I find myself here again -- jobless. I planned this all along though. Finally I'm getting in the groove of doing 'nothing' after less than 2 weeks of quitting my job.
I worked in a highly stressful environment (hello call center!) where it involves the workings of my two hands. OKay, don't want to beat around the bush, it's non-voiced, a chat account. You may think that's easy and fun work, but if you include Sales, that's a different ballgame altogether. In sales, we have financials to hit, week after week, month after month, quarter after quarter, and the next. It would have been almost two years. I had a month to make it exactly a two-year stay, but I had to let it go.
The leave was a sign for me whether or not to continue. If they grant my much-deserved vacation, I'd stay, if not, I'd resign. They did grant it somehow, but I had to go back to work for a day after the three-day leave before my two-day off. You see, if they just maximized and made it a win-win situation, I could have stayed a bit longer, by a few months. God knew how I needed a break.
After not getting my full vacation leave I requested, things were never the same again. It was a bit terrible for me (and the team captain I was under). Good thing I was chummy with our new TC (team captain), but I never cared if I was late by a few minutes and get points deducted. For the uninitiated, we have a point-system for our attendance. The point-system is our lifeblood as they say. If you get late for a minute or even seconds, you get a point deducted. You get 21 points to start off, and you have to make sure you keep that positive, or else. The points get refreshed every after six months, so if you get a point deducted during your the last six month, you will earn a point back. Before I left, I still got a point, a negative point at that (a -15? and it wasn't refreshed yet), hahaha. And I didn't care any less. No point of being on time if the company doesn't give much importance to work-play values, right? That was how indignant I turned.
Alas, there's no second-year anniversary for me. If there's anything that came good out of my stint, it's the friends I kept in the office. I told myself that if I ever work in a call center industry, I will never get too attached, uwi na kagad (go home right after), and do my own thing. That proved otherwise. I would have never survived and stayed this longer if it weren't for the company I kept. Mind you, in our account, you will need friends to keep you sane. It's usually talking to friends over beer, a colleague's birthday party, food trips, and most recently, over gym at our office and badminton.
Numbers, our financials, is the name of the game. And yes, we will just be a number to our client, a number attached to our name. Sad but true.
The romantic in me could have celebrated my almost two year-stay. But if I were to remind myself that this had been the longest job I've been in and based on the quality of friendships I kept, it's still a personal victory for me, in more ways than one.
