So here’s the thing- right now I work in the call center industry and I’ve been there for a little over a year now.  It was the only job that said ‘yes’ to me when all of the other hospitals or other nursing-related jobs slammed their doors in my face.  Currently we cater to one of the biggest telecommunication companies in North America and right now I’m part of the Resolutions Team in our company.

I had a lengthy conversation yesterday with a friend of mine who’s currently undergoing her own quarter-life crisis and somewhere along the line, I was forced to do an impromptu evaluation of where exactly I’m standing in right now.  I think she also asked if there were any regrets on my part that I entered this job and that I forsook my nursing career.

Of course, in this country, being a call center agent definitely does have its perks.  It’s possibly the highest paying job right now and the easiest one to get into as well.  The pay’s good and if you have enough discipline and patience, you’d be able to go far in this industry.  At this point in my life where I’m still really eager to explore all aspects available out there to explore, I’ve got to say that the salary is a very big benefit to me.  The money I get from this job allows me to have all sorts of freedom – I get to watch movies and plays whenever I want, I get to buy things I need and this year, I’ll get to go on out of town trips without having to ask my parents for a single cent.  That, for me, is truly awesome.

It’s also one of the easier jobs available out there and I do not mean that in a derogatory manner.  I say this because what I know what staff nurses do during an eight-hour shift inside hospitals and the fact that call center agents (or any business outsourcing employee, really) get paid more is the biggest form of injustice in this country, I think.  That’s right; give the minimum wage to the people who save lives.

And then there are the company benefits.  In the one that I work for, all agents are covered up to a hundred fifty thousand pesos worth of medical coverage that can be used even though you’re still not yet a regular employee.  On top of the basic pay we get transportation, meal and rice allowances and the night differential pay, because yeah, we do go to work at night.

For the bad stuff, mostly it’s the fact that we do work during the night.  It can be dangerous, yes, but mostly it’s just annoying that I wake up at 2 o’clock in the morning during my rest days and find that there’s literally nothing that I can do to alleviate my boredom.  It definitely can get tiring after a while since I’d have to change my sleeping pattern during the weekend just so I can have decent moments with my family and friends.

Of course there’s negative connotation that people have of call center agents.  For some reason we do get tagged as lazy and stupid people who are only in this job because we aren’t competent enough to get a “real” job with the profession of our choice.  And I guess in my case this is a partially apt description; I got here because I tried my luck in other avenues and failed, but I am here because I’m choosing right now to stay.