Dreaming Between Calls

“You know, no one has really talked to me in months,” the old man said over the phone as the call was about to end, the words spoken with a hoarseness indicative of the thickness of the lump in his throat. What he really meant was, “No one has really listened to me in months.”

It was just a regular working day for a call enter agent like me. And this, a call from a fifty-something American man who begged to be allowed to skip the payment for his credit card for that month, was supposed to be just one of the 70-plus calls I would routinely handle and, owing to the fact that I didn’t have a limitless memory, would have to be casually swept out of my mind and into the realm of oblivion by the end of my shift. But the memory of that call simply refused to go away. Even until today, more than two years after I received it and nearly a year after I left the call center industry.

As in any outsourced call center that services credit card companies, the call began with routine verification. I asked for the name, credit card number and some personal info. Getting his date of birth made me aware of his age. And through the accurate personal info he gave me, I was able to access his account profile, allowing me to see his profession as well as the spending limit on his card. I could no longer remember his profession. But I do remember being impressed. It was something like a doctor or an accountant. The spending limit was high, further convincing me that the man had an enviable financial status. But when he began explaining the reason for his call, all impressions of success and stability faded.

He said he used to have a good-paying job and didn’t have to rely on anyone for his needs, much less, ask for undeserved favors. But things changed drastically a few months ago. He was crippled in a car accident that nearly had him killed. And since then, he was never able to work, thus depriving him of a source of income. Given his situation, he begged for permission to miss that month’s payment for his credit card.

He couldn’t work, I thought. That’s why he couldn’t pay. But couldn’t he have received insurance as a result of the accident? It was a question that I came up with as a result of curiosity. But sensitivity kept me from asking it aloud. What about his children? A middle-aged man at the pinnacle of success must have raised children who grew up to become well-off professionals.

“I don’t have any children,” he said even before I could ask. I didn’t bother asking about a wife, lest she turned out to have been killed in the same accident.

I did what I could do for him, something which, as a matter of professional ethics, I can’t disclose in this article. And right then and there, the call should have ended. I should have said “Thank you for calling” and “Good bye”. But the man kept talking, ranting about things that didn’t have anything to do with credit cards. He kept pointing out how pitiful his predicament was. He said he didn’t know how he could survive without a source of income. God, he didn’t even know how he could buy his medication. I wanted to say, “All right, you’ve made your point. I already did something for you. Why do you have to keep talking like that?” But I simply didn’t have the heart to say all that. It only took me 2 minutes to address the man’s concern but the actual call lasted for 40 minutes. Professionally, that was a catastrophic failure on my part. The required average handling time of each agent was only five minutes. And I was over that figure by 700 %. It was a moment that warranted a rare selfless form of unprofessionalism. And that’s exactly what I gave him. Even though I knew that would get me into trouble with my boss as soon as the agents’ performance numbers are released by the end of the day. The man didn’t just call bout his credit card. He badly needed someone who could listen.

Finally, when his emotions subsided, when the psychological volcano in him had completed its eruption, he found the courage to say “Thank you”, words that somehow frightened him because they would inevitably be followed by “Good bye”.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

I wanted to say a few more soothing words that I should have said much earlier. But the man began to weep like a child. And then he hung up.

Ironically, it was at that moment, right after I heard him sob, that I had this somewhat insensitive thought. He was crippled but still had the capability to dial our number and speak over the phone. If he could do all of that, he‘d get a job sooner or later. All hope’s not yet lost for him. He would just have to rid himself of the emotional baggage that paralyzed him far more than his actual paralysis did.

Thinking of the last caller made me turn towards the agent seated to my left, a 49-year-old guy whom the young people at the office endearingly called Daddy Rolin. He was the living proof that the man who just spoke to me over the phone could still get his life back on track. Years before entering the call center industry, Daddy Rolin was a man one wouldn’t hesitate to call successful. As I recall, his academic background was in finance but he established a stable career in the construction sector in the Middle East. However, tragedy struck after he returned to work here in our country, the Philippines. A viral infection attacked the bones and muscles of his legs, practically crippling him. But he fought back. Through therapy, he was able to walk again, albeit only with the aid of a cane and at a very inconveniently slow pace. In a way, he had conquered his illness. But when you see him walking in the office, struggling to lift his leg to make each difficult step, his body trembling each time a lifted foot landed on the ground, his hand quavering as he did his best to grasp the cane’s handle and keep his balance, it is simply impossible to describe him as victorious.

A victor, he might not have been. But an inspiration, yes. Despite his handicap, he still found a job as a call center agent, answering calls of customers from the United States, a country halfway across the globe from ours. It’s no secret that each time he walked past the entrance door, all employees nearby would take notice of his arrival and watch the subsequent struggle he would courageously face as he walked from the door to his work station.

When mortals see a god walking among men, the mortals would be stunned. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by the sheer glow of a powerful god? And as soon as that god leaves, all mortals will go on with their lives, lives that will remain unchanged despite the descent of that god from Olympus. But when a mortal seemingly cursed by the gods dares to climb Olympus, the mortals will not only watch. They will be moved, inspired to go where only the powerful gods go. That’s exactly what Daddy Rolin did to us. By merely going through each difficult morning, he drove us to climb our own Olympuses.

If someone was free, that is, if someone was nearby and didn’t have a call to attend to, that person would willingly walk slowly alongside Daddy Rolin so that the latter could have one hand on the cane and another on the kind person’s shoulder. Given his situation, riding a wheelchair would have been much more convenient for Daddy Rolin. Except that it would put to waste all the miraculous triumphs of the therapy since his legs’ muscles would inevitably deteriorate if they’re never flexed.

