The crappiest job you’ve ever had
Got a message from the Disney distributor’s rep. He said, Thanks for reviewing Adventureland. I thought, Aha! I must test my power and influence over the corporate monoliths!
I said, I want a stuffed toy banana with googly eyes.
He said, Would you settle for a poster?
A poster! Witness how I sow fear and trembling in the vast military-industrial-entertainment complex! I said, Okay, but send extras so I can make readers write my blog for me by dangling freebies.
So I have three Adventureland posters (They’re sending four, I’m keeping one) to give away. To get one of the posters, send in a short (500 words maximum, the judge will not slog through an epic) essay on The Crappiest Job You’ve Ever Had. Don’t mention names, we’ll get sued. You can be vicious, but the essay has to be funny. And the prize is just a poster, so don’t knock yourselves out. Also, it’s best to describe a job you’ve already quit because if you’re still at The Crappiest Job You’ve Ever Had, that’s sad.
Post your essays in Comments. We’ll take entries until Tuesday.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 17th, 2009 at 01:01
Come customer billing time, he’s always leading the pack with his instant invoices, his endless requests for mobilization fees and you just drool at how much the consulting fees he’s charging (plus all the administrative costs, facilitation fee, and all the jargon you can think of that’s synonymous to ‘I’ll-charge-you-for-even-the-teeny-weeny-tiny-toothpick-I-used-during-our-initial-meeting’) and all you get is a pathetic 5,000 pesos for all your effort, plus a token hand-me-down shirt, a pat in the shoulder, the token celebratory dinner (where even he gets to bring home the take out food), and that wide smile, nay – grin – like that of the Cheshire cat. You wonder where did all that money go? And then you found out, as always, that he spends it on the vices of his lover-cum-driver-cum-model-cum-sabong enthusiast and his other paramours-on-the-side. You try to convince yourself that you’ll charge it all to experience, that eventually you’ll find something better, that you’re actually still learning the ropes, that you’re willing to work weekends if only to get things going and move on to the next big project. You never get any social security, your taxes are not paid at all (even when they withhold some of your income – but on second thought, ok na rin – hehe). Until one day you realize that the only you’re fooling is yourself. Despite a few attempts to resign you were manipulated into staying for one, two, three more years – your self-esteem boosted by those morning talks on the phone while he’s dictating the order of the day. You were such a sucker for the empty compliments, that ‘he’s one of my best students’ remarks to unsuspecting clients. He thrives with his ‘divide-and-conquer’ strategy, so our loyalties remain to solely to him and not to everybody else. How’s that?
July 17th, 2009 at 01:03
This is the first part (the first response was the 2nd part – sorry)
“Burned Out†would be an understatement to my first job as research assistant / video editor / script writer / voice over talent / spin doctor / cover-my-ass-I’m-in-the-middle-of-doing-something-illegal backstage guy / sketch artist / receptionist (when everybody else has yet to turn up in the hellhole of an office while the boss is earning millions and sucking up to the powers that be in that palace by the dead river) / concert promoter / economic analyst / masterplan associate / pretending-to-be legal expert / correspondence mill / literary critic / proofreader / logistics coordinator / seminar organizer / bazaar attendant. Jack-of-all-trades wouldn’t begin to describe it. For a measly 5,000 pesos a month (that was in 1997) I was working on multiple unrelated projects at a time for a “multi-disciplinary†consulting firm that would literally take any opportunity to make money – from humongous masterplanning studies for some development project that wouldn’t actually see the light of day, to producing audio visual productions for some development projects that needs a little pizzazz, to marketing research, to just about anything under the sun. We were often instructed to browse through all the newspapers (even the sleazy tabloids, and that was the time when Internet usage was not as prolific as it is now) and see what ‘business development’ opportunities can be had. And in the very rare instance when I get invited to an honest-to-goodness party, he suddenly pages me (yes, EasyCall was still in existence, and my boss in the generosity of his heart gave me his rundown pager the size of a pocketbook) and asks that I take dictation right then and there for an ‘idea’ that he doesn’t want to slip his mind – how pathetic is that?
