01380: Nine Years of the Call Center Life

Rocky 2005

Nine years. I've been working for the same company for NINE years now. That's a bit of a feat for any company. And considering I work in the call center industry, that becomes an even bigger accomplishment somehow.

One of my former bosses used to quip that tenure is like virginity among whores - you're bound to lose it sooner or later, so it's nothing to brag about. And I've never really invested too much into my tenure - it's just a thing that sort of comes up as the occasional anecdote or funny story during a client presentation or something. But it's really dawning on me just how long I've been here. I don't feel bad about it nor do I feel particularly good about it either. I'm just sort of still here. Hmm.

I enjoy my job. It's not quite what I imagined that I would be doing at this point in my life but then not many people can accurately predict what their career might ultimately look like. But I have to admit that I've been learning a lot in this job and the world of marketing and social media marketing is pretty interesting indeed. I can see myself further exploring other aspects of this particular career path, although it'll take some doing.

Rocky 2007

I've reached a point in my work life though that I find  myself somewhat alone-ish. And what I mean by this is that most of the folks that I knew in terms of batch mates who starting working a the company the same year I did. There was a point in time when I felt that I knew key people in pretty much every department and client program. And now I look around and I barely know anyone, plus my current role has me working with other people very little - at least not in person. So yeah, that has me feeling a little sad.

It's a job. You don't exactly go to work to make friends. You go to work to do your job. The relationship that you try to foster most is that between you and your boss, and probably your colleagues in the department for teamwork purposes. 

But now I work in a department with technically just one other person. My boss is great, although he's on the other side of the planet, but I definitely have no complaints. There's an auxiliary team attached to ours but they don't exactly report to us given their organizational ties link back to the US as well. So I really don't have too much interaction beyond my one colleague, with whom I share an office. So that's something to ponder.

So what will the next few years bring me in terms of my career? I have to admit that I don't officially know at this point. I'm still doing well in the call center world and I think I'm making progress with my writing (although I need to push harder). So definitely there's a lot of things going well for me, and I can't really complain. It just feels like there could be more, but it's just not quite there yet. Something's missing in my work life and maybe I'll figure out what that is in time.