The Business Letter

A couple of days ago, my new supervisor handed me a white envelope. It was weird receiving a letter from a company especially if the letter was addressed to me. I opened the parcel, ripping it on its side. It was a business letter alright - in two pages. The content was formal. It followed the business writing that I learned when I was in high school. I know I should not talk about the grammar or the tenses of how it was written; I am writing this piece because the letter tells me where I am now and how the past six months have gone by.

The letter states that I am now a regular employee. For the first time in my 29 years, I have become a regular employee. The formal dressing, the dizzying bus trips, the tensed feeling of long interviews, the night schedules, the memorization of hundreds of papers, the proper diction, the exam harassments, the tight compliance with company policies, the stressful conversations with the clients and the pressure of hitting my metrics - these are the things that occupied my hyper time. The remaining time and energy left are for sleeping. I became a lousy homemaker, best friend, sister and daughter. Opening this white envelope reveals a lot of thought and issues that I’ve been ignoring for the last six months. As the letter ended, I think about some things that put to an end to an almost perfect job.

It’s the friendship that matters and how I can grow and move inside the company. They say people in your lives come and go. I never realize how fast it will be in this kind of industry.

I made friends during my training days. There were seven of us originally. We ate, we laughed, we smoked, we dreamt and texted each other. As we were distributed to different teams, the text messages became fewer, and soon enough most of them resigned and the only three of us were left. I made friends again with the new team. The closest friend I had was Joanna. We were inseparable until one day she was gone. I was so sad and lonely that I never sit at the last post we spent together. The spam messages were gone and soon enough the work is work and was never fun at all. Two months after, my supervisor sent a goodbye letter. The team was again, distributed to different teams. I was now under this supervisor who is kind of homophobic. I was absent for two days because my partner was very sick. He told me it was not valid because she was not to be considered as an immediate family member. Nakakabadtrip kasi sabi nila call center jobs are for LGBT’s because they don’t discriminate. Technically, she was supposed to be considered as an immediate family member because we were living together as what other married couples do. Kasalan ko ba kung walang legal documents? As I think about it, that supervisor is the one who is homophobic not the company. He is the one to decide about this case and even if I called earlier I was tagged as NCNS (Read as AWOL).

As I am folding back the business letter, putting it inside the white envelope again, I think about what I am going to do if I decided to resign because this is the thing, it is easier to leave because you have an option to stay.