July 17th, 2009 at 03:11
My first job involved “tallying numbers” and submitting it to a boss who takes a break every freakin’ hour and had the gall to ask me everyday, yes every freakin’ day, if I think her ass looks big because she’s been taking pills. My co-workers included a douchebag who flirted with every girl in sight, a wrong grammar pa-colegiala type, a “manong†who kept asking me if my Civil Service exam results have come in yet (and would give me the evil eye when I say, “wala pa poâ€), and several tsismosas who wouldn’t answer the freakin’ phone on their own desks! I resigned after two weeks, and much as I am ashamed to admit it now, I felt that it was my karma because I didn’t really try to find a job right after college. I took the job because a relative was the head of the agency and was told that I’d be transferred to the department where my college course would be more appropriate…after two weeks! Never ever get yourself involved in nepotism! It would come biting you hard in the ass or, as I experienced during those two hellish weeks, be stuck with a boss who would keep asking you if her ass looks big. Hay.
July 17th, 2009 at 03:24
Customer Service Representative.
The job’s not really as crappy as most of the “konyos” who have gone to decent grade school and who’ve always made us NUTRIBUN-fed public-school philistine pupils as inferior as shit might think, but when you’re forced almost everyday to listen to people talking about what McDonald’s Value Meal they will buy with their $1/hr wage from the #1 sought-after job they got from TESDA, and there’s almost not a day you can’t eavesdrop from other cubicles initially funny but later on just oddly sad lines like “What is your expiration date, sir?” or “That’s not my problem any more, ma’am. It’s your problem any more”, you just sometimes can’t help yourself but think of going Sylvia Plath.
P.S. Jesse Eisenberg’s “I felt I could have written it, so the fact that it was already written was just kind of a technicality” line on plagiarism nailed dead-on my most convenient reason for taking what I call an uninterrupted hiatus from college. So this poster means so much to me, I’m willing to pay the mail-delivery fee.
And I am not saying this because I won the JAY contest but have yet to receive any of your prize.
July 17th, 2009 at 09:10
My first published work for the first paper I worked for was a very personal travelogue about Disneyland HK. It had the boss’ byline because she was the one who went. I still can’t believe I managed to write a travelogue about a place I’ve never experienced.
July 17th, 2009 at 09:32
It really depends on what one sees as crappy. I had this really memorable job which paid big but with a catch: our boss was a little on a “odd” side.
When I started, everything seemed smooth. We were made to meet our American boss (let’s call him Mr. X). We were warned about Mr. X before, about how “odd” he was, but the first meeting went well nonetheless. He gave this speech about how we were supposed to love our jobs, how we’re supposed to work hard, because it was all going to pay off when each of us had laptops and cars and big houses. Then I was introduced to him: name, position, and sexual orientation (What’s up with people introducing you to others and indicating your sexual preference? “Hey, I’d like to introduce you to my friend. He’s gay.” Why can’t they just add your interests, like in those personal ads? “Hey, this is my friend. He’s into reading, travelling, and removing benign cysts.”). After the introductions, Mr. X told me he’s OK with gays, that he has no problem with them. (Umm… do you have to say that if you’re really OK with gays? The way he said it was equivalent to this: “Hi, Morgan Freeman, I would like you to know that I’m OK with negroes.”)
A couple of months later, I found out what made our company different from other companies. We had eviction nights. I found that out when our boss asked us to write down on a piece of paper what we loved about the company, what we didn’t love about it, what we liked about our work, and what we didn’t. He said we should be honest because he wouldn’t mind. While writing down my honest answers, a co-worker who’d been there a few months earlier told me we were having another eviction night. The next night, our boss met with us to have our answers read aloud, and to point out by yelling that we were wrong with our honest answers. A co-worker who wrote that she thought the managers were rookies was yelled at because she had an attitude problem. I was yelled at because I wrote that I didn’t like the politics and the mind games. He told me that I should resign. I didn’t.
