management sucks, but you get rewarded...inconsistencies here!!!

I am working as a technical support representative in a call center here in the Philippines. You can see that on my profile. Anyway, the company I am working for is not that new in Manila but very much a baby here in Baguio. It was a great opportunity to work in a call center located in the northern part of the Philippines. Why? There's no place like home. You work at a job you are adept of (I have call center experience) and at your hometown. You don't have to go to Manila and look for a job and while the pay there is great, so are the expenses. You won't even feel that you are earning P18,000/month.

So here I am working 9 hours a day, 5 days a week troubleshooting online issues from American customers who are too stupid or too lazy to fix their own problems. It is easier for them to call up tech support and curse at them blaming their ISP for their problems that are as simple as not knowing their password to having one of the cables from the modem unplugged.

This job is kind of different and requires more to be more professional than my former job (where you only sell online yellow pages and pick a fight with the customer whenever you feel like it...ahhh, the freedoms of outbound calls). Plus, it requires you to use your brain, which is a relief to know. A little technical knowledge wouldn't hurt either. If you have loads of tech knowledge then you are a tech geek, a PS (product specialist not play station), or an owner of a computer shop (like kuya Alvin Tandoc, aka Baby Buckner). Basically, this is a much more difficult job because troubleshooting connectivity issues requires knowledge, skills and a very. very long patience.

I am an irate agent even in my former job I have the tendency to yell at the customer on the other. How I still survive in this job is beyond me.

The company I am working for is much better than the former job I have. But like any other company we have problems. First the management doesn't know how to take care of us mere employees. One instance is their system of scheduling is so unstable that I feel disoriented on what day of the month it is. You see our schedule is being changed every week which should not be the case since this would destroy your body clock. Damn can't they see that?

Second ever since I started working I heard nothing except payroll disputes. Even if this was fixed there are still disputes all around. Most of my co-workers resigned because of this, my best bud Ice resigned because of her 25 hour overtime that was not reflected on her payslip (paycheck for Westerners) and had a row with one of the supervisors here implying that she is lying about her overtime pay...what a bitch to be honest.

So she left and I thought I might as well join her. Because of this, we had the most outrageous adventure in our lives when we went to Manila and did some job hunting. She managed to be accepted in a very nice call center in Ortigas and I ended up with uncertainty. When I got back home, they called me one by one.

Result? The first one sent me an email with the usual crap of while your qualifications are good blah....blah...blah...but there are people much more qualified than you are. The second one, I turned down their final interview since it is soooo late in the evening (who ever heard of a 10pm interview?! And in Makati of all places!). When the same company called me here in Baguio I told them that I am back home and the guy (some idiot HR personnel I'm sure) said thank you and let the phone go. The third which I ended waiting for the entire night was a waste of time and effort (not to mention of sleep) because in the end I wasn't accepted. The fourth one well, almost but not quite since this company and the one back home are at odds with each other since they have the same program or client from the US. There goes my chances of working in Manila once again.

But when I got back, I decided to stay. You might think ARE YA NUTS?! But I did. Not only because there is no place like home but also because in some weird reason I still believe that someday things would change for the company.

In a way it did since I suddenly find myself a recipient of some sum of money (not that big of an amount but money nevertheless) because of a very good survey from several customers and had recently got a 2-day grandslam for customer satisfaction, which I got a lollipop I guess. Gee, I am avoiding sweets since we have diabetes in the family. Food rewards come and while we're grateful for being fed, money is much better.

Rewards? Candies and cookies. Why don't they add a glass of milk as well? Too bad there is no fireplace in the office for Santa Claus to drop by.

But the company is relatively young (at least here in Baguio) but that is not an excuse to mess with their employees. They do that, they lose people. People who are not leaving the company stayed because either they have no choice or because it is not easy to find work these days since Philippines has very high unemployment rate. So there goes the enjoyment of the job.

If you're not happy with your job quit already or it will kill you one day.

Told you this is inconsistent.

fanfictions, flames and mary sues

I am an avid reader of fanfictions and I never fail to go to fanfiction.net everytime I am in front of a computer (like right now, I am at work and looking at that particular website while troubleshooting connectivity issues). Anyway, I recently came across a particular author who had nothing else to do except flame other authors.

It seems that she hates Mary Sues. To define this a Mary Sue is a character who is totally perfect, no flaws or anything that would mar her personality. She is someone who can do anything and is unstoppable. She is the object of every man's fantasy and lust as well. If there's anyone who can elaborate or correct me further on this definition that would be great.

Fanfictions are fictions or works written by fans of anime, cartoons, tv series, books (gee, I wonder why you have to write fanfictions based on books, this I will never be able to figure out...ok, we are getting out of the subject here). Anyway, this is one good way of expressing oneself even if the charcters are not exactly original but this is one of the ways to exercise one's creativity and eventually evolve to write real-life stories.

Anyway, going back to that author she flames writers who does not meet her standards of what a good fanfiction should be. She did write her own work and honestly I find it funny and her style is sarcastic and mocking. I was laughing while I read it, heck I tried not to laugh out loud since I was at awork. But it was really funny in a mean way.

I am not here to flame her back or defend the authors she had just flamed but to state that both of them has a point. The author is right that there are some writers whose works are plain lousy and I would love to flame them to death for their plain stupidity in writing stories. Some don't even have plot and the content is horrible. These people would need to either expand their horizons or read further.

But these authors are quite young where most of them are only high school students. The oldest writers I have met so far are on their junior year in college and I am sure that adult writers are even more difficult to find (at least in anime fanfiction anyway). So it means that generally speaking, these writers are still immature and have no idea how the world works outside their home and classrooms. They need improvement definitely though it should be done in a constructive way not in a way that would offend them.

If that doesn't work, well they better get a hint. Or take a hike. Whatever.

I'm not much into correcting grammatical errors since I have grammar problems as well. But what I am after is the story content, plot and beauty.

As I was reading the flames and counterflames on the review area the first thing that came into my mind was: whoa, this is supposed to be the review section not a forum. If they want to flame each other please do it somewhere else. I understand that they are defending that particular flamed writer, but review sections are used to point out the improvements an author has to make not turn it to a free for all flame forum. Good thing that author has a blog here in blogger.com, she strikes back really nicely. Spiteful, but nice.

As I continued reading the review sections of ff.net, I thought to myself that I maybe, just maybe I could be a mediator for these guys. Like the ones at forums who can remove the topic and keep an eye on their members. Obviously that doesn't work here in the fanfiction community.

Nevertheless, the cycle of flames and counterflames will continue and I will be there reading and observing from afar.