DISCLAIMER: The following post is part fiction and part reality. I am not at liberty to say (or rather you are not at liberty to hear) in what proportion. Most of what I write (up to and following) are intended to be funny. That being said you need not feel obligated to laugh. If you feel offended at any point (I'd like to add that it is a likely scenario) then it would be a good idea to leave. It would also be a good idea to leave if you feel you belong to one or more of the following categories:
- You work in one of the said places and have a good feeling about what you do. (I could do with fewer unsavory comments)
- If you have created an illusion that you actually like what you do. (or even if you know that your illusion is shattered and you are hanging onto the pieces so that you continue feeling good)
- You do not like sarcasm and/or you have trouble understanding it.
- You have not laughed, felt remotely amused, smiled sarcastically up to this point.
- You do not understand obscure cultural references.
- If you have not realized that the actual post is yet to start.
So you are here then? Do not tell me you weren't warned!
Coming to the freeway story, well that was a metaphor as most of you may have guessed (or not. It wasn't particularly obvious). What you read in the beginning mimics the expected response of a call center employee who gets a call towards the end of his shift. Now continuing with the metaphor:
You sit up straight, curse a lot, steer to the left, hit the brakes (and do everything else that you usually do when you are panicking). You curse yourself, you curse the driver who was was responsible for the honk, so close but yet so far!
What is a call center?
call center n. A workplace which under the best of circumstances is semi-ideal.To explain the concept I will use another metaphor (Again!).
I believe most of us are familiar with the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf . I am going to build my case based on the story. Now after the villagers failed to respond to his cries, the boy decided that he would pay the villagers each time he calls upon them to drive away the wolf. This way the boy can call the villagers each time he thinks that there is a wolf and the villagers are contractually obligated to look into the situation and drive away the wolf (real or imaginary).
The villagers accept the proposition and decide that they would take turns to respond to the call of the boy. They decide that each villager should be responsible for a particular duration in the day, and when more than one villager is on active duty they have to respond in a round robin fashion. To make the process even more streamlined they divvied the villagers into teams where each team was responsible for a different type of wolf (The metaphor is starting to fall apart a bit but at this point I'm kind of committed to it). So for instance if Team 1 was responsible for the Grey Wolf they would have to deal with problems pertaining to grey wolves. This raised another issue, the boy was not particularly well equipped at finding out what type of wolf was bothering him. Being the spoilt brat that he is, he would just say "I don't know what I am dealing with, just come here and fight it! What am I paying you guys for?!" . Despite knowing his complete uselessness in the aspect the villagers would still ask him to take a stab at it. Based on the wild guesses of the boy they would dispatch the "appropriate" team. The team would first check what kind of wolf they were dealing with. If the grey wolf team goes to the villager and finds out that it is actually a maned wolf then they would say "Sorry mate,not our problem I'll send in the maned wolf team to handle this". After the other team get there they might think it is in fact not a maned wolf and they pass the baton to another team (Sometimes the baton passing was circular, frustrated the boy to no end). The last team in line might say, "Uh! I think we are dealing with a werewolf here and we are only paid to fight wolves. I'm sorry buddy but this one's all yours."
Of course the previous scenario would make the boy really mad. So the next time the villagers were there he decided to make their lives miserable. Even after they fought and drove away the wolf the boy would ask questions like "Why was the wolf here?", "You guys came in and drove away the wolf less than two days ago, why is it back? I want a refund". Of course the villagers had several good answers like "You need to learn what to let in and what not to." and "The wolf that came yesterday was a different wolf. That and this are not connected". But the boy (in all his ignorance) is adamant, "I need to know where the wolf is coming from and fix this once and for all", "Its still a wolf ain't it? How can you tell they are different". (Inside the villager's head "Duh! From the forest", "Because this is what I do everyday idjit!") The villagers often felt that no amount of money which the pinhead gives can account for the misery they have to go through every time he calls.
You can't always blame the boy for the way he interacts with the villagers, the villagers have different methods of dealing with wolves. Some kill them outright (Not to imply that I am for animal cruelty, you know just a part of the metaphor) which is the right way of doing things. Some tranquilize the wolf, which would come back to bite the boy (literally) and the villager responsible (figuratively). A few others had the audacity to say that there was no wolf while standing in front of it. Others had the unenviable task of proving that a wolf wasn't actually present and it was the farm dog with a bad case of whooping cough mimicking the cry of the wolf, and there is in fact no wolf present. All in all there was a lot of dishonesty in the whole operation. One more reason why a few villagers might not want to be a part of this contract.
That concludes the boy and wolf portion of the evening. The general opinion seems to be some bits made sense, the rest was a desperate attempt at not letting things fall apart.