Weeks later was another eviction night. We were divided into three groups: the first group being good (I was lucky enough to be in this group), the second group on the fence, and the last group the ones being evicted. Actually, they were asked to opt for a pay cut or get evicted. Half of them chose to get evicted (with severance pay), and others chose the pay cut, intent on proving themselves worthy of being in the company. They never did prove themselves. Weeks later, they belonged to the same group and ended up shedding tears.
This should be longer. But since you said we should keep our essays brief, I’ll end this here with a couple of paragraphs more.
One time, a girl was asked to leave when she reported for work with her hair wet. Apparently, you haven’t meditated enough yet to consider yourself ready to get right down to work when you’ve just had a shower. We’d also be asked to leave if we didn’t have a schedule of all the things we were going to do for the day (9:30PM-meditate; 10:00PM-call whatsisname, bring up the contract; 10:13PM-role-play with colleagues in order to close a deal!).
Another time, we were interrupted from work because in 12 minutes, we had to send our boss a YM message explaining why we loved the job, and how serious we were in succeeding in life.
I started there with 30 or so people. When I finally resigned, there were 8-10 of us left. Why did I resign? Well, we were bonding with our boss one morning and he was making jokes. It was past work hours already. It was a fun meeting; he wasn’t in a bad mood. He said something and I joked back, asking him to buy me a butt-plug. It was funny (but you had to be there). The more conservative people aired out their yuuuccckkks, paired with laughter. My boss also laughed. The next day, after work, he sat us down for another meeting. He pointed at me and told me I was singing for an hour during work. Apparently, one cannot do a good job if he/she is singing along to songs on the radio. I told him I couldn’t have been singing for an hour; that’s just impossible! That’s like singing along to two albums with bonus tracks! And then he said, “I’m a multi-fucking-millionaire and you ask me to buy you a butt-plug?!”
In my head, I said, “Oh Em Gee! Why is he bringing that up? That was yesterday’s tea! It’s now cold and uninteresting!” Then he talked to me one-on-one and offered me a pay cut or a severance pay. I chose to stay that day. But the next night, after much thinking, I told him I was leaving. We fist-bumped and I never saw him again. About two days later, I learned that the deal I was working on got closed. That should have been a slap in his face because I managed to close a deal while singing along to songs on the radio! A week later, I heard the company was dissolved. I didn’t get my commission. And none of us was able to buy laptops, cars, and big houses. But what’s crappier is that we held this Big Brother kind of job, with eviction nights and all, but none of us gained celebrity out of it.
July 17th, 2009 at 13:13
Asst manager: I want to know what all of you are doing. Give me a performance report bi-monthly starting [date two weeks from that day].
Me: Oh, Ma’am, you mean bi-weekly or semi-monthly…
AM: No, I mean bi-monthly.
Me: *shrugs*
A week later:
AM: Sorry to disappoint you, but I asked a Lit professor, and I am right.
Me: (Immediately searching Wiki-pedia and printing the meaning) Here you go, Ma’am.
Me: (wailing) This is wrong!
Me: *shrugs*
On-the-job training for 300 hours. Accountancy student. 25th floor. I was so excited to start my OJT, imagining the work pressure and expectations. I am looking forward to numerous files to be photocopied, coffees to be prepared, and invoices to be recorded. When I got there, I thought, “Whoa! Very office-y…” “Uhm, Ma’am, where is my table?” “Oh, here it is,” and just like a magician brandishing a new trick, she opened the door… to the stockroom. Sure enough, there is a makeshift table and rickety chair. Still, I feel very professional – and hopeful. Okay, not so bad, not so bad. Excitedly, I asked, “What will I be doing today? Process petty cash replenishment? Prepare cash receipts report? Make an aging of account receivable? Follow up on customers for credit and collection? Just say it, Ma’am, I am soooo ready!” “Oh, no need to tire you on a first day, but our pantry supplies are running low. Would you like to make a run to the grocery store?” “Uh.. sure.” I agreed, thinking that maybe I will be given bigger – and Accounting-related – responsibilities the next time.
