kollgirl!

If you are familiar with the terms QA,Queuing, EOP, ACW, AHT, avail, then you are one of us, the thousands of "kolboys" and "kolgirls" in the Philippines.
We belong to the sleep-deprived, nicotine-inhaling, cab-riding new breed of Filipino youth. We infuse our anemic, caffeinated veins with ferrous sulfate every day so that we won't be "NCNS" (no call, no show) for our next shift. "Ginagawa naming araw ang gabi." [We make the night our day.]
Glamorous? Well, if your idea of glamour is staggering down Ortigas Avenue wearing Paris Hilton shades at 8 in the morning, looking dog-tired while everybody else looks fresh and new, then we are the kings and queens of glamour.
Bohemian? Ha ha! We follow a very rigid schedule. We cannot go on extended breaks. We cannot hang up on cursing customers. We cannot refuse to take calls. And we have to ask for permission to answer nature's call. We are like prisoners in our stations for eight whole hours. Ours is a Spartan life.
I cannot help but be catty and melodramatic about it. We say, "Good morning" when we all know that everybody but us (at least in this part of the Pacific) is in his deepest sleep. We say (with an audible smile), "I'd be glad to assist you, never mind if we had to leave a feverish son under the care of his "yaya" [nanny].
We can afford to miss family occasions and national holidays because we know we will be well compensated. Every birthday of a family member that we miss means we have P700 more to pay the bills, rent and tuition. The added pay for every national holiday that we worked helps pay our taxes. Yes, my friends, we are paying for the street lights along the avenues and highways that we must brave every night.
Contented cats we are not. "Laway lang ang puhunan" [Saliva is our only capital], we some people say, but we are in one of the most stressful and draining jobs you can find. And like the rest of the working class, we are overworked and underpaid.
We are forced to defend big banks, superstores, telecoms or any account we are handling. Just like any member of the proletariat, we are alienated from the giants that we work for. We apologize for things that we do not have anything to do with. We fix problems we did not create. We are the cheap, apologetic and docile answering machines at the other end of the line, the receiving end of the frustrations and ire of customers who feel shortchanged.
Apolitical? I have to disagree. We are tax-paying citizens like most working Filipinos. Yes, most of us get the latest news from Inquirer Libre (while riding the Metro Rail Transit on our way to work), but we are also appalled by the P500,000 "cash gift" congressmen got to kill the Arroyo impeachment complaint last year. We are also furious with this government for spending half of the national budget on debt servicing so that it can borrow some more. And we are enraged that some people cheated their way to high offices.
We may speak in English for more than half of our waking hours, but it doesn't make us less Filipinos. We share the sentiments and burdens of every landless farmer, every laid-off factory worker, every out-of-school youth, every hungry Filipino mouth. We find time to mourn slain activists, priests, journalists and innocent civilians. Most importantly, we share the aspirations of the Filipino people to build a just society where we can say, "i'd be glad to assist you" and actually mean it.