Pancakes, anyone, for supper?

Here's a contribution to BlogStreet by Paul Vincent of the BPO Forum:

Waking up to the smell of pancakes for breakfast is truly one of the better things one gets to enjoy in life. Luckily, for those of us who work in a call center, those of us who don't get to wake up for breakfast, there's lunch, dinner and all sorts of edible stuff you can get from the friendly convenience store around the block.

The call center industry has indeed - for lack of a more unique term - boomed to exponential proportions with all those foreign multinational corporations setting up their sites here and there. It had opened up a lot of opportunities for people to explore their potential and become a contributor to society without having to be confined to the limitations of one's educational attainment.

So how does a typical Juan dela Cruz (he has since changed his name to John once he got signed by one of the top call centers in the Philippines) spend his day? He wakes up at around 7pm (he hit the sack at around 11am earlier), eats a hasty meal and prepares to go to work. By 7:30pm he's saying goodbye to his wife and kid; then he's off to work. He gets to the office at around 8:40pm and has just enough time to enjoy a stick of cigarette before logging in. He enters the office at 9:01pm and is late by one minute.

He gets his first call as soon as he logs in to the phones. Its a sup call. The customer is so irate about the product or service that he purchased, so naturally John tries to calm the customer down while holding back his own unrelenting fury. He checks the time and he can't believe its just 11pm. To him it felt like he'd been wearing that headset for days. The hours dragged on.

Finally his day mercifully ends. He logs out of the phone as soon as his last irate customer hung up at around 6:45am. He goes down the elevator and walks amongst executives and businessmen, except that he goes the other way. Their day's just beginning. For John, he's glad to be going home. He gets home at around 8:30am. His wife makes breakfast (pancakes), and his two-year old son wants to play. He spends almost the entire morning with his family and finally gets to sleep at around 11:15am while trying to block out all the noise outside. The following week his shift schedule was changed and he barely had time to see his family awake before going to work.

Now I know this does not typically apply to everyone. Some don't get to do the things John did in the previous example. If anything, working in a call center has made me realize the value of things that I normally took for granted - sleeping, eating right, and spending time with the family. Pancakes anyone?