Had there been no call centers in this country, the man wouldn’t have a good-paying job. At his age and at his condition, it was difficult, if not impossible, to find a new financially rewarding career. In this country, in this age, the call center industry had become the new Great Equalizer.

Great Equalizer. That’s how, in an interview for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Filipino tycoon John Gokongwei described the Second World War. After the war, both the rich and the poor had to struggle for financial survival. And in such a situation (this is my opinion and not Mr. Gokongwei’s), the usually sturdy wall that blocked the poor’s path towards wealth crumbled. The same is true of the call center boom in this country. It offered a sea of opportunities to countless Filipinos who never would have established real, respectable careers had the boom not come.

In our workplace, there were promising young men who had a lot of potential that could have just gone down the drain in the absence of the call centers, young men who studied at the University of the Philippines – Diliman, the country’s premiere university, but eventually had to drop out for financial reasons. Had they graduated, they would have become brilliant engineers. And when you come to think of it, had they decided to stay in their respective provinces (the University of the Philippines – Diliman campus was in Metro Manila) and study in smaller, less prestigious state colleges, they should have become engineers by now. But ours was a generation taught to aim only for the best and nothing less. That’s why, like the more than 60,000 senior high school students who take the entrance exam to the University of the Philippines each year, they dreamed of graduating from that estimable university and nothing less. They didn’t become engineers. But they were brilliant nonetheless. And for that reason, they deserved the success that the call center industry generously gave them.


I still clearly remember how, in college, my engineering professor mocked call center agents in front of the class. “Yes, they are well-paid,” he said. “But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?”. He paused to let the words’ impact be felt deeply in the silence. “If you’re happy to simply earn money, if that is the only purpose you can have in your life, then go ahead, work in a call center!” But now, I was compelled to ask. What are we supposed to do for our society? Dream?

While waiting for the next call, I looked at the other agents at the office. It wasn’t a very busy day. The volume of calls was low and as a result, many agents didn’t have calls to attend to. Some of them spent their unexpected free time gossiping with each other. The others seemed to be resting, staring at the computer, perhaps their way of keeping their eyes open (sleeping was a no-no) while their minds flew to dreamland. Yes, that must be what they were doing. Dreaming.

A call center in the Philippines is a place filled with dreams, most of them broken. Here, you would find not only the dropouts but also the engineers, the programmers, the accountants, the teachers, the nurses and even the former soldiers earning a living through a profession they never even dreamed of when they were young—when they dreamed of becoming something else, something more prestigious. In this office, there was a school teacher who had to shift to a new career because her salary as a teacher simply wasn’t enough to pay for her children’s tuition. In this call center, there were promising Computer Engineers who were stuck here because they could not find employment in the I.T. industry. This place was the refuge of engineers who could subsist on the lower salaries they could have had as entry level engineers but had to take calls for a living because they had to support the college education of their younger siblings. Finding sanctuary here are the young nursing graduates who could not find a hospital that would offer salaries high enough to cover the debts their parents had to incur for the sake of their education. Here, you would find former bank supervisors who had to leave the banking sector because they could not find a bank that could give them salaries high enough for them to afford the ever increasing apartment rates in Manila.

All these brilliant people, these underemployed professionals, they certainly must have once dreamt of doing the best for their society. Just imagine the young computer engineers when they were young and full of hope. They must have dreamed of building a billion-dollar I.T. industry for the country. But instead of manufacturing computers, they found themselves wearing headsets and pacifying irate callers. The teachers, they must have dreamed of nurturing the talents of the gifted. The accountants must have spent years imagining themselves in an accounting firm, putting into order the finances of the country’s biggest players. The programmers must have spent their youth nurturing their creativity. But now, the only time they could make use of their creativity is when they had to say a big “No” to a pleading customer’s request. These people had spent a good portion of their lives preparing to serve society in the ways they had dreamily envisioned. What were they supposed to do now that reality was bluntly telling them that their society had no room for the fulfillment of their dreams? What were they supposed to do? Dream, starve and die?

Sometimes, in between calls, they— we would still find ourselves thinking of the dreams we could no longer fulfill. But each time that phone rang, each time a call ended only to be followed by another one, we were being smacked thunderously in the face by the bitter reality. And the more calls we took—the more thunderous smacks we endured—, the more we were compelled to forget our dreams. So what if those dreams could no longer be fulfilled? The important thing was that while we were there, taking calls and earning the money we needed, the dreams of our siblings and children remained intact.

Now I know why I never forgot about that crippled American man’s call. It’s because his predicament was not too different from ours. He spent much of his life believing that life would be good if he only worked hard. That until old age, he would be a significant contributor to the society’s welfare and would never be a liability to his government. Then suddenly, something shocking happened and through some cruel twist of fate, he found himself unable to get a decent job, unable to serve society and himself in the gallant way he had always envisioned. We spent our lives preparing to be heroes for our country in our own gallant ways. We even worked hard for the fulfillment of our dreams. But when our turn to be part of the workforce came, something shocking happened: we realized that deserving the job would never be enough to get the job. And even if the job was already ours for the taking, the heavy hand of fate dragged us back to our responsibilities and away from our dreams. For some time, we inevitably wallowed in self-pity. But luckily for us, each of us swallowed his pride, rid himself of all emotional baggage early on and scrambled for the next best thing.

“But ask them, ‘What are you doing for your society?” the words of my professor echoed in my head.

And my caller said, “You know, no one has really talked to me in months.” Although what he really meant was, “No one has really listened to me in months.”

Listen to us.