Honesty #1

No goodbyes, I pleaded,
And was met with farewells.
I have yet to see the seriousness of life
When it comes to reason.
There have been so many faces,
So many names, yet so little life
Begotten from the countless conversations
And the many verses exchanged.

And when nighttime lingers
And sleeplessness threatens,
What more can a lifeless poet
Do but do. For good-byes took
Away his capacity to be.

Title: Honesty #1
Date: April 6, 2000

I'm with another team now. It is so painful to leave friends who have stuck with you throughout the creases and the downside of life for so many months. All the call center companies I have joined, I am fortunate to have been assigned to teams with people I am proud to call friends, but it is only now that I have the chance to have really stuck out for my team, refusing even to join another company for a higher position and hefty salary. I feel guilty for deciding to move to another team (after all I was given 3 chances to decide) as for the most part it was for convenience. Day shift and no calls. Mostly emails. But I simply had to make this move as it was one way of protecting the team from my performance.

I was turned down - again! - on my application for promotion and among all the applications I've sent to date, the reason for being turned down this time takes the cake! "Agent failed to think out of the box!"

I don't usually take these rejections personally. I have always believed that these tries, the performance and the outcome, are mostly self-driven. You present yourself as a product, make your pitch, if they don't like you, then come again another day! But this recent try is really disappointing. I am not blaming any one for this failure, I just feel frustrated. I remember my previous applications, areas of improvement said, "not confident enough." Next try, no deal again, and they said, "confident but lacked classroom management." The next try, I was actually half expecting the reason would be, "the agent was not wearing green."

I'm frustrated because I can't seem to get it right! Anyway, what the company thought I could be good at would be to join the Cyber Response Team. So now I have to leave my very treasured friends, most especially Alex, Beth and Tess and recent confidantes Joan and Jem (both tried out for promotion the same time I did, both were turned down too. Didn't think out of the box, too?) . It also meant leaving Matits and Lot, two of the relatively new agents assigned to me for coaching - who have surpassed my stats, ha! - who I've watched as nervous wrecks to stat drivers of the team (imagine two straight months of excellent ratings in customer satisfaction, three months of perfect credits, and two months of perfect quality monits!). I have always thought i'd stay with the team but because of the recent development (or utter lack of development), I felt I lost the drive to do well in my work. I know that's unprofessional but I feel burnt out. And with this feeling I might be a liability to the team.

So to my teammates, more importantly friends, sorry if I have to leave. I'm pretty sure, my new team will pale in comparison (but am hoping to make new friends).

Was it Richard Bach who said, Goodbyes are necessary for us to say Hello again?