Myla, a colleague of mine in the Quality Team was driving alone in her Toyota Innova along Osmena Highway at nearly 6 in the morning yesterday. Her driver and passenger side windows were half-open to save on aircon and hence, gas which costs an average human soul nowadays. As she stopped on the red light near the intersection of Osmena and Pedro Gil, two guys approached her from both sides of the car and demanded her cellphone. Thankfully, her doors were locked. Unfortunately for her, one the guys had a semi-sharpened bread knife poked in her face so trying to close the windows belatedly would be inviting disaster.
“Give me your cellphone”
“Wait, I have to look for it.”
Truth to tell, Myla can’t remember exactly where she tucked her cellphone. After a few tense seconds of groping all over her pockets and flipping through her dashboard and bag the ruffian pointed at something on her dashboard.
“What’s that? Isn’t that a cell phone?”
“No it’s not, it’s an MP3 player. Wait, let me look for it some more.”
The green light flashes. Myla stepped on the gas but in the ensuing confusion with the clutch, the stick shift and everything else, the engine went dead.
Yes D-E-A-D. Dead.
One of the thugs tried to grab her bag from the half open window. She instinctively pulled it back while looking for a way to make a quick getaway. It was then that the thug on the driver’s side started stabbing at her. At first she felt nothing, she said she thought she was just being punched in the nape or something. That was until the blood started gushing and she started to feel a sharp pain coming from her back. All she can do was duck. The seatbelt was clipped around her. No time to unlatch it at any rate. The thugs walked away as if nothing happened.
After crossing the street, a good samaritan helped her. Thankfully, she got through with only 3 superficial stab wounds and she did not lose anything save for maybe a unit of blood.
Others, were not so lucky. I’ve read countless stories about this or that call center agent being ganged up, robbed and killed inside FX taxis. Earlier this week, ten heavily armed men robbed 16 agents who were taking their cigarette break just inside the Robinson’s Cainta compound that houses Teletech Customer Management Corp. The men escaped on two vans with government plates. Also this week, an EDSA-Ayala JMK bus was robbed, 13 call center agents went home without cellphones and wallets that night, the robbers alighted the bus along Buendia avenue. This is the same bus I ride every night.
If I had my way, call center people should be allowed to carry guns. We work at night (well at least most of us) and we should have the right to protect ourselves if our freaking companies or lame government can’t protect us. It’s high time we fight back and teach those thugs a lesson. If they don’t want to earn a living fairly, they’d be better off dead.
In big US cities, convenience store clerks keep guns under the counters. It may not be an effective deterrent all the time but it’s better than just standing there and watching haplessly as someone carts away your hard earned living – or worst, your life.
Yesterday we received an advisory in our email that we should be doing this and that, you know, be alert, stand and walk tall and keep our belongings intact. Keep our company things with their logos hidden. Keep our cellphones in our bags and pockets. Avoid counting money when we’re outdoors. Avoid daydreaming. That’s fine, really, but that’s common sense. They don’t have to tell us that. I thought maybe, it would be better if graveyard people like us should be allowed to go on dress down instead so that we won’t be so conspicuous in the first place. Crooks don’t care about your company logo or cellphone model you know. All they need is one good look at your business casual look and they’d go lock on you as a target. A call center agent looks like a call center agent simply by the way he dresses: slacks, polos, blazers and the cursory earphone stuck in his ear while waiting for a ride or going to his car. It’s easy to tell a call center agent when you see one in the unholy hours of the morning. Especially around the cities of Makati or Ortigas.
One of my teammates brought up this matter during our bi-monthly meeting yesterday. We were told that the company policy for dressing up stays and should be followed. If we want to make new rules, we should set up our own call center.
Ha-ha. And they say our company “Cares.”
To think that at first, I thought the crooks outside are our biggest enemies. I was never soooo wrong.
F**k that. I’m quitting.
com.ments