Happy Holidays! How May I Help You!

CEBU, Philippines - Christmas Eve is a once-a-year-event celebrated with dear family and friends over Noche Buena and Manito-Manita. But it is a different story for those on “graveyard shift.”

As told to Queenie Sue M. Bajenting

 I looked up the tall, green tree decorated with fancy balls and ribbons of gold and red. Eluding from fascination, I quickly turned my attention to the clock. It was an hour before ten and I just knew that Christmas this year would be different.

As I settled in my cube and logged in on my Avaya, I felt really lonely, just like how I felt when Prue Halliwell died on the third season of Charmed. I sighed and halfheartedly accepted the bitter reality: it was a few hours before Christmas, but I had to take another night of customer service calls. I had been a travel agent of an international online travel agency for almost a year, a call center agent as many would call my job. I deal with different travel issues every day—or night. From a simple request of a flight itinerary recap or a complicated schedule change, my job is to accommodate and please different kinds of people from different nations. I have become accustomed to cursing, irate, and impatient customers.

Tonight was the very night I had been dreading since I accepted such a night job. While some were lucky enough to get a vacation leave, others, like me, were given holiday pay, a good amount of cash which could never replace the human need of being with the family on that one special night. I was a fresh meat in the field, and boy, what a heartrending initiation it was for me to be on duty when I could be spoiling myself with queso de bola. I do not hate my job but just less enthusiastic about doing it during Christmas eve.

“You’ve reached customer support. Happy Holidays! My name is Francesca. May I have your first and last name please,” was my line that evening. Calls were not few, but I still had a chance to hum Christmas carols. Most calls were last minute bookings of busy people who probably did not expect to fly home for Christmas. Most, if not all, of the callers were surprisingly nice, perhaps their way of spreading the holiday kindness. Whether it was the new air-conditioning system or the thought of the holiday breeze, the ambience in the workplace was just odd yet cozy. No groaning agents or yelling supervisors. It was awfully quiet and peaceful. Rather solemn.

It was already past eleven when all the agents were invited to take a break. As promised, there was a smorgasbord of fine food waiting for the hard workers of the season. From my plate of crispy lechon, I looked around and saw a sea of young people, compelled to celebrate Christmas amid a tedious setting. When the clock struck twelve, what used to be a scene of grandparents, parents, ninongs and ninangs, and children exchanging hugs, had become a fresh view of yuppies taking a quick break from work to greet colleagues. It was awe-inspiring how these people were willing to miss an annual tradition to deal with demanding quota and furious clients. But it was even more amazing for me how, I, a first timer in the professional world, was a part of it.

It was still dark when I stepped out from the busy building of my BPO office. Yet the brightly-lit buildings and roads of the city’s top business center brought a comforting, crisp, breeze of serenity, serenity from work and the huge promise of sweet Noche Buena leftovers. Breathing in Christmas air, I could hear Christmas carols being played in nearby restaurants. The quiet yet gleaming streets told of another anticipated Christmas Eve that came to pass, the Christmas Eve that I just missed—but never regretted.