My next time never came. After a month of hoping that I will be able to put my knowledge to use, I quit. Let them worry about their BIR problems on their own.
July 17th, 2009 at 13:46
The crappiest job in the world is being a cineaste and a phony critic all at the same time, being in a cinema with people you do not want to meet, and not being paid for a review you did with all earnest.
The cinematic experience of a budding cineaste in the Philippines can be quite disappointing and traumatic if he has not prepared himself for the drudgery caused by other people whose ultimate objectives in going to the cinema are to be entertained, to feed their carnal fantasies, to be humored by the supposed comedy, or to escape from the harsh realities of this world.
But of course, a cineaste also wants his theater experience to be corporeal, to appeal to his primitive senses, just like ordinary viewers. He is an avid fan of melodramas and he also finds slapstick comedy quite amusing from time to time; but unlike ordinary cinema goers, he wants to extract substantive spiritual material from the film that will complete his ‘cinematic experience’. Without this, he leaves the theater as empty as when he entered lacking this spiritual or, let’s call it intellectual, adventure that leads him to feel dejected, deceived, robbed, or worst, sodomized.
The following is a list of 11 people a cineaste will meet in a cinema that he should try to avoid by all means.
1. The sleeper. This person goes to the cinema to enjoy an afternoon nap. He’s not at all annoying if all he does is sleep, but often times this act is accompanied by sleep talking, somnambulism, and snoring coupled with an abundant stream of saliva from his open mouth. Aside from the disturbing noise, the bodily discharge is gross and supports the spread of diseases.
2. The Telephone Operator. The first telephone ring. He’ll ignore it or cancel the call. Another telephone ring. Cancel. He’ll say, “I’m sorry†with an apologetic look on his face as if you can see his lame attempt on acting. Third ring, and this time the sound of the ring becomes so difficult for him to bear that he’ll succumb to the temptation and answer the call. From here, he’ll start to forget that he’s in a cinema. He’ll occasionally laugh until he’s carried away by the conversation with the person on the other line. The talk, regardless of the importance, is now imposed on the cineaste.
3. The Businessman. He can be a telephone operator at the same time doing anything that is traditionally done in an office, say, working on a balance sheet in his laptop, replying to emails, or booking plane tickets for his next business trip; but these activities can cause overly conspicuous glare that is too distracting for those sitting behind him. So, like the Telephone Operator, he’ll transact business on the phone while following the plot of the movie, after all he is good in multi-tasking. Ignoring the fact that the cineaste is incapacitated by his exaggeratedly focused mind to do multi-tasking such as watching a movie while holding back an urge to pour his iced-cold soft drink onto the businessman’s balding temple.
4. The Prima Donna. She is somebody who thinks that the cinema is her home theater. She asks the cineaste to transfer seat as she wants to have that seat where she can have the best angle. She may answer and make calls; walk around the theater at whim; scold the attendant who failed to show her the way; and make complaints that the sound is not good, that it’s too soft or too loud, that adjustment has to be made. She’ll even ask the manager why the cinema is too dark, or why there are people around watching the movie with her, because all the while she thought that the reservation she made was a reservation for the entire cinema complex.
5. The Lovers. They think that the dark will hide their clandestine love affair, hide them from the prosecution caused their forbidden love. They find refuge in the anonymity cloaked by darkness inside the cinema. They think that only darkness can comprehend the love they have for each other, that the world outside is just too dumb to understand their undying devotion for each other. And so they embrace, kiss, torridly kiss again and again resting only to gasp oxygen, neck, pet, pinch, and caress each other with complete abandonment. For them, only the other person exists. They both ignore the better judgment of their minds that they are watching a box-office hit on a full house. Much to the chagrin of our cineaste, the display of love in such lavish scale took away his concentration that he totally forgets the thematic realities of the movie he is watching.
