Although I thought that life here in the Philippines could not get any harder, I was proven dead wrong when the recession finally made it's way to our happy but slightly impoverished little archipelago.  I was really happy and content with my previous job, regardless of the fact that we weren't really movers and shakers in the industry.  We were small, yes, but our services were really affordable, and we had a huge number of clients because of this.  Most of these people actually treated the owner like a friend, since we produced good quality work for them at a price that was definitely among the lowest in the industry.  In fact, we got so much work that the owner simply had to turn down some of the projects.  All seemed well until the recession hit the country, and small to medium scale businesses felt it the most.  This was quite evident when the owner finally had to have a long and hard look at his books and realized that the company he put up would only be able to last for another month, given the overhead expenses that we were accumulating.  Since the recession hit virtually all levels of business, telling the existing clients that we were raising our prices was simply out of the question, and the owner simply decided to close shop rather than have us work for a smaller rate than our already small rates, being the really decent man that he is.  So this is why I ended up in a job at a Philippine call center.


call center in the Philippines

While the job itself is not so bad, I easily earn twice as much as I did in the small start-up company that I used to work for, defunct now, the working hours and conditions are brutal.  Breaks are just 15 minutes, and not a second more.  If the store happened to be something that you could not get to in 5 minutes or less, and if the food you bought was something you could not eat in another 5 minutes, plus 5 minutes on the way back from break, you would really get it.  Breaks are equally as strict, with absolutely no room for additional rest or eating time.  The trainers are actually pretty good, since I think most of them had either education units while in college or were thorough trained to provide good training, the team leaders were boorish and terrible, only in their position because they were simply not qualified for any other line of work, and they had to be promoted because of the years they put in for the company.