It was a normal day, infact a normal weekend, I was sitting in a coffee shop with my best friend, and we have been together right from our school days. We were busy discussing about our present lives, our schedules, work, social matters, politics etc etc. We generally love to share each and everything and I feel a coffee shop is a best place to meet up our pals. She started the topic after having a bite of chocolate cookie, "my younger brother Sameer, he has completed his graduation and u know what? He wants to join a Call Centre!!! Can u believe this" I said, "Pooja, It’s just a Call Centre, relax he is not planning to join any terrorist group and have no plans to became a terrorist. Why r u over reacting?"She intureppted,"Vidhi, what are you saying this? I can’t believe, how can you support someone who wants to work in a call centre? You know what is a call centre? night shifts, health problems, no social respect, high chances on him to be a drug addicted , have you not seen the guys out side the call centre taking drugs, smoking complete alcoholic people and at the end of the day what do they learn ? Nothing, complete zero. No B schools will consider any BPO experience, no companies will hire a person at a senior level on a basis of his Call centre experience.........nothing doing, he is a dumbo, he does not have any sense to take decisions, dad has already decided he will be giving MBA entrance exams in this last quarter and will go for an MBA and that’s final!!!!. “Pooja said all this without a single break and after listening to all this I just said 1 sentence, "Pooja, try once you can beat Shankar Mahadevan for breathless .....” She was looking complete blank, I was able to read her mind, she was angry on me, she was quite but her eyes said lots of things, the very obvious thing which I read is "Vidhi, I am discussing something so important and you are busy cracking jokes......" and this was the same sentence she repeated after 30 seconds, pooja said,"Vidhi, I am discussing something so important and you are busy cracking jokes....". I said, "no dear, I am busy reading your mind, I know you inside out, I know how you think and how you react on some particular topics in life, but, this time its not for you, Pooja remember you can suggest sameer, you can guide him but no one can force him, I know sameer, he is no more a kid, If he has decided something about his career he must have at least thought 10 times over it. ......"and she interrupted in between, no no no .... No Call Centre please, I can’t see my brother coming late night, alcoholic, nooo I cant imagine this....." I should say she is a melodrama queen, I picturised her in a 1970 type movie and saying a dialouge like 'nahiiiiiiiiii...........kehdo ke yeh jooth hai .......yeh nahi ho sakta.............yeh sab sunnne se pehle dharti maa ne mujhe apni godd mein kyun nahi sama diya..........' and then I could not control myself and started laughing, definitely I was a centre of attraction in the coffee shop but courtesy my thought process, I could not stop laughing. But I know she was angry and I apologized immediately I said, "Sorry Pooja, but now on a serious note, please don’t interrupt me in between let me complete, let me share my views my thoughts with you rest it’s your family matter and will not interfere." She said "OK".
“See, do you know more than 45% of India's population work in this call centre, I agree, as a sister, as a well wisher you will always feel that your brother does something that’s very unique, intelligent, outstanding etc etc and you are not all wrong if you think like this. Agreed, when compared to profile of an Investment banker, Fund manager, HR head, marketing and Advertising head etc etc this profile has no learning involved in it. But, just to ignore saying this industry has no growth is something that’s completely wrong. Its not only our degrees and our experience that will lead us towards success, definitely they do and they are very important for our professional lives, but, something that’s more important than all this is our self motivation, our aggressiveness, our determination towards our goal in our lives. Pooja I have 2 good friends working in a leading BPO and would like to tell you their success story in short. They both joined as an agent some 5 yrs before in a leading call centre of Mumbai, started their part time MBA and today one of them is a UNIT HEAD managing a unit of 100 agents for a particular process and when a profile includes management of a group of people there is no need to include that the complete responsibility about the quality of service rendered and being an out bound process also the revenue earned from his team. And my second friend, he got shifted to the administration department as he wanted to start his own call centre so wanted to get trained in every possible aspects of BPO. And, today he started his own BPO, successfully managed to achieve projects of couple of leading companies of UK and AUSTRALIA. Defiantly at the early stages it has to be out bound but that’s something which can be made vast later on, isn’t it? Dear BPO is a vast industry, call centre is just a part of it, each and every companies need to outsource their work due to several reasons like to concentrate on the main core business, efficiency, higher profit motive etc etc. Now, can you imagine your brother going to UK for business trips and a CEO of a leading call centre? Or at a very respectable position of a leading BPO? Would you still react in a similar manner the way you reacted today?
I have still not completed pooja. I still need to clear your doubts you have regarding the knowledge and other aspects of Callcentres. All these high profile people in our society, with their high profile jobs and their extra ordinary qualifications feel that they have got a license to speak any thing and everything for those people working in callcentres. Sorry If I am sounding rude this time, I have no intentions to speak anything negative about the high educated people in fact even I respect them because of their intelligence, their self motivation and their determination towards their work. They are actually role models for the upcoming generation but, just because they are blessed with superpower full position and degree they do not get a license to speak anything that hurts or ruins any ordinary men's image in the society. How easily they say," what’s the learning in a call centre? , now I want to ask them a simple question our older generation more then 50% were into the retail business of sales of stationary, grain merchant(retail), cloth merchant(retail) , fast food stalls etc, now can anyone please explain me what have they learnt in their entire professional life ?
Or I should say they have a PhD degree in sales of stationery items, selling books and pencils, selling icecreams, selling sarees and kids wear. In fact I have heard people saying" kya margin wala line hai ...bosss....kitna chaapta hai ". So now where is the learning? In fact they were known as respected businessman. What I am trying to convey is, up to certain age learning plays a very important role and if you are lucky enough you learn and earn for your entire life but, after a certain age there are responsibilities where you need your money, not your knowledge. What will a 27yrs old guy feed his son? Food or knowledge?
Still I am not done Pooja, you gave a pathetic reaction on Night shifts, are you aware about the profiles of nurses and ward boys in hospital, airhostess, people of hotel industry, people in army, air force.....do I need to speak anything more on this ? I think you are smart enough to understand, aren’t you ?
One more thing, Drugs, night life, alcohol.....still in your mind right? Pooja, all the people who are working in BPO are above 18. Do you understand the meaning of above 18? ADULT, ADULT who is mature enough to take his own decisions, who has a right to vote and when we talk about adults we should not forget that they need to take there own decisions, let them learn from their own mistakes, let them see this world in their own, We cannot spoon feed them all the time. That’s all what I wanted to say; now you decide......"
Hey guys, I am neither trying to change everyone's mind, nor I am interested to become a politician, my aim is to convey the message of peace and to politely request each and every individual of the society to respect each other as they are, remember guys everyone is not born with a silver spoon, you need to earn that silver spoon and that requires not only hard work but also love and support from the society.