6. The Exhibitionists. They are like lovers in the first place, but for Exhibitionists, kissing, torridly kissing again and again resting only to breathe, petting, necking, pinching, and caressing each other are for teenagers who are just starting to experiment on and to realize the blissfulness of love. This kind of cinema goers has raised the ante a long time ago. This list will not anymore delve into the acts done by Exhibitionists inside the cinema (which are already a public knowledge) and which our cineaste can only describe as prurient, unhinging, perturbing, and salacious.
7. The Frustrated Director/Film Critic. He has watched the film several times, researched on the motivation of the director and his previous works, analyzed the film using Marxist-Post-structuralism approach with a focus on Neo-colonialism specifically the methodologies of Gayatri Spivak. He knows all the characters in the film including the names of all the 732 extras used in the concluding battle scene. Commendable. That is, if he keeps these information to himself. But the problem is he delights in hearing his intelligent and witty self talk.
8. The Candy Man. He’s a chain smoker, definitely, but since he is sensitive enough not to smoke inside a theater with a central air conditioning system he resorts to sucking hard menthol candy. Sucking hard candy will not suffice to dull his craving for nicotine; he then compulsively crumples the plastic wrapper to ease the tension. Without realizing it, he has produced a rhythmic sound that can be soothing for him but not for the rest of the viewers, especially not for our cineaste.
9. The Big Foot. This kind is endemic in the Philippines, a result of an utter lack of sense of culture. He’s a cross between the Prima Donna and/or any of the other kinds. There’s only one observable act that he does that gives him the name – he places his feet on the seat in front of him unmindful whether somebody is sitting.
10. The Excursionists. They come in groups, and this sense of a group dehumanizes and camouflages the individual members. They laugh to their lungs’ content; they make running commentaries about the film; they throw pop corn. Individually, each can even act like a cineaste, but the spirit of the group inebriates them to a point that they become nuisance who think that a cinema is a perfect place for a retreat, a class reunion, or even worst, an excursion.
11. Another Cineaste. He is the worst kind. He keeps quiet all the time inside the cinema, maintaining that air of superiority while sneering at the humble cinema goers thinking that this group of faceless and uncultured proletariats is incapable of any intellectual acuity necessary in understanding the spiritual dimensions of the film.
He is suspicious of anyone that acts like the way he does, so he ends up writing a list that categorizes movie goers into eleven kinds and leaving the worst category solely for that person who acts like the way he does the entire time while inside the cinema.
July 17th, 2009 at 14:31
It’s a sad day when you find out just how little your work is worth.
Slaving away as an outsourced module designer (read, underpaid copywriter) for a huge consulting company that provides programs to even bigger world aid insititutions, you tolerate the overpaid bosses and their vague directions (read, We want something light and conversational) because you harbor the dream that your contribution will assist other third-world countries in developing their resources towards financial stability; only to wake up one day and find your work has been stolen (read, the foreign consultant got the credit for your carefully-crafted compositions), the project manager’s seemingly-feigned lack of understanding of English was actually real (read, deadline for payment is ignored aka What is that, I don’t understtand?), and the red tape that you thought bound only government offices exists ten-fold in private firms (read, it’s been 3 months and you have yet to receive the downpayment agreed on upon signing). Lesson learned: unless the boss has your back, never submit copy work for “review”, because intellectual property rights are a myth.
July 17th, 2009 at 14:56
This is not really the crappiest job I’ve ever had so I’m not vying for the prize. But I would like to share anyway one of the crappiest jobs I’ve seen.
When I was in grade school, we took an educational trip to a TV factory. Towards the end of the assembly line, there’s a guy there who does nothing all day but whack finished TV sets with a rubber mallet. Two strikes on each side of the TV and a single whack on top.
I will never forget the guy’s expression. Or the rather, the absence of any. If there’s such a thing as a walking dead, it was him.
I couldn’t recall what was all the whacking for, as explained by the tour guide but I do remember telling myself, “Now here’s there’s one good reason why I shouldn’t flunk school.”
