7 years in one company may not sound at all too hot on a professional resume. But lemme tell you that the story is a whole lot different when you came from the BPO industry, to put it in numbers, this paints a picture of what that would be:
- 1,848 days of being up all night while the rest of the world was blissfully asleep.
- 5,544 cups of coffee taken during work hours just to keep you up all through the night
- 126 holidays missed... Or in my case 122, I did get to celebrate a few new year's eve holidays at home because I traded off Christmas due to my religion.
- About a thousand days of lost sleep because the world of course is ignorant about keeping quiet when you're the one trying to get some shut-eye.
- The eye bags... I'm thankful I didn't have to suffer it (thanks again mom and pop for the genes) but it's common enough to say I would've suffered it should I have been prone to it.
- 1 out of 3 fifteen-minute breaks spent staring off into space, waiting for your cigarette to go out before groaning and hitching your ass back to your desk.
- But there are some things unique to working in the industry that puts an invisible mark on your forehead that marks you as Graveyard shift personnel.
- The novelties of going home drunk in broad daylight because payday gimik happens to be a Thursday morning.
- Blissfully ignoring traffic news because you're NEVER in the direction of the heavy traffic.
- Having to endure stares because you're all dressed up in the middle of the night while everyone else is tucking away ties and rolling up sleeves.
- Worse, you got a spanking new jacket that everyone admires at work but earns you not a few what-is-he-thinking look from people who've never worked in the sub-zero temperatures BPO centers seem to favor.
- Being the first of a new breed of people who demand to speak to the manager when their fries aren't hot off the grill or when the cashier looks at them funny.
- The more you keep quiet about your job, the more people seem to ask "Sa Call Center ka ba?" hence leading me to believe that we do, actually, have that mark.
But working during the day has been a surprising but NOT at all refreshing culture shock... One of the very first things that didn't go right when I packed up my bags for a brand new day in a daytime job (In my head I was prancing around and singing "Good Morning Baltimore!!!")
THE MRT - it wasn't that I never had bad moments working graveyard, but everyday bad moments?!
- People say it's a constant struggle to get to work, but no one ever said that it's getting into the MRT that makes up 90% of the struggle. Pack light, stay thin and have nerves of steel when
- I find myself tucking my perfume in my bag since you never know when being squished against 4 or 5 peoples shirts so hard in the MRT would end up you coming out wearing all their perfumes a
- That given enough people trying to get in turns the train door entrances into a sort of walkalator- you can actually get in without having to use your own feet!
- That there's an air of magic to the carriage when you see a seemingly jam-packed train coming in... two people alighting and surprisingly accommodates six more.
- The most dangerous situation to find yourself in is to be the lone person alighting from said jam-packed train with 50 people wildly trying to get in.
- Fist fights occur in the trains during rush hour- what with everyone tired and all a sharp jab from an elbow can be all too mistaken as intentional. Downright uncivilized...
