Night is the land of dreams, and the graveyard shift the territory of dream weavers.
Midnight mist. Empty sidewalks. Flickering street lights. Deep inside the nocturnal hush of the city is the hum of young men and women in different call centers all over the country. Like a black cat in the night’s shadows, graveyard shift pounces in the strange but exhilarating life of call center agents.
It was my turn to take a rollicking plunge into the neon world of midnight workers when I started working for a contact center October of 2003. I got hired as a split-skilled customer-service-technical-support agent answering calls from irate irrational foreign customers and replying to poorly constructed email requests during downtime. Taking calls can be physically exhausting and emotionally blistering. On my first night on the job, I had a headache roughly the size of Araneta Coliseum.
Playing the part of a nocturnal animal doesn’t come naturally. For several months, I was constantly fighting against my body’s biological clock. But thanks to my lively co-workers I made it through my regularization.
A few weeks later, I got promoted as a supervisor. More than ever, my job requires me to be awake during my shift. So, while my internal circadian rhythm tells me to sleep, I struggle to keep my eyes open during client conference calls and QA-calibrations.
Call center life is not easy. The stakes always seem higher at night. Jeopardy is too close a companion. You never know what you'll find in the shadows. On top of that, no one respects the fact that you sleep during the daytime. You have to be to work at 11:00pm so friends and family think that you have all day to spend time with them on “weekends” and “holidays”. They don’t consider the fact that you don’t expect them to hang out with you at 3:00am on your days off. And when you are trying to sleep in the daytime, there’s always a loud sound tormenting you into a restless, half-awake misery.
But why do people stay?
Call centers offer a lucrative future. Agents are well-compensated and gets 20% night shift differential daily. That’s over Php3,500 a month on top of the basic pay. That’s Php3,500 to be working the shift where there are the most drunks, the highest crime rates, and the most number of co-workers who haven’t brushed their teeth for too long. That’s Php3,500 to work when everyone else, including your friends is out partying or snug in bed. That’s Php3,500 to work on Friday and Saturday nights, Christmas Eve and New Year.
But money isn’t the only reason for staying. As for me, the job security, the-come-whatever-time-you-want-flexi schedule, the work environment, the goodbye-to-traffic-on-my-way-to-work daily, the unlimited-surf-all-you-can-until-your-boss-catches-you access to the internet, and the culture that encourages people to develop, grow and take responsibility are reasons that will always keep me from venturing elsewhere.
And on these ghostly working hours, the many great thank-you-for-calling-customer-service-how-may-I-help-you colleagues can almost always drive the night sweats away.
Midnight mist. Empty sidewalks. Flickering street lights. Deep inside the nocturnal hush of the city is the hum of young men and women in different call centers all over the country. Like a black cat in the night’s shadows, graveyard shift pounces in the strange but exhilarating life of call center agents.
It was my turn to take a rollicking plunge into the neon world of midnight workers when I started working for a contact center October of 2003. I got hired as a split-skilled customer-service-technical-support agent answering calls from irate irrational foreign customers and replying to poorly constructed email requests during downtime. Taking calls can be physically exhausting and emotionally blistering. On my first night on the job, I had a headache roughly the size of Araneta Coliseum.
Playing the part of a nocturnal animal doesn’t come naturally. For several months, I was constantly fighting against my body’s biological clock. But thanks to my lively co-workers I made it through my regularization.
A few weeks later, I got promoted as a supervisor. More than ever, my job requires me to be awake during my shift. So, while my internal circadian rhythm tells me to sleep, I struggle to keep my eyes open during client conference calls and QA-calibrations.
Call center life is not easy. The stakes always seem higher at night. Jeopardy is too close a companion. You never know what you'll find in the shadows. On top of that, no one respects the fact that you sleep during the daytime. You have to be to work at 11:00pm so friends and family think that you have all day to spend time with them on “weekends” and “holidays”. They don’t consider the fact that you don’t expect them to hang out with you at 3:00am on your days off. And when you are trying to sleep in the daytime, there’s always a loud sound tormenting you into a restless, half-awake misery.
But why do people stay?
Call centers offer a lucrative future. Agents are well-compensated and gets 20% night shift differential daily. That’s over Php3,500 a month on top of the basic pay. That’s Php3,500 to be working the shift where there are the most drunks, the highest crime rates, and the most number of co-workers who haven’t brushed their teeth for too long. That’s Php3,500 to work when everyone else, including your friends is out partying or snug in bed. That’s Php3,500 to work on Friday and Saturday nights, Christmas Eve and New Year.
But money isn’t the only reason for staying. As for me, the job security, the-come-whatever-time-you-want-flexi schedule, the work environment, the goodbye-to-traffic-on-my-way-to-work daily, the unlimited-surf-all-you-can-until-your-boss-catches-you access to the internet, and the culture that encourages people to develop, grow and take responsibility are reasons that will always keep me from venturing elsewhere.
And on these ghostly working hours, the many great thank-you-for-calling-customer-service-how-may-I-help-you colleagues can almost always drive the night sweats away.
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