February 18, 2008
part 1: If leading meant good role models, then I’m screwed.

Gooooooood morning, happy people of the internet. Let me start off by saying I am so sorry if I can’t either post, comment or visit any of your updates, and if it might just last for a couple of weeks. Updates, I can try, but blog hop, I just might not. I can’t even do a quick answer to Jhed’s comment on my topic below because I can’t do things at liberty right now. See, I am positioned beside a new hire at work, and we don’t really wanna be corrupting fresh new minds at such an early time, do we? No, because we are the role models of the company, we are to be straight-doing and peace loving folks up until such time that you realize that none of them really is and maybe it’s okay to go around and show how such a bad ass we really are.

So. The truth is, I didn’t really wanna post anything other than diversions such as gig schedules and gay film reviews. I’m not picky, just that the past days (weeks, even), I could hardly talk without hoping I’m not jinxing anything by talking about not talking about what I should or shouldn’t be talking about. You know, usual corporate stuff. Like me being promoted as one of the five new supervisors.

Oh yes. You read that right.

So I started this Monday, although according to the papers I have been on the position since the 8th—yes, my mum’s birthday was too lucky, it spread its glittering luck even to the wind giving me the push. The funny story there is that we weren’t supposed to know about it, except our Assistant Program Manager (my team’s former gwapo Chinese supervisor before Ger) sent a cc requesting for supervisor access to one of the promoted supervisors as well–except the email was spotted by our ever boisterous gossip machine, Eman, and started his own raw news spreading brigade which of course, began with Ger. Except he kinda said that out loud that–out of sheer disbelief of the preposterousness of how one sleuth email was known across the floor in a matter of seconds—our APM stood up (eh ang tangkad pa naman nun, 6’+ ata), snapped his head towards Eman’s direction, and gave him an uber icy stare that scared the hell out of everyone else in the floor (eh singkit pa naman). Oh yeah. Priceless.

But, I wasn’t there when that happened. So naturally, I was roused from my sleep by one middle-of-the-night phone call courtesy of Ger. And later on from Eman himself, nearly crying on the phone because of fear for his life and job. Mwahaha.

So there. I’m starting with a queue entirely different from mine and maybe even the worst right now on the floor—worst being the hardest in terms of stats, chats, and customer satisfaction reviews. Yes, also made me wonder why I left my haven of a queue for this. But as our Operations Manager said, this is career development. And so I say, let’s bring on the shit.

Ooh, my bad. Yes, from now on, I ought to be an angel of a person to be able to influence lest I start strangling necks. How I’m gonna do that, I’m not sure, but I already started with a fluffy faux fur jacket. I can’t have wings but I got fur. I looked russian, though, with all their furry jackets and stuff.

Well, it’s cold in the training room. I gotta start being warm first before I become an angel.

Anyway. Right now the whole class is going through basic training. Lance (another new supervisor) and I are breezing through this one as we already went through this back when we had our own training. The hard knowledge comes next week—which is funny, because our Monday starts with a holiday off. Almost saying that we ought to rest a day and ready ourselves for something overflowing. Hoo, boy. Somehow, we gotta help keep the balance, as half of the class are newbies and half of them were transferred from a different account which happened for the third time, so they’re pretty jaded. Well, we are too, but we can’t show them that, can we? We are after all, gonna be role models for the next weeks and maybe up until we’re in this career development curve.

So. There, I’ve finally blogged about it. Wish me luck, eh?

February 22, 2008
Part two: it’s cold when frost touches you

It’s somewhere in between the trip to the loo and wearing rubber shoes on a weekday that I got my first reality check: while I was simply aiming for a nod or two as a recognition, he smiled widely and called me, “ma’am.”

This is it. No turning back now.

For the past days I’ve been simply considering myself lucky: going through the training like just another compulsory training we already know; showing a lax attitude on wearing comfortable casual clothes on the training floor when we’re supposed to be wearing business casuals. Hey, it’s training, I’d say to myself. Cut me some slack here. I feel like I’m simply a giddy student, going around and silently breaking the rules.

Of course it was a surprise—no, it was a mild shock, to be reminded of my duty. Of the new responsibility I should be owning up to and still carelessly going about. While some people were laughing about some other new supervisors taking it to their head from the first minute, I claimed I won’t be doing such; now overdoing it by almost shrugging it all off. This, is definitely not the attitude I should really be showing, but I did.

I really ought to shape up if I want them to start perceiving me as their leader. This is not a game anymore, I guess.

March 06, 2008
Part three: frost bites and bites hard

The class kind of got into our last straw of patience: Lance, my class buddy and the other co-supervisor in training, bellowed in the middle of discussion and requested to have all computer monitors closed, as someone was surfing friendster through lectures. On a separate occasion, someone even had the nerve to sleep through a visiting QA’s discourses. I mean, how screwed up is that? We couldn’t believe that one wouldn’t show the enthusiasm in the class is they even meant to stay in the program, or at least some respect. Later on, Lance and I talked to the class after we requested the trainer to leave for a few minutes. We were trying to be lax, blending in, minimizing the shoutings and trying to keep things at a more comfortable pace. I guess it was too soft.

I suppose some things really come through hard. It just had to sort of shake us up. I know Lance is silently trying to keep the enforcements at bay, but he did arouse the required superiority in me to oversee these guys. I know I have to one of these days shake off the idea of staying in my comfort zone and be stricter.

We know it’ll be harder to tame them as soon as they start at the floor, so I suppose we have to nip them in the bud.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am and is filed under Daily Mundane Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.