July 17th, 2009 at 16:30
The crappiest job I’ve ever had was at this small, hole-in-the-wall PR firm. My job title was “PR Writerâ€, which was a laughable euphemism for what I actually did. “Fake news writer†was more like it. And not in a “Daily Show with Jon Stewart†way (that would be the complete opposite of “crappiest job everâ€), but in a we’ll-make-your-government-agency-seem-hardworking-and-honorable-even-if-everybody-knows-you’re-a-bunch-of-sleazebag-crooks kind of way.
The company was unaccredited and technically illegal, so we didn’t have social security or health benefits. Our office was the size of a typical studio-type apartment. Our boss had his incompetent sons and daughters serve as “VPs†while he kept hiring ex-GROs as secretaries (uh, actually that one’s not a complaint). My salary was below industry standard. In the one year I was employed there, I worked during Holy Thursday and New Year’s Eve, without holiday pay. I even remember commuting home that night and inhaling all the firecracker smoke that Manila, Quezon City, and Novaliches had to offer. (My God, I almost forgot how miserable my life actually was). Oh, and I also served as an occasional bagman-slash-messenger; taking loads of cold cash from the said government agency or giving envelopes worth of cold cash to selected newspaper reporters and columnists.
So to sum up: I had a job that was sleazy, unethical, boring, soul-crushing, AND potentially life-ending, since our client’s enemies could have easily had me whacked on the streets of Manila as I held tens of thousands worth of taxpayer money. Think Bubby Dacer, only much, much more inconsequential.
I would like to think all that crap would have at least been worth a movie poster. But one can only dream.
July 17th, 2009 at 18:04
crappiest, but fun. I made people draw houses, trees, figures of man, and recommend if they still fit to continue mainstream class or be sent to a special school based from interpretations of these drawings. it was really crappy because I would find them possibly psychotic or were truly oppositional defiant and not recommend them still for special school, because we needed to wait for them to stab a classmate with a pencil or kick a teacher in the shin before we do so. at the same time, I was all over the place gathering graduation pictures and interviewing the students as I laid out and design the school’s yearbook. I learned PageMaker and Photoshop on my own. and I had to stay late to finish the damn lay-outs and pagination (how late? I clocked in at 8 am, go home 11 pm)
CRAP! :-)
July 18th, 2009 at 00:53
I was the manager – oh, proprietress – of a lingerie store, one of the most recognized brands worldwide thanks to the brand’s bordering-on-soft-porn catalogues and fantasy “fashion shows.†We had a strict dress code back then: only skirts and dresses, to be worn with hose and heels; no exceptions. Because payroll was practically zilch and I was the only salaried employee on staff, I performed double-duty as janitor (excuse me pala: sanitation engineer) as well.
Every morning, in my suit, I climbed to the top of a ladder in the store window to change yet another burnt-out halogen light bulb while a crowd gathered outside, some standing right up next to the glass to stare up my skirt to catch a glimpse of my feminine bits. At the end of the day I got on my knees, trying not to rip my $10 pair of pantyhose as I cleaned the bathroom and mopped the floor with bleach and Pinesol until it was clean enough to eat off.
I was also store security: I’ve had to restrain a crazed 7-foot thief who ran out through the back door and crashed through the security exit, wake up a homeless woman who found our carpet comfy enough to snooze there one fine Sunday morning, observe a gang of transvestite shoplifters open up drawers and stuff padded bras into their amazingly stretchy pantyhose, and report a three-year-old who had been trained by an El Salvadoran gang to distract salespeople while the adults helped themselves to a wall of bathrobes.
I’ve had to help men buy gifts for their wives and mistresses while gently refusing their icky advances, handle lace panties still freshly stained , soiled, and smelly with all varieties of female discharge, perform frequent fitting room coitus interruptus right after Cosmopolitan Magazine declared our fitting rooms one of the best places to make love in America, and assist burly men in their suits find the right size of bras and pantyhose for themselves (crossdressers are often straight, I found) while trying not to hurt their feelings when I couldn’t find anything that fit them.
All this while trying to keep my lipstick fresh, hair in place, and hose run-free. A girl’s got to keep the fantasy going after all.
July 18th, 2009 at 05:31
I SENT THIS SHORT STORY TO ONE OF MY COLLEAGUE AFTER MY RESIGNATION.
