March 6

What's with today.

FrancisM succumbs to Leukemia at around noontime today.
I bet the whole nation will mourn for him in the next few days.
I, for instance.

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What's with today.

I browsed through my old emails and found the following article, and I realized that nothing has changed two years after I wrote this.

I have always been a sentimental person. I usually dwell on things which are no longer with me. I have been fond of keeping memories from people that have long been gone out of my life and (stash) just about anything that would remind me of them every now and then. At home, I keep a box full of one or more of the following: scraps of gift wrappers from my friend's birthday gift for me, candy wrappers from market! Market!, dunkin' donuts' paper napkins with little notes in it (and another I snag because my crush held it when we dine in dunkin' one time), dried plants I got from hiking, notes being passed around the class either asking for answers or criticizing the prof's outfit for the day, old workshop id's and nametags, letters from grade school friends whom I've never heard of for ages, plastic rings (the ones you get along with the bubble gum that you buy), boracay sand kept in a small bottle and many other trinkets which my mom usually refer to as "junk". Some of these things have been with me for more than a decade, some I just tossed in recently. Nevertheless, whenever I open the box, the memories that come with these things flood me. Most of the time, it makes me feel good to remember where they came from and just what significant event I could associate with a candy wrapper I am holding. I keep them in a safeplace, for if my obsessive-compulsive mom finds them, I could only follow these stuff I have in the garbage truck which happens to pass by every morning.

My tendency to hold on to little things are perhaps explained by my fondness of keeping people "closer" to me. When I start to develop relationship with people, whether for friendship, romantic or professional, I keep them close and most of the time I hold on to them so tight, for so long, sometimes even long after they have left and gone out of my life.

This was me long before the time i wrote this down. And this, I have to tell, how my being in a contact center changed the way I keep things and more, in holding on to people.

Being my first job after college, I was introduced to a whole new fast-paced world of schedule flexibilities, work pressures and a tapestry of people to deal with. But I was able to cope up anyway. I was, after all, I told myself, geared to be resilient so I know I can stand the pressures. But not for long, along the way ,I've been encountering changes that I have to go through for me to "adapt" to my new world. And this is just one of those.

Right from the training that we had to undergo for more than a month, I've seen some my classmates leave the roster of trainees one by one. Some, survived only for the first week of training, while others left when there was only a week to go before we hit production. At first I when they started to leave without giving us prior notice, I felt bad; not even having to get their phone numbers or email addresses so I can still keep in touch with them. And it all ended there. The stories we've shared while on lunch at the pantry will remain just stories, I thought. Later on, when I got used to the trend, I started to realize that this is how it really works here. What you might be sharing with your friends at the contact center at that very moment should be, well, enjoyed because while you can still actually laugh and share stories tomorrow, you might not share them with the same people anymore. You'll never know who gets to stay the next day to share coffee with you and who gets to be the topic of next day's chit chat.

When we hit the production floor, team assignments was my new concern. I was transferred from one team to another twice. The last team that I belonged was I the longest that I have been with, so practically, I have invested much on the emotional aspect with the team and its members. There came the day when my supervisor told me that I was chosen out of the team. Bad thing was, we were chosen to be out of the team randomly; no basis. They just had to pull out three people out and that's it. I felt bad that I cried in front of my supervisor. I was thinking of how I will be needing to adapt again to my new teammates which I found out later were already tenured agents; I began to worry about how am I going to work hard to sustain and be part of the new team.

After the outburst, my supervisor talked to me which then I told him that I was already thinking of quitting the job. Before it happened, I was already asking for signs if I really should be staying in this job, far from what I ideally wanted which was to teach literature. My supervisor pointed out the things that I might be losing if I quit that very moment. Aside from the legal bonds that I am tied while serving my contract, I was committed to be flexible which of course includes, situations like this that you get to be transferred form one team to another from time to time. And so when my "alter ego" calmed down, and after my supervisor Pedro assured me that this is but a challenge to my resilience as a person and as a player in this field, I gradually understood things clearly now.

In a contact center industry like this, sentiments and emotions do not have a place in the production floor. We leave them at the locker and when we decide to access them later, we can just go back and get them once you log off from your pc's at the end of your shift. And as for the people who come and go from the production floor, we cannot hold them back and make them stay, so while they are still with us, we just have to draw the best on what there is to share with them.

I am turning tables now. the lifelong behavior of being a sentimental kid should and must grow now, I guess. After all, this is how people in our lives should be treated. I believe that our lives are just like the roads where people passes by when they travel. Some of these people may just travel your road once and never come back. Others, may pass by very often but have to leave at a certain point in time; while others choose to stay for good. Which ever among these people that you come across everyday, I think that we should learn to respect time to determine how long they will have to stay. When they leave, we should understand that while we can always look back to the memories, we should always live our lives forward.

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What's with today.

I was told that I am among the supervisors that will be transferred to another account in the next few days. I am still not too sure what there is to feel about it but one thing for sure is that I am not shocked-- for where I worked, anything and everything can happen, whether you like it or not, whether the reason is plausible or absurd, subjective or objective, clear cut or no basis at all.

Anything.

And just when I am starting to jumpstart my long hiatus from sky rocketing stats for my "dreamteam", all of these are being taken away from me.

Life sucks. I know that. And you don't have to rub it all over again.


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What's with today.

Or maybe I should use a "?" instead of "."