Workload Paranoia
Fucking mierda. I’ve been trying to connect to the MSN messenger all morning but no dice. Now, this might not be that big of a deal to you, but the childish part of me that’s grown too attached to IM’s has not yet withered away and died, so upon realizing the thing wasn’t going to connect I promptly fell into a deep, troubling state of paranoia. I’ve gotta hand it to my brain, though: whenever there’s a problem he takes in his power up and jumps into overdrive trying to find a solution. Sometimes smoke will literaly come out of my ears… this time around though, I felt like there was no use. Y’see, the workplace I’m currently employed in is not the best in the world when it comes to personal space and freedom. We’re all cramped up on the office floor, like a cubicle office space but without the cubicles and both the receptionist and tech-support/whatever-it-is-he-does take a tally of how many times employees get up to either go to the kitchen or the bathroom. They’ve fired people over getting in 3 minutes late, for enjoying the music we listen to with our headphones too much, for getting up too many times a day, no matter what, and using the phone. Which, by the way, was recently taken away and replaced by a pay phone. If my wife’s water broke and I have to call the hospital or whatever, I have to get up and tallied, go to this 1983-emmited, pitch black, blocky public phone, find 10 cents, slot them in and make my call. They charge us if we want to make a phone call. And the pay phone’s in the kitchen. The kitchen.
The other one I particularly enjoy is the fact that the stair access is half-blocked. I mean half-blocked as in “it was blocked before but an anonymous phone call told their asses on it and now it opens only from the inside” half-blocked. Putting up a glass door right by the stairs, when it was first put the only way anyone could access them was by calling the tech-support useless douchebag and open the locked door for you, since he has the only copy of the key to it. If you have half a brain you’ll quickly realized what a safety hazzard this is. I was with Zeccke once and, stoked by the assinine contraption the Tech Douchebag waltzed by. She asked “Tech Douchebag, what happens if there’s a fire? Are we supposed to wait for you to come up and open the door while we roast?” to which the douchebag replied: “Yeah! I’ll run back here and open the door. You’re just gonna have to wait and burn a little.” To this, he laughed. He laughed with that sarcastic, Goofy laugh he has. And then you ask me why I don’t trust that jackass. Whatever; point is that they deduct by the minute if you come late but when people stay until 10 PM there’s no overtime to be had. Their tactics are dirty, they’re too cheap to give raises, buy the programs we use (*ahem*) and just flat-out do whatever the hell they want with the workforce. Hell, I’m the only one of my kind here, doing much much MUCH more than my contract stipulates and there’s no raise in sight. The general manager here’s a child who cares about nothing else but money. This was all cute for a while, but it’s starting to get on my nerves; I don’t like being in a constant state of paranoia, specially over silly shit and this place is making me that way… and I don’t like it.
And this is what happens in a lot of outsourcing companies here in Panama. Always, the little man gets shafted by the bigger dogs. The costs of labor, construction and hook-ups are cheaper, and aside from having your Latino agents talk English like they’re a cliché the business is very well-rounded. And I don’t know how it is in call centers since I’ve been smart enough to never apply for ajob in any of them, but here the English levels are intermediate at best. At least what you would call “sales representatives” in either Dell or Client Logic or whatever (in this case taking the role of graphic designers) don’t have to talk over the phone with clients and instead limit themselves to e-mails and instant messengers, I find myself being the resident dictionary and Spanish-English translator more than half the time. Their conversational English is rarely good enough to put themm on the phones, and their grammar is just as spotty. Always eager to learn, though. In everything. These people, the managers here take advantage of the fact regarding many things, and since their English is shitty they can’t really fight back, now can they? It sucks, but it’s the reality. Labor’s cheap, malleable and easy to get rid of… no wonder so many different companies want to set up their call center branches in our country!
Hey, sorry for the bleak posts lately. Dunno what’s going on, but I’m trying to resolve it… send cookies for good measure.
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