The months after I was made permanent were pretty uneventful. I was made permanent in September. Had really bad burnout and had intense pressure in October. The other employees believed that around October onwards, management tried to get staff fired so that there was less competition for bonuses in December. I would later learn that ALL industries felt the slump that time of the year.

Anyway sometime around November, my manager got the idea in her head that she wanted “Plug and Play employees”. I didn’t understand what that meant but basically she wanted her team to have full working knowledge of the entire Customer Care department.

At the time it wasn’t uncommon for the different teams to step in and help each other. So for example, the Fulfilment team could work on the Customer Care inbound line or Customer Care could audit calls. More often than not, it was Fulfilment helping Customer Care Inbound and Quality Assurance helping Sales Admin (aka the data capturing team). My manager wanted to equip her staff to work in any department. So she divided the team into smaller teams and had people learn different skills. I was in awe and fascinated by Customer Care but I knew I could never speak on the phone. So when I was assigned to do data capturing for the Fufilment team, I agreed. My job was to activate simcards and I was great at it. I was incredibly fast on the computer and that showed in my activation numbers.

By the time, December rolled around, our team was doing activations, data capturing and even assisting on the Customer Care line. It was amazing and I am still so proud of what we accomplished. Towards the middle part of December, the Quality Assurance manager requested that we assist her with auditing calls which we did. Our team was doing all the things. Which was great because what we didn’t know was that the team was about to be dissolved.

The business had decided that they didn’t need a data capturing team and Sales agents should capture their own sales. Our team was split. Some people went back to the sales floor as verifiers while the rest were absorbed into other Customer Care departments.

I stayed in Activations because of my speed on the computer. I found this interesting because this speed was something that I learnt from years of playing on the computer. I used to pretend to be working in an office. I used to try to write. In fact I did write a novel at 12. And now instead of getting my dream job in Journalism, I was working in an office. Odd how things work out.

I was happy that I wasn’t leaving my team but I felt a tiny twinge of regret. Why hadn’t I asked to learn Customer Care? I was always amazed that these people could talk on the phone but I was too scared to ask for the opportunity to learn.

Looking back on this, it’s funny that I was so scared. 2022 Me would be scared and do it anyway. But I guess that’s growth.

If you’re new here, this is a pretty awful way to ease your way into my blog. “Welcome to the Real World” is a series detailing my early working years. The idea is to impart some wisdom and laugh at my mistakes.

You can find the full series here. However for a quick recap, I started my data capturing job and things were good. I was concerned about the fact that I was a temp on a 3 month contract but I worked really hard and I was sure that it would pay off. Let’s all laugh together.

I was young and had no clue that how hard I worked had nothing to do with my promotion. But I was about to. I was going to learn that lesson the hard way.

When I started in March, there were a few other temps. There was a man in his 30s, a girl who had just finished high school and a older female. The only person who worked at the same pace as me was the man in his 30s. However I started work at 7AM every day (my working hours were 8AM to 5PM). I felt like it could be seen that I was a hard worker. About a month or so after I joined, a guy around my age joined. He was able to keep up with my pace. But he did one thing I didn’t. He befriended the boss.

When it came time to renew our contracts, all of the people who started with me got their contracts extended for another 3 months. I was incredibly surprised when the same thing happened to me. I knew that I was faster than them. So why now were we given the same treatment?

When it came time to renew the contract of the guy who befriended the boss, he was made permanent immediately. I was furious. So I stopped working as hard as I did. I was called into countless meetings where management tried to figure out what the problem was. I replied with I didn’t understand what the problem was. I didn’t understand why now I was no longer as fast as the other guy.

But I knew what the problem was. I just didn’t know how to verbalize it. I didn’t know how to verbalize that I felt demotivated by what had happened.

Thing is, the working world is a game. Who you know matters more than what you know. I should have known that. After all, the main reason I got the job was because my aunt set me up with the interview.

The guy who was made permanent actually stole work from others (i.e everyone had an Excel spreadsheet assigned to them and he would go into these sheets, copy the information that he needed to capture and add it to his spreadsheet).

Management defended him and said he “took initiative”. I was shocked by I kept my head down and worked at my new, slower pace.

After my second round of 3 months, I was made permanent. A vacancy opened in a different department and the guy applied for it. He didn’t tell the manager who he befriended which brought me so much joy.

The manager had no choice but to let him go but he was not happy. The manager then came up with a new rule. If you’re applying for a job in another team or another department, you need to tell a manager.

I’m not sure what the point of this rule was but when the time came for me to leave, I made good use of that rule.

But that’s a story for another day.