I USED TO WORK IN A CALL CENTER AND OUR TASK IS TO BOOK FLIGHTS,HOTELS AND VARIOUS ACTIVITY FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE GLOBE.
Regina,
I know that you must be very busy right now booking flights for people you don’t know, looking for hotels for people who will forget you even exist the moment they hung up. Every 5 or so minutes you glance at the avaya wishing that your 15 minute break will come soon, so you waited and waited. In between calls you track your sales, check your emails maybe even browse the web. You told yourself that there’s nothing wrong if u illegally browse once in a while, this job is so boring and what’s the point of having google in front of u If you cant visit the sites u really want to look at.
TOOT-TOOT AIR GENERAL- said the whisper- you reluctantly close your chicka account feeling cheated because your not done typing yet, you click on your jumpage making sure that you click on air general just like what the automated voice prompt suggest. You gave your opening spiel trying to fake enthusiasm by smiling and talking at the same time.
“ I want to book a flight and hotel in vegas†said the voice on the other line
“ wow so whats taking you to vegas? Vacation?†you said with a glee, thrilled with the idea that this could be your much awaited vacation package sale.
“ is that any of your business?†said the woman.
You feel anger building up inside of you then you remembered that someone from QA could be listening so you politely said†no,not reallyâ€
“I thought so “said the annoying lady and asked if you can book her the flight right away unfortunately the system is slow and you’re getting an error message trying to book her flight. You pound on the mouse, curse on airtran put the customer on mute and said “FUCK YOU†out loud, you then composed yourself went back to the waiting customer and inform her of the situation, you are still explaining to her when you realize that your talking to a dead phone line.
You again checked on the avaya only to find that you still need to wait for another 45 minutes before your 15 minute break, You know that you cant wait for your next break you really need to go, your bladder is about to explode and your afraid that urine will start pouring out of your nostril, but no! Your 15 min break is for your nicotine fix and that is more important than your bladder and kidney.
TOOT-TOOT “something else†the voice said.
Opening spiel….. no response……. So you waited……another opening spiel…… still no one on the other line…… your finger immediately hit the mute button then you said†fuck me hard in the assâ€!!! Only louder this time.
3 MORE CALLS –ALL SHOPPERS then you hit on the aux button.
You usually check on your emails before hitting the auto in button.â€POWER HOUR†said the message from one of the TL’s.†first agent to book 3 flights and 2 vacation package wins 3 bite size cloud nineâ€. You want the bite size chocolate bars, you need it, you want nothing more than those sweet choco bars and…..
TOOT-TOOT- “cloud nine†said the whisper. Confused by what you heard you search for the right button to click , none of the options said cloud9, but youre sure of what you heard,again you looked at the screen then click on something else.
“ I want to book 3 flights departing on different dates†said the odd sounding man on the other line. You began to hyperventilate, your heart is pounding—split itinerary you told your self I can get that cloud9 you almost said out loud.
avaya – telephone system hook to computer
cloud9 – cheap local chocolate bar
*** each agent must book 2 sales for every 5 calls received
July 18th, 2009 at 11:35
I’ve had my summer job in this quasi-call center company. ‘Quasi’ since technically, it’s a call center, but the nature of the job is to talk to Koreans, over the phone, of course, and teach them proper English. So how do they sound like? If you could imagine a Visayan native with a cleft lip and palate (no harm intended) talking, that’s it. And oh, I almost forgot, imagine him as a three-year old.
People think it’s cool, talking to Koreans, that is. Well yeah, at first. But somehow I had so much Koreanovela in my system that I prefer them speaking in Filipino instead.
And would you believe I had that summer job for two years in a row? Crap.
