less metrics — but more challenging tasks, of course!!!

Congratulations to me!

No Permanent Seat is OK

I started my day right. While travelling to the office, I have my mp3 player stuck in my ear and my bf just send me a good morning message. Then I entered our office. In our team, there’s at least 18 of us. In the row where I have no choice but to sit, I still have three seat choices.

It’s not some sort of statistical solution of where you should seat. But at that moment, it seems like it the best thing. Where will I mostly like seat — here or over there?

I thought of that because on the cubicle where I am supposed to sit, the conversations I heard is my colleague saying something about her problem to my other colleague.

Nice morning.

Nice weather.

Nice aura.

Here is the seat I can choose which is beside her or choose the seat over there where in I won’t be able to hear any rants in life.

Being so selfish that I am, I chose the seat over there and not the one “here”. Call me a selfless and heartless colleague but my disposition in life is always start your day right. If you have any problems at home, leave it there. Concentrate on your work. Most of all, know what the problem is, decide what are your options to resolve it, choose which solution you want, stick to that decision and never look back. Hmmm … am I being too hard on that person?

That’s the beauty of life in a call center compared to a usual office life. You are already assigned to this seat. So if you’re being bitchy on this day and you dont want to be seated right next to this person [although you don't have a personal vendetta to that person], you don’t have any choice but to seat beside him/her.

So am i just being bitchy that day?

Probably not.

I just don’t really want any negative vibes to associate with my happy day.

 

Team Building

Call center won’t be complete if there is no team building. And what is a great way to spend your summer than to go out of town. Which our team actually just did. Started with a bumpy road to a very beautiful place. It may not be a beautiful place for them, but for me, it is, compared to any other commercial resorts I’ve been to.

This time, we decided to go to sitiolucia resort. If you want to see the place, you just need to go to sitioluciaresort.com – if you just want to.

We ate for awhile when we got there. After this, some of us, including me, went to the swimming pool. There are only two pools open: for the adult and the kids. I even found a place where there are only two swimmers and the videoke is very lonely. Hmmm…. videoke — alone and lonely? Not a very good way of treating a videoke machine. So while my teammate is so busy swimming, I tried the videoke  and voila! I started seeing my teammates transferring to that place.

Out of town, overnight team building and just a few of us. The night turns happys, then creepy and finally serious. Anything under the sun. Bonding with them doesn’t just mean having fun with them but you’re also going to learn something. I learned a lot of new things. Like, I didn’t know that some of them are the scariest people on earth just by mentioning scary topics/ subjects!!!

This time, we are looking forward on the company’s outing. Yoohoo!!! Happy summer holiday!