How people work here?
Metaphor time people! (Apparently this is my answer to everything now)Ever considered a career as a baby-sitter? This comes real close to it. You will have an arbitrary number of babies entrusted to you. The number varies wildly, it is usually high on Mondays, pretty low on holidays (because you know the parents are at home). Murphy's law is applicable as always: When you think you can no longer handle it you will have another crying baby waiting for you. Consequently when you feel ready to tackle the naughtiest baby everything seems hunky dory and you find yourself a bit let down.
The bundles of joy comes in many varieties. There are the angels who wait for you whilst you attend to the other babies, the ones who don't complain even if you ignore them completely. They are capable of entertaining themselves and expect minimal everything from your side. Ah bliss!
In your heart you know that there must be a yin to the yang you just encountered. Of course there is, there are some babies' who are the devil's incarnate. The ones who start crying the minute you put them down for a nap, the ones which make you look like the most incompetent baby sitter on earth by crying at the top of their voices the minute their parents are about to leave. Regardless of how many poopy diapers you change (or the number of boo-yah!'s said), there is no making this one happy. Every time a parent sees you with this one your credibility takes a dent.
It goes without being said that most babies fall in the range between the extremities described above. If you are not a fan of the angel-demon scale then you could possibly use the other scale which is described from "Intolerably Obnoxious" to "Mostly Harmless". Depending on the scale you would experience mood swings regularly regardless of your gender.
When you are in a long phone conversation, there are those few minutes where you zone out and come back with a "Hmm". Well you don't have the liberty of doing that here. Although zoning out might be beneficial at times, overall it is not recommended because people have the weird tendency of saying something extremely important right in the middle of something (you think is) unimportant. Brain freeze is another hurdle which you have to overcome, it is quite embarrassing to get stuck halfway while speaking a simple sentence. But then your right hemisphere of the brain might say "Its 1 AM, I need some rest. Good luck forming cohesive sentences, Ciao". Comeback strategies from brain freeze and zoning out are very similar. (you know just a bit of improvisation and buck passing)
Funny sign right? If it were true we would have a slew of serial arsonists, and if the other side felt like returning the favor then we might have seen what would have appeared to be a series of racial hate crimes.
How to deal with working at night?
When your day starts at 2 PM in the evening you need to do something about it right?
Live in denial: Try to convince yourself that there is nothing unnatural about your schedule and go about your business as usual. Side effects may include telling people "Good night!" at 6 AM or referring to the later part of the same day as tomorrow just because you have not slept yet. A friend of mine used to say this in the wee hours of a Saturday, "I have not slept yet so it is NOT Saturday!".
Live in a delusion: Take the previous suggestion to the next level. Reset all your clocks/watches to the time zone in which you work and do everything accordingly. Side effects may include finding yourself in a strait jacket and being told that you have a god complex by a person in a white coat.
Of course there is a third option of accepting things which is good mental health wise. Bad happiness wise, you will realize on everything you are missing out on and feel bad about it occasionally.
Personally I have never experienced a hangover or jet-lag but from what I have read and heard, what you feel when you wake up in the late afternoon is a close match. In fact it used to feel like you were jet-lagged AND hungover at once.
Sleeping in the day has its similarities to the lifestyle of a zombie. You don't sleep all that well in the morning, you are in this semi-conscious state which barely passes for sleep, funny thing is you are in the same state even after you wake up. Now the duration of this period (read zombie-trance where you have absolutely no interest in doing anything, you could possibly sit and stare at the clock for an hour and think of it as an hour well spent not realizing that you were actually watching the clock) varies from person to person but it goes on for a few hours and by the time it ends you have to get ready to work again. So your life consists of two phases: Work and Zombie like trance. Your weekends on the other hand is 80% sleep (Fully unconscious "dead as a log" sleep). If I made a career out of this my autobiography would be title "Chronicles of an Insomniac who mostly dealt with half-wits". (Now it won't, but that's kind of sad because I have to decide on a new name for an autobiography)
Please imagine the next quote in the voice of Sir Michael Caine:
“Every great support case consists of three parts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The guy tells you that he will do everything in his power to fix the problem. But of course... he probably won't. The second act is called "The Turn". The guy after hearing your problem fixes it, but you are still not satisfied because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why there is a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."
(Of course there is the small matter of making it disappear again)
Yours whimsically,
M
(Now that's a good title for an autobiography. Dammit I should stop using parentheses as thought clouds!)
2 comments:
"A friend of mine used to say this in the wee hours of a Saturday, "I have not slept yet so it is NOT Saturday!"."
I think I know this friend... ;)
Why don't you yap so much in reality? :P
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