July 18th, 2009 at 22:43
At one point of my life (actually, around two months ago), I wrote articles about rubber mulch, herpes, hypnotism, tips on how to avoid sexual harassment, at the workplace, real estate properties in a Houston suburb, etc. Five articles a day, 500 words, preferably teeming with key words to make Google stand up and pay attention and direct people to the site. It was stupefying at best, because they fool you into thinking that the job will actually involve the act of writing. Of course, technically and if you want to be PC and prissy about it, what I did was still writing. I was still a writer. I still wrote. I just didn’t have an idea what I was writing about; and after 30 minutes and you think you know a lot about sexually transmitted disease or the real estate market in Texas, you realize what you just did wasn’t writing.
On the upside, it paid handsomely. Because I know at least five synonyms for ‘small’ and I’ve a penchant for commas, I fool people into thinking that I can actually write. That being said, I was a phone monkey for a couple of years. I know how it feels like to take it from and be called stupid by people who can’t even spell some of the subjects I studied in college. However, you expect that in the call center industry. As for content writing, it is misleading and demeaning to the label. Content writing should not be called content writing, because with access to Wikipedia, all you need is a stable armory of conjunctions and you’re all set.
Another upside I forgot: I got to work at home in the buff while smoking. But even that is not without the attendant possibility of horrible, horrible accidents.
July 19th, 2009 at 15:13
The day my first employer (a semiconductor manufacturing firm) told me that I was hired, I was freakingly ecstatic!
Who wouldn’t be? Anyone in his early twenty’s wishing to be free from the daily harassment of ones parents (who , by the way, are pushing you off their blocks and making you realize how incapacitated you are for not finding a decent way of earning a living) would be so glad that finally, after months of bumming out, you finally get the chance to earn money for your self. Plus, it’s the first REAL job. Not a part-time thing, this one’s got the legal contracts with benefits and services offered by a big-time corp!
Or so I thought I was euphoric.
It was a case of conflicting happiness if I may say so.
One would normally confuse happiness with sudden outburst of simple happy expressions simply because youve been desperate for the past period of say, three months (long enough to declare financial drought), and an immediate affirmative response from a seemingly stable subcontrating manufacturing firm, hiring you to be one of its growing number of dynamic personnel (therefore increasing the propensity of the workforce) means manna from heaven.
But really, let’s think things over.
When, after a couple of months, you begin to realize that the fringe benefits promised beforehand are not complied with, and the necessary equipment needed to make your work a little bit easier are not provided, and, at times you have to deal with the occasional bitchiness of your senior workmates (you, being the neophyte, have to absorb all the bitch shocks thrown) really, this makes you tick a little.
You do your job well as a Process Engineer, you actually internalize your work description each time you wake up in the morning, and you are so dedicated that you actually dream about it during the night (or if youre the sleepy type, even in your daydreams, perhaps). But still, the crap that you produce aint good enough.
After a year of hoping that the ecstatic feeling would surface again, a sudden twist of the very playful fate happened. Simply put, when youre about to accept the fact that lifes like that and you must keep on working to keep you alive, shit happens.
The company in which I work in had a problem. It had loaned a tremendous amount of money from another multi-national, not a budding sub-contractor, but a solid multi-national manufacturing firm.
So the President said, just to cheer us up, “We just have to bear it. Since we are a subcontractor, we can go around floating.”
Whatever that means. And the employees learned to laugh at their problem.
Days went on and the agenda on my planner reflected as follows: First, there was this problem. Second, there was that problem. Third, there was this other problem. And so on, and so forth. There were many problems. And every time my boss smiles at me and says, “that problem’s no more”—he’d suddenly angrily frown and whisper, I think this call means there’s another problem.
That was how my job went.
Though some all-knowing in the company (those I presume I may have stepped on during my climb up the corporate ladder) say I may be the problem that I loved my job so much, I get to be carried away by certain situations. F*ck them, I said, they don’t know anything. They think I should do away with the abstract policy and deal with problems on a case to case basis! Of course, I should I know I should. But we have to have an abstract!
I knew, though, I’d have to stick it out up there. The company needed me, Im sure. So that I could only go back to my agenda, eluding in the process my own abstract.
Even though I already knew it.
I’m happier now being a process engineer for a bra company.
July 23rd, 2009 at 23:34
i cant